Unravel:

1 a: to disengage or separate the threads of : b: to cause to come apart by or as if by separating the threads of.2: to resolve the intricacy, complexity, or obscurity of : clear up. 

3. to free from complication or difficulty; make plain or clear; solve: to unravel a situation; to unravel a mystery.

4.

to take apart; undo; destroy. ~Unravel is an interesting word.  It describes resolution, while it also depicts destruction.  It can be both a good word and a bad word, but something about unravel seems so freeing. I'm listening to Explosions In The Sky, "So Long, So Lonesome" (introduced to me by Eric), and the song makes me think of unraveling.  I imagine a tightly woven ribbon intricately twisted together, and the wind is tearing at it, in a sense destroying its structured beauty, then soon it's long strands of loose ribbon dancing in the wind.  It's a mess.  It's initial order is everywhere.  But it's free.  It's free and it's beautiful. Are we meant to be unraveled?  Certainly we can be destroyed; though I am confident destruction isn't what we were made for.  What about solved, or free from complication or difficulty?  Undone?  Like the ribbon wildly waving in the wind, can we ever let our form and order go?  I suppose not.  I suppose we wouldn't really want to.  But I still like thinking about the ribbon twisting apart.

Today I wish it was foggy.  I wish I was not in a city covered in cement, but in the lush, green countryside.  The rain would fall heavily in a morning shower, and when the storm passed the whole world would be shinning.

The grocery store.  I love -- LOVE -- the grocery store.  I love buying all sorts of food, finding great deals, and going home and creating something.  I would almost go as far as to say browsing the grocery store is relaxing.  Though maybe the root of this love is seeded in the fact that i love to cook.

Mainly cooking appeals to me because it's something that I am able to do and almost always makes other people happy.  Who doesn't want a meal cooked for them?  I also enjoy cooking because I like the creativity involved.  There's really nothing quite like discovering a new recipe.  I especially love recipes that remind me of people.

My grandma has been working on a recipe book for me for quite sometime now, and I love looking at all the recipes.  The recipes, as cheesy as it may sound, are potential good times to come.  They are ways to feed hungry people in my life, and the meals the recipes create are times to connect and talk with people I care about.

Recently I have been really into discount grocery shopping.  Yesterday, in an attempt to avoid buying bread, I decided to bake it myself.  The result, due to lack of yeast, turned out to be the most humiliatingly large biscuit I've personally ever seen.  It tasted decent though, and baking bread will definitely save me money.  Then today I took a roommate's advice and visited the 98 cents store.  There, I was able to buy the amount of food that at Albertson's would cost at least a hundred dollars for only 21 bucks!  Perhaps you're thinking, "nasty, 98 cents store food."  That's what I initially thought.  But I just bought things that are overpriced at other places that really don't need to be purchased for expensive prices.  One really can't beat less than a dollar each for olive oil, teriyaki sauce, cake/pancake mix, various spices, etc.  I was literally in a "saving state of bliss."

I suppose my love of grocery shopping and cooking is a bit dorky, but I don't care, it's honestly really fun.  

Dear Abby,

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately (a dangerous pastime ... I know) -- ok enough "Beauty and The Beast" references.  

The statement "I've been doing a lot of thinking," should not be a shocking one coming from me.  I have been told on multiple occasions that I "think more than anyone"; a ridiculous statement, as I find it hard to believe that I think more than the rest of the world.  Regardless, after years of denial, I have grown to embrace -- even appreciate -- my over-thinking side, it makes me uniquely analytical.  Or tightly wound.  I'll go with being the former.

My volleying thought has been: what are dreams?  Now when I say dreams I don't mean the mismatched storylines that float through our heads nonesensically in the late hours of the night.  I mean passions, hopes, aspirations.  To refine my thought further: is it acceptable to go for our dreams?

I am at a crossroad right now in my future.  I can choose the path of quick success (perhaps success is too strong a word) and find a job in journalism or a related field.  There I can work day in and day out climbing a corporate latter that I really wouldn't mind never tackling in a lifetime.  I would have a stable paycheck, sound successful in social settings, and make a meager difference in the world.  It would be a career that I worked for.  It would also be a career that I didn't much like.

Option number two is to become an English teacher.  This option would require more schooling, which I'm comfortable with.  The main issue is that I'd have to wait until Fall to begin the endeavor, and I have quite a chunk of time until then.  The other issue is where would I want to go to school.  If I was a teacher I could share something that I love.  I would also run the risk of failing to show other people how to love or at least appreciate what I love.  Though chance and risk are present in anything, so I suppose I should embrace that factor in all my decisions.  As an English teacher I could also influence people on an individual level, this being something I know I'm passionate about.

My final option is to become a writer.  This is what every fiber of the deepest part of me wants.  This is also the most unrealistic, risky, and unstable option.  But to be honest, this option -- my dream -- is the only of the three options that feels truly right.  If I were to be a writer I would get my masters in creative writing, but this really couldn't happen for another year and a half due to application deadlines and timing.  Which leaves a year and a half of my life vastly open.  The good thing about a creative writing degree (one of the few stable things) is that it could most likely allow me to undertake some form of a teaching job; it would also be useful in publishing and some forms of journalism.  To be candid, this whole dream terrifies me.  What if I'm not good enough?  To fail in something you like is bad enough, but to fail in something you love ...  However, God did give me this love, and there's a pressing in me that feels like it will never rest until it tries.

Do I go after what I want, or do I pursue security?  

- Confused in La Mirada

I was planning on continuing my day-by-day job updates -- really I was -- but the realization that blogging about the stress was only adding to the stress has made me decide to avert topics.  At least temporarily.  

I find it hard to believe that I'm not starting school tomorrow.  This is the first time in seventeen years that I have not experienced a first day of school.  It makes me dizzy with a surge of mixed emotions.  I wish I could let it feel good.  No homework, no dull introductory lectors, no awkward experiences when looking for my classes.  But, sadly for me, I like school.  I like having goals to work toward, the constant sponging of knowledge, projects to submerge myself in, and the perpetual feeling that I'm working toward something that might some day make a difference.  Maybe, after great lengths of time, I'll grow nostalgic about work, but right now, I miss school.

As a highly sentimental person (I have little shame in outright admitting this), firsts have always been hugely special to me.  Along the same vain of thought, so have lasts.  And I suppose, in piecing it all together, the outpouring of sentiment that change evokes, makes me highly nostalgic in times of transition.  So perhaps it's not really school that I'm missing; in fact, recollecting my chronic "senioritis" just over a month ago, I can almost guarantee that's not the case.  Honestly, I think I'm feeling sentimental toward the change in my life.  In a sense, I think I'm grieving the loss of college.  Really, what I need to do is embrace adulthood, because being a "working-woman" is good.  Here's a meager, fairly un-vibrant list to prove it:

-No homework -- blah.

-On a better note: no busywork.

-A paycheck.

-Money for bills, entertainment, travel and lovely purchases (or more education).

-Cool work clothes (well I suppose that's a matter of perspective, I mean if you're a police officer wearing a uniform may or may not seem cool to you.)

-Stress free weekends.

-Benefits: paid vacation, health insurance ... common', how is that not alluring.

-Respect.  Adults usually generate more respect from society.

-Stability.  This one is debatable.

As is evident -- why grieve the loss of college?  As is also evident -- I posted about something similar to jobs.  I guess my attempt to avert in subject matter was unsuccessful.  

Day 2 of the job search -- a documentation:

Dreaming about being hired at Anthropologie, I awoke in a fury to find work -- any work that is.  After toying with the idea of acting and modeling for about five minutes (sketchy websites and the realization that I have little in common with Kate Moss made me quickly reject Michelle's idea of modeling.)  I then proceeded to look into basic jobs: a receptionist at a hair place, a pilates instructor (this could be a problem seeing that I don't know how to teach pilates), perhaps waitressing at The Yardhouse?  Soon I was calling up local cities, only to be told that every city they knew of was on a hiring freeze.  I sent out roughly five resumes to marketing firms that I found on monster.com, then proceeded to convince a woman that despite my lack of education in early childhood development, a liberal arts degree was basically the same (she argued that I was wrong -- how dare she). 

Push and pull, time passed and soon I had an interview at a marketing firm and a preschool.

Marketing is basically the same as journalism, right?  Preschool teaching ... I mean who doesn't like little kids? 

We'll see.

As of lately I have been unemployed.  Yes, incase of any confusion from the last statement, I am completely and utterly jobless; my income is zero.  Being unemployed, though rarely impressive to say about yourself in really any conversation, does have its perks.

Being a jobless citizen I first and foremost have the luxury of being a statistic.  I am, in its essence, aiding in Obama's moral for change by upping the unemployment rate, hence heightening the incentive for that very change.  Secondly, on a much more personal level, being unemployed allows me the luxury of doing whatever it is that I want.  I, of course, am encouraged to fill my days with mindless job searching (which much of the time I do) but job searching can really start at 8 a.m. or 4 p.m; essentially job searching can mold around my sleeping schedule whatever way I please it to.  Then there are social engagements, no longer am I too busy for my friends (a lot that I have suffered for the majority of my life), as of now I'm so available, that really, if someone wants to hang out at 3 a.m. two hours away, why shouldn't I be game?  (Granted they pay for gas money, seeing that being jobless would imply that I also have no money.)  

Sure I could fill my time with educational novels, self-betterment podcasts, and potentially successful novel writing, but believe it or not, being unemployed -- the very thought of being unemployed -- leaves less time for the arts than one might think.  Really, the very thought of attending a job fair is enough to take up at least a week of creativity.

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Alright, so rant over.  I suppose I'm just hyperbolizing in a slightly satirical fashion the last month of unemployment.  Deep down I know God has a plan for me, and really, I should look at this post-grad time as a blessing more than anything.  It's just so terribly hard when you've spent your whole life somewhat atop the academic float, then suddenly your wallowing in success-less-ness.  I guess it's a good lesson to be had, and I'm eager to see where God brings me next.

Three sweatshirts, two long sleeve shirts, one undershirt, a jacket made for the sketchy sport of snowmobiling, long johns (a.k.a. "long underwear"), jeans, three pairs of socks (one wool, one fuzzy, one designed for cross country snow skiing), HUGE boots, one pair of gloves, one pair of mittens, a scarf, and a hat/headband designed to warm one's ears.  Sweatshirt hood up.  I think I'm ready to go to the grocery store.

I spent the last week in Berlin, New Hampshire, nestled in a picturesque home in the, well, dead of winter.  Accustomed to temperatures that range from 60 to 80, I thought surely a sweatshirt and jacket would be suffice in the New England climate.  I was wrong.  Very wrong.

The introductory layers that I listed where not only the layers that I sported for merely quick trips to the grocery store, but they also insulated me during heater blasting car trips and the rapidly familiar kitchen furnace.  Long story short: I've spent the last six days frozen.  

True, choosing to venture to New England when temperatures range from (-)10 - 20 degrees (on average) was not the smartest thing I have ever done.  Especially considering I get "the shivers" in 50 degree weather.  But coming to this part of the country was certainly not the dumbest thing I've done either.

Birch trees, silver maples, majestic pines, and streams powdered with snow, made this trip feel as though I was living in a snow globe -- it was breath taking.  Sure LA is warm, but let's admit that the smog laden "City of Concrete" is only breathtaking in a literal sense.  Though I would argue that however fresh the New Hampshire country air may be, -7 degrees shooting through ones lungs with the gust of a wind chill isn't exactly gentle on the lungs either.

Regardless, the thought of New England in the Fall is enough to make me consider braving such a winter.  Driving through Maine, Vermont, part of Canada, and New Hampshire introduced me to some of the most beautiful countryside.  Oh, and the white farm homes with the green or red shutters.  The porches that view the expansive fields .  The creeks that run through the forest in acres of backyard.  Makes one feel a little sick to be living in Southern California.  I'm convinced such foliage, nature, and space found in New England is far better for the soul.  But then again, I'm convinced the frigid cold is detrimental to the soul.

But what do I know.

I think I'd like to purchase a "fixer-uper home," possibly in Maine (by the sea of course), and rent it out during the year, but vacation there frequently -- of course being sure to avoid winter exposure.