You'll play lonely games too.

"Fame! You'll be famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.

Except when they don't.
Because, sometimes they won't.

I'm afraid that some times you'll play lonely games too.
Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you.

All Alone!
Wheter you like it or not,
Alone will be something you'll be quite a lot."
~Oh, The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Suess~

Fame is exciting, motivating, whimsical, depressing, destructive, and wonderful.  People have gone to the ends of the earth to find it and hold onto it. I love the reality check that Dr. Seuss throws in here.  "Except when they don't because sometimes they won't".  Life can't always be a mountain top view.  Being at the top is fun, but completely unrealistic.  No one gets a free helicopter ride to the peak of the mountains of life.  You have to get out the grapple and hook and start climbing.  And once you get there, what are you going to do? Stay there forever?  In order to move on with life, you must keep moving.  Sometimes that means going back down to the valleys.  Sometimes that means finding an even bigger mountain to climb.  However, it is times "when they don't" praise you and applaud you that really let you live.  Those are the times when you aren't living for someone else.  Those lonely games can teach the most valuable lessons.  God's will and your own personal expectations should be the only benchmarks for success.  Comparing yourself to others won't get you anywhere, expect maybe into a deep abyss of insecurity and unhapiness.  Don't go there.  That is not a neccessary part of the journey.  Rise above the temptation to base your own success on someone else's failure.  Or worse, the temptation to label your own efforts as worthless because of what you see others doing.  It's a waste of time, energy, talent, and a perfectly wonderful you.

Silence

Silence is a beautiful thing. It is rare. It means you are alone. Today, people are aloneaphobic. They can't walk down the hallways alone. They can't enjoy an evening alone. Even if they can't find humans, they fill their spaces with noise and distractions and needless communication. No wonder we are so confused as to who we are. The only way we can see who we are is by observing our constant interaction with others. In the end, we base our idea of who we really are off of how we talk, what we say, what we do, and who we are associated with. I can't think of a more innaccurate means of measurement. Where is your heart in all that? How can you tell who you are when you are so busy trying to control how you appear to others? You will turn into that ficticious person. You will cease to exist. Try being alone and then see who you are. When you are alone you can hear your thoughts. What are you thinking? Right now? Close your eyes and stop reading this blog. What fills the empty spaces in your brain? Or do you even have empty spaces? Is your life so full with other people and priorities that there is no room for unintelligble nonsense? Don't let it be. Dream the impossible.

Random Rant

For some reason, I have a strange compulsion to share about myself. I have all these thoughts spinning around in my head and I'm starting to get dizzy. Plus, I am not focusing on my art history like I should. So perhaps this will help.

1. I am a dreamer. I dream almost constantly. Not just when I'm sleeping and not just nice "here is what my future will look like" dreams. I imagine every scenario in my head, realistic or otherwise. It's my type of escape. The only problem is, I often forget to come back to reality. So if you hear me talking or gesturing and I seem completely disconnected that's probably exactly what has happened. I disconnect when things aren't going well. I know eventually I'll have to always live in this world but I don't know what I'd do without my dreams.


2. I have a bad habit of trying to make everyone happy. Not because it isn't a noble goal, but because it is impossible. I try to be everything to everyone and I end up burned out. But I know I also am quite selfish. So its not that I am always giving or anything like that. I just change who I am to fill in voids way too easily.


3. I love my job. Even though I rarely want to go, spending time with kids can make my day so much better. I like the fact that I'm needed and that there is someone always asking "Chloe, can I show you something?"


4. I am horrible at lying to other people but amazing at lying to myself. I have figured out how to change my memories. While this helps with the rough patches in life, it also makes me doubt what really happened and can be quite confusing. I can seperate who I really and who I am being so I end up unsure of which is real. I'm sure I'll figure it out someday soon.

I have more to say, but I think I've sufficiently emptied out my brain so I can now memorize more pieces of art. ta ta for now.

So there's this new drug called Facebook.....

Hello. My name is Chloe Smiley and I am addicted to Facebook. This addiction has afflicted an entire generation. I know several friends who have reached a point of no return. You know the part of all of those medicine commercials that list off all the potential side effects? And if you listen closely you start to wonder...why in the world would I take medicine that might kill me just so my legs stop feeling restless? It really doesn't add up. The same goes for facebook (see, I wasn't completely off topic). We are so easily impressed by the flashing images before our eyes that we stop hearing the side effects. So I am going to spell them out (cue images of happy people walking through fields of flowers to distract you)

1. Tendency to walk through life seeing it through the eyes of "ooh! that could be a good status" This has been reported to cause fatal narrow mindness and inability to enjoy life for what it is instead of enjoying life for the status it could inspire.

2. Leads to fatal self-centeredness. Many people have found that facebook leads one to base self-affirmation in number of comments, likes, friends, wall posts, etc.... Once reality hits, these empty affirmations will hurt you more than a denied friend request ever could.

3. Abnormal behavior and seizures when denied access. Life seems empty and meaningless with Farmville.

4. No longer able to communicate with friends face to face. People with this side effect often try to link things to their friends in the real world, only to recieve weird looks. Also leads to attempts to comment on others conversations resulting in the unsavory titles of "evesdropper" and "creeper"

5. Unexplainable urge to poke people as a form of interaction. The results when one finds others do not think poking is endearing can be disastoursous.

6. Inability to go on the internet/do homework/fulfill responsibilities/pet your dog/eat........without checking facebook first. These distorted priorities will catch up with you and the resulting chaos will provide the perfect sympathy evoking status. Lucky you.

Some claim that the benefits of facebook (being friends with people you don't know, seeing events that you weren't invited to) far outweigh these side effects. Don't let the pretty pictures fool you.

This is only the beginning but I can't finish this post now...I need to go post this on my facebook.

The Ripple Effect

Here is a sneak peek at my speech for Induction....please tell me what you think!
I apologize that I have not finished my five theories series...it will happen...eventually.

Service isn’t about the hours logged or points earned. It’s about the smile on someone’s face and seeing the incredible power that helping others can have. One of the best volunteering experiences I have had wasn’t so rewarding because it helped me meet my volunteer hour goal. Instead, being able to see the gratitude and happiness on the face of the person I helped was very potent and gave me perspective. Just a small sacrifice of my time and energy meant the world to someone else. A comparison of how much time we spend serving ourselves and serving others can show how easy it is to have our priorities wrong. Being able to serve others and see the huge impact it has on them helps us realize that helping others is infinitely more rewarding than helping ourselves. When we serve ourselves, it only benefits us. However, when we give our time to help someone else we create a ripple effect of happiness and service that build a stronger community. An act of service never stands alone. Helping others is contagious: inspires other acts of service. This ability of service to multiply itself is incredibly powerful and cannot be ignored. It is often just what our community and family needs. Anne Frank once said, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Serving others isn’t limited to volunteer hours. We have the opportunity to help others every day of our lives. Service isn’t something that can be switched on and off like the lights. It is an attitude, a smile, an awareness of others’ needs, an intentional act, and one of the greatest gifts we could ever give.

The Way I Saw It: 9/11/01

I found this story on a piece of paper under my bed a while ago. It is about the way I saw 9/11. I don't believe I wrote it while I was six but rather a few years later. I'd date this around ages nine or ten. I typed it up as is, please excuse the grammar and incomplete sentences.

War to a child

Sitting inocently, playing with her sister, her Mother rushes to Tv. People on the screen talking frantically. Billows of smoke.

What Is Going ON!

Mother explains two very tall buildings have been hit by airplanes. Olders sister seems to understand. Everyone is so gloomy. It's rather confusing and consuming. A family that rarely watches TV has the news on. The only thing that makes any sense is that there is a pattern to the news. They repeat the same clip every fifteen. In between are reports of more terrorist destruction. Everthying is touched; even her birthday, the on month anniversary. The airplanes flying by seem rather frightful. The years pass, the war does not. It is continual. It slowly slips from the child's mind only to suddenly be brought back with a new "terror" report.

Will it end before her childhood is over?

I wrote this so long ago and yet the question is still valid. Will it ever be over? My childhood is quite gone. Yet the war and terror remains. Is this a passing phase or new era?

Theory #2

Today’s world offers many different gauges for success. In high school, success is often judged based on grades, test scores, athletic ability, or number of friends. Later in life, success gauges usually come in the forms of spouses, job, income, housing, or type of vehicles. People are often judged by what they achieved or what level of living they have managed to reach. The difficulty with this way of judging others lives is that it fails to take into consideration extraneous situations. No one ever starts on the same square in the game of life. Everyone is endowed with different opportunities and begin at different “life levels”. When this is considered, society’s current method of gauging success is not only very biased, it is also incredibly inaccurate. I believe that a better method would be that of gauging others improvement when determining whether they are a “success” or not (even thought that title is often arbitrary). When others are judged by their efforts at improving themselves, it doesn’t matter where they started or where they end up. What is truly important is that there is an endeavor to be a better person, daughter, husband, sister, etc… The person that is truly living every day striving to be, act, and think better than they had the day before is a true success in my eyes.