Maddison's Musings

Time isn't real, but as a society, we have decided that the time between December 31st and January 1st is important. I don't know why. However, I do know that I love hopping on the bandwagon and reflecting on the past year of my life every December. Thankfully, I keep a journal because honestly there's no way I'd remember anything any other way. Even with my journal, I forgot like 95 percent of the things I did this year. Regardless, let's start with some high points: in 2019 I went to 12 concerts, got three new tattoos, made new friends, fell in love with Schitt's Creek, and realized I'm a lesbian. So a big year. But there were also plenty of lows, including realizing that I couldn't actually fulfill my dream of studying abroad in London. Although I will never admit it to my parents (mom if you're reading this skip to the next paragraph or something) I think that staying here worked out okay for me. Hell, if it wasn't for the extremely dark depressive spiral that came from withdrawing from the study abroad program, I wouldn't have started obsessively watching Schitt's Creek as my only source of joy and I wouldn't have made all the new friends I now have. So it's not a total loss.

While looking through my journal, I found it odd just how much I could forget in just a few months. Like I literally forgot that I got three tattoos in March?? Well, they're on my arms and I see them every day so I didn't forget about them in that sense, but more along the lines of I-can't-believe-I've-only-had-them-for-less-than-a-year if that makes sense. 

Concert-wise, it makes sense that I've been to the most concerts this year (beating last year by one), but again I found myself wondering how I could have forgotten that I went to some of them. Again, time isn't real and I hate having to acknowledge the passage of it, but sometimes it's cool I guess when you realize just how many concerts you were able to squeeze into a few months

School-wise, not much has changed. Still doing well, but one thing that I was (surprisingly) proud of was the fact that I got my first C ever this semester. If you had told high school me that I would be here today giggling over a C in this history class, I probably would've screamed and accused you of being deranged, but in my defense, high school me was lame. So I got my first C and guess what? I'm still alive. Still standing. Nothing has changed. It's not a big deal. It's not even an important class. It was an online world history course that was set up weird and extremely boring and so I just said fuck it and accepted the C. I could have tried for a B, I really could have, but I didn't want to write the final paper. I took one look at the prompt, realized I had no idea what any of it meant, and just accepted my C while giggling profusely. I think I've reached my academic peak tbh.

Personally, I think 2019 was one of the wildest years. I had some extreme lows but also a lot of good times. I think that looking back now, I'm just focusing on the better parts because that's generally what I like to remember, but even the bad parts don't seem so bad now even though they were Bad at the time, you know? I didn't travel a lot like I thought I would, but I still had a pretty good time and explored new things here. 

Also, I don't even know if I ever mentioned it, but like I got an internship this semester? And it's been going really well? I'm the Editor in Chief for UTA's branch of Society 19 and it's really small since it was just me when I started, but now I have two writers and I hope to keep the momentum growing next semester. I know two writers isn't a lot, but considering my anxious ass had to put myself out there and connect with people to get these writers, I'm counting it as a win tbfh. I've also been doing more creative writing this year which makes me so happy. I think I wrote nearly 10k words in the last few months, which doesn't sound like a lot, but also I feel like I'm in a constant state of writer's block, so I'm proud of that. My writing style consists of popping out 7k words over two nights and then hardly writing for weeks/months at a time, so that's definitely something I need to work on, but that's a problem for future Maddison. I'll let her figure that out.

Although I didn't blog as much as usual (I think I skipped like two or three months?), I'm still proud of 2019 as a whole. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, I made new friends, I finally feel at peace with my identity, and I just fucking survived another year. I'm not gonna say that I have high hopes for 2020, but God I really wish it's a good fucking year for all of us. See you on the other side.

~Maddison

~Maddison

As I enter my final year of college I'm already trying to push myself more than I have before, but not just academically. Sure, taking the max credit load each semester in order to graduate early can definitely count as pushing it, but I've been doing it since my second semester, so it's become my normal. And contracting two classes through the Honors college each semester is just something that I have to do to graduate with honors. So that's just a normal semester so far. But this year, I want to try something new: getting more involved at school. I want to join a few clubs and force myself to be more social. I feel like I constantly hear stories about those "friends from college" everyone seems to have, and as a very introverted commuter student, I haven't made those kinds of connections in my last two years. There are a few people I know and have had classes with, sure, but I never go out of my way to hang out with them or consider them actual friends, you know? Anyways, even though I've only been back to school for a week, I have already pushed myself to be more social. I went to various back to school events/activities and even went to a game night event and met/hung out with some people while playing UTA themed Monopoly. So far, I'm proud of myself. I have various events scheduled on my calendar that I want to try to attend over the course of the semester, and I'm trying to force myself to talk to people more. One of my classes has a lot of small group discussions and activities, and I tried to make sure that I was actively participating and speaking with the group. While this is hard for me usually, I'm hoping that by pushing myself over the next year, I can leave UTA with more than just a degree. And I'm not saying that I expect myself to turn around completely and somehow become able to speak to other humans or make friends normally, but I won't let myself stay so closed off to other people. 

I think that I've spent a lot of my time in college so far with my head down, doing my work and trying my hardest to get out of Texas as quickly as possible so that I could start actually living my own life, but I don't think that strategy has been working out incredibly for me. Sure, I'm good academically, but socially, I'm still floundering. I'm still trying to figure out who I am and what I'm supposed to do with this life, and I've spent so much time just trying to shorten my stay in Texas that I haven't really let myself experience things. So this year I'm focusing on the experiences. I have a few internship opportunities up my sleeve. I want to take a trip to New York. I'm joining a few clubs and societies. Maybe I'll go on a date and try not to get murdered, who knows. All I know is that I want my final year here to be different, to mean something more to me. Hopefully I succeed with my mission.

~Maddison

As I'm typing this, I currently have about 85% of my room unpacked. However, there are still boxes all over my floor and these last few boxes are full of all of the miscellaneous shit that I threw in a box at the last possible minute. Might just throw those in my closet and call it done if we're being totally honest. But over the past month I've realized a deep truth about myself that shook me to my core: I suck at moving. You see, as someone who has moved houses a lot in her life, I really thought I had this whole moving thing down, but boy was I wrong. As it turns out, I do not have the whole moving thing down, as I refused to pack until the week before we moved, then when I was packed I missed all of the things on my walls/around my room. We stayed in my last house for four years, which is the longest we've stayed in a house for a while, so I got used to it and I had a lot of things scattered around. Even though the house was really small and didn't fit all of us too comfortably, it was home and I had gotten used to it. While this new house is bigger and nicer, I find myself missing the old house and the ugly ass yellow walls I spent four years complaining about (okay maybe I don't miss the walls because that yellow was truly god awful, but just let me be sentimental and shit). Also, this new house is fully hardwood, so I've been adjusting to that by running and sliding on my socks. Also by sliding my office chair across my room. So basically, I've spent most of my time sliding across the floor.

I also realized this move that I'm pretty sure this is the only time I've handled all of my things by myself. In the past, I think I would just put off packing until my mom ended up freaking out and doing it for me, but this time I packed my entire room by myself. I mostly had books and office supplies, so packing that was easy. Then I got to the miscellaneous things that I still haven't unpacked. For some reason, I'm way too sentimental and I get attached to my things, so even though I know I don't need something or won't use it, I found it really hard to get rid of it. I think this is quite possibly my worst trait. This is how I ended up with a garbage bag full of stuffed animals I don't need or use simply because I couldn't bring myself to throw them away or donate them. Now I don't know what to do with them so they're just sitting on my floor still in trapped in the bag. I also have a bunch of knick knacky things that I haven't figured out where to put yet. On the bright side, I did manage to get some working Christmas lights hanging in my room, even if I got the wrong command hooks that just keep popping off my wall. I bought the right ones today though, so once I get the lights to stay on my wall my room will be mostly done, at least in the lighting department.

In other news, I know I didn't post an update last month, and I had a post kind of written, but I just never got around to finishing and posting it. If you're reading this and do see a June post, it just means that I finally posted the update but I backdated it so I didn't actually post it two months late. If there's no June post then I haven't done that yet or I've scrapped it entirely. A fun guessing game for you. I leave for Seattle this weekend, so my August post will most likely be about that and/or some back to school post. Hopefully I get my motivation back soon, but I haven't had any the last few months, so the posts have been pretty bare. Oh well. See you next month (hopefully).

As Pride Month comes to a close, I thought I'd share some reflections from the last 30 days. I haven't really done much this month, but I did end up going to my first Pride event and that was really special. Despite finally going to Pride after three years of being too scared to go, I've found myself annoyed with the amount of corporations involved that don't actually care much about the queer community. There was a great article about that topic written by Naveen Kumar on them. a few days ago, which you can read here if you want. But before I talk more about that, I thought I'd share some of my experiences at my first pride event.

Behold, my first pride event. Dallas Pride 2019. I'm not going to lie, even though I've been out for years, I was still terrified of actually going to pride. Not only because this is Texas and there's always the fear of becoming a victim of a hate crime, but because I had no idea what to expect. I decided to go alone for many reasons. One, the festival cost $10 and I didn't want to drag others there with me when they had to pay. Two, all of my friends live far away so even if I did want to go with people, none of them live close enough to Dallas anyways. Three, this felt like something that I just had to do on my own, you know? Like being gay is My thing and while I understand that there are people in my life who support me, I still feel as if I'm never fully myself with them. Therefore, I went to pride alone and honestly, it was one of the best things I could've done for myself. I was able to just walk around and be myself. There were so many rainbows and happy gays and I felt so much joy around me. It was so beautiful and everyone was so nice and kind. As time progressed and I had walked around the entire place, including the inside bit with vendors where I managed to snag some free things. I hadn't even been at pride for a full hour, but I felt like I was probably done because I had already seen everything. But, thanks to the magic of the internet and Twitter, I made a new friend and we ended up spending a few hours together walking around the booths, grabbing free things, and chatting. Before I left for pride, I had actually Googled "what to expect at your first pride" as well as "what to do at pride alone" and most articles I found were nice and mentioned meeting people. Being the extremely anxious introvert I am, I assumed that wouldn't happen to me and I would just continue to wander aimlessly, but thankfully I did end up making a new friend.

All in all, my first pride event was a very memorable and emotional moment. I really didn't think I would get so emotional, but as I walked to my car at the end of the day in the drizzling rain, I felt so overcome with joy and love that I ended up crying in the car.

After being dragged by my friend the other day when I mentioned that I had bought another journal, I decided to sit down and take a long look at my notebook/journal collection. The first thing I noticed was the sheer amount of notebooks that I own. After counting three times (because I kept losing track) I concluded that I have at least 57 notebooks. I know I have more in boxes in the garage or in a bin under my bed, but for the purpose of this post, I'm just going to be looking at the 57 notebooks that I have on my bookshelves. I haven't written in all of them, but I've written at least one thing in at least half of them (I counted writing in 32 notebooks). For most of my notebooks, I buy them because they're pretty, but then once I get home I suddenly have no idea what to write in them and/or I don't want to make any mistakes or mess something up. I know that's ridiculous, since notebooks are literally made to be whatever you want them to be, but I strive for organized perfection, which leads me to abandon notebooks after a few pages. However, for some reason I have no problem using the 50 cent composition books I bought at Target three years ago to write all of my school notes in. I guess I just don't care about them as much. That being said, now that I've been reusing composition books, I do find that I'm a bit more attached, since I've fit four semesters into those bitches, but I will have no problem tossing the less useful notebooks once I graduate next year.

As I was looking through my notebook collection, I began thinking of the various ways that I fill my journals. Some are more organized than others, and I find that those journals are used more than ones that I haven't organized or decided to dedicate one thing to. Since starting a bullet journal last year, I've found that most of my journaling is done there, but I still use other notebooks besides my main bullet journal since I feel like my bullet journal needs to be pretty and perfect, and not a mess like some other notebooks. This can also be in part because I spend a lot of time watching journaling videos on YouTube, and I desperately want my journal to look as pretty as the ones I see online even though I have no artistic abilities. That being said, I find journaling videos to be fun and calming, and I got inspiration for this blog post after I watched this video by Jordan Clark where she discussed how she uses her journals. Not only is the video really fun and relaxing, but it got me thinking of all my journals and how I use them. While I won't be going over all my journals in this post, or even all of the journals that I've written in, I do have a few key journals that I thought I'd touch on in this post, and then if you want, I can make a follow up post where I talk about other notebooks. 

First up, we have my Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. I used and completely filled up the teal journal last year when I used it as my bullet journal for 2018. I wrote a post about how I set up that journal and I'll link that here if you want to go and check it out. I currently use the gold notebook for my 2019 bullet journal and even though I haven't really posted about it, I still have a lot of fun working with it, making it look cute, and having a space to jot down things I did each day. My favorite spreads that I do are my concert spreads where I print out pictures from concerts and tape them in with parking receipts, wristbands, or anything else that I got at a concert. The gold notebook is the dotted version, while the teal notebook is the grid version, and while I personally think I like the grids a little bit more than the dotted version, I do like how the dots fill the entire page, whereas the grid notebook had a blank space at the top of each page to write a title/date. I got the light blue notebook early this year after I realized that the dotted notebook was slightly different than the grid notebook, and I wanted a place to practice spread ideas or color palettes in a space that I was able to be a bit messier in. This journal is definitely useful to me, as it allows me to mess up or practice and be less-than-perfect in the same type of notebook as my regular bullet journal without any of the pressure of feeling like I need a perfectly aesthetic bujo. I also use this notebook to do various pen tests with all the pens I get to see how they look on the page. Overall, I would really suggest having a second notebook that is similar to your regular bullet journal, especially if you're like me and feel like you need a notebook where you can test spread ideas without committing to putting it into your actual bujo.

This next set of notebooks includes two pocket-sized Moleskine journals that I got on sale at Target and a simple lined journal that I just bought from Amazon. The small black journal has blank pages and I use it as a simple journal to jot down lists, drawings, and ideas that come to mind. For example, I have one page dedicated to bullet journal spread ideas, another page has a list of things I plan on selling or giving away when I move this summer, and another page has lavender doodles. This notebook is great for me because it's small enough to fit in a small purse and take out if I have a random thought or idea, plus it was on sale and who doesn't love a sale. The small green journal has lined pages and I use it exclusively for creative ideas. So far, I have a short story idea, and then part of another short story that I just wrote in the notebook. Again, this is another nice notebook because it's small, but I find that I don't take it with me because if I rarely get story ideas while I'm out, and if I do I just hastily type them into the notes app on my phone. The third notebook in this set in the newest addition to the family -- the one that caused my friend to drag me and thus partially inspired this post. I have to say that this is my most used notebook so far in the sense that I've had it for two days and I've already filled in eight pages. I use this whole notebook as one giant brain dump. I make lists of things I have to do, I write down my favorite song lyrics or quotes from shows I'm watching, I write down something I did that day, or I just journal about how I'm feeling. I don't know what it is about this notebook, but I really love having a place where I don't have to worry about anything being pretty or perfect, and instead, it's just an everyday journal that I constantly have open and next to me. Plus, it was only $5 on Amazon, and it's surprisingly durable and the pages are thick and nice. 

Next up I have these pretty pastel Moleskine Cahier soft covered journals. These are actually two packs that were in the same colors, but one pack had blank pages and the other pack had grid pages, so I bought both. I've had these for a few years, so I don't know if you can still find them for a good price or not, but I love these little notebooks. They're small enough that you can have one notebook dedicated to a single thing. I used the yellow grid one as my first bullet journal when I started college back in the fall of 2017. The journal lasted me until the end of the year, then I upgraded to the teal Leuchtturm 1917 from above for 2018. I use the blank lavender notebook to write (shitty) poems in pencil (for some reason I only write poems with pencil?), one of the pink notebooks I used as a random journal where I had packing lists, important things to remember, tattoo ideas, etc, and the blank yellow notebook I use exclusively to plan a novel I've been planning/working on for years that will most likely never see the light of day, but I've had the idea for so long that I always end up coming back to the story. All-in-all, these little journals are great to have dedicated to a single idea/use because they're so small that it's easy to fill it up and  you don't have to feel overwhelmed having a larger journal for one idea.

Last but definitely not least, we have my collection of journals that I've kept each year since the 8th grade. I used to keep a journal for each school year, then a journal for the summer, then I would get a new journal for the new school year and the cycle would continue. I kept these journals going from 8th grade up until my senior year in high school, or maybe even the summer after my senior year. For some reason, I can't find the journals for the summer of 2013 and for my freshman year of high school, but I'll probably find them while I sort through boxes while I move in a few weeks. I actually think that I might do a whole blog post dedicated to my favorite quotes from these journals because I looked at one a few weeks ago and I was so funny and dramatic, so that might be a post to expect before 2020. Even though my love for journals and writing goes as far back as I remember (I can picture a Webkinz themed journal from third grade that I know I still have somewhere, as well as a notebook from second grade filled with little stories), these journals are at the heart of my journal collection because I somehow managed to document five whole years of my life (seven if you count the fact that I still keep journals, just in a different format) in simple composition books (plus one spiral and one small notebook I would use during senior year when I was bored in class oops).

Despite the alarming amount of notebooks that I own, I find myself grateful that these are the things I recklessly buy because I think there's a story with each notebook, even if there's nothing inside. This might just be my stationery-obsessed ass talking, but there's something really magical about collecting journals and notebooks, whether they're really pretty or super simple.

~Maddison

Source

As I finish my second year of university, I've come to a slightly dramatic conclusion: I know nothing. While this is probably just me being dramatic, I don't know. Sometimes I really just feel like I've been scamming the education system for the past 15 years. Like sure, I do my homework (at the last minute), but I don't really study or actively try to retain any information, yet I do well in school? Honestly, this isn't supposed to be a brag at all, I'm just generally confused as to how this is happening. Sometimes I'll be sitting in a class and people will say something that sounds so much smarter than anything I could ever string together, and we're in the same class learning the same things. Sometimes I genuinely worry that if I spoke up in class I would sound like a complete idiot, so I never say anything, and maybe that's part of the problem. For example, in French, we all have to participate and speak in French as often as possible, and my professor last semester made sure that we were always speaking French and not English. Everyone would say something out loud at least once or twice a class, and if something was pronounced wrong he would work with you until you got it right. That semester was my highest French grade so far. (Let's ignore the fact that I have no idea what's going on in French this semester oops.) I think that part of active learning is engaging with the material, and I don't really engage unless I absolutely have to because I constantly worry about being wrong.

Source

While I take notes and (mostly) go to classes, sometimes I feel like none of the information is sticking, which is infuriating. Even in my favorite classes, I feel like all of the information gets jumbled around. Perhaps I need to develop better study habits, or maybe I should try to be more confident in my abilities, but even then, I can only pretend to be so smart. For example, earlier today my mom asked me what I did in school and I said that "I had two presentations. One was about the discourse community of the editing career and the other was about how graduation can be seen as a dramatic ritual or ceremony." Sure, the phrase "discourse community" sounds intelligent, but could I tell you what it means? Maybe. Right now, I would say that a discourse community is a group of people and how they interact, but is that correct? I don't know. (Update: Googled it to double check and I was on the right page. It's actually a "group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals." So I had the bare bones definition, which kind of proves my point that I'm an academic fraud?)

Now I'm definitely not a legitimate academic fraud like those rich people who bribed their way into college or anything, but I think that I overthink things, which causes me to think that I have no knowledge about anything, which then makes me feel like a fraud. I've been feeling like this for a while and I don't know if I'm being too hard on myself, or maybe I've just become a worse student since coming to college? In high school, I worked my ass off to get straight A's (plus the one B I allowed myself in math) in order to get into a good college, and now that I'm actually in college, I don't have that motivation to be the best anymore. I don't have any plans to go to graduate school, so once I get my Bachelor's I'm done. This lack of drive/motivation has allowed me to worry less about my grades. Currently, out of the six classes I'm taking this semester, I have four A's and two B's that are teetering on an A. Hell, I can't remember which semester it was, but I allowed myself to have three B's in one semester, which I never would have allowed in high school. I think that this is definitely another factor that comes into play. Even though I know that a B is still a good grade and my GPA is still pretty high, maybe I can't get over the fact that I've allowed myself to have a B in the first place. And trust me, I know this sounds completely ridiculous, but as someone who has literally always pushed myself to be the best, allowing myself to be less than "perfect" in some classes causes me to feel less intelligent even though that's definitely not the case.

I'm going to end this rambly post before I start overthinking myself to death. As of right now, I only have one more day of classes, then I have a few finals next week, with only one actually being on campus. Hopefully my next post will be less self-destructive, but you never know. (I say as if I don't have a whole page of blog post ideas just waiting to be written.) If you also feel like a fraud at all, I would love to hear about it. I don't know how the comments on this goddamn site work now that Google killed Google+ but if there still is a comment box you can type something there (or just reply to my tweet if you're from Twitter and made it this far I guess lol). Anyways, I hope life is treating all of you well and I hope if you also have finals soon that they don't kill you.

Hey girls and gays how's it going? I hope you're doing well and if not then I hope it turns around soon. Anygays, I've realized that it's been a while since I've just done a ramble-y chat-type post, so that's what we're up to today. Also, I totally forgot that it's the last day of March today and I really thought I had more time to procrastinate writing. I guess that brings me to one of my main points today: I am constantly procrastinating. No matter what I do, I never want to do homework or anything productive really. It's so bad that I will literally wait until like 9:30 pm to start homework, then I wonder why I'm up at 2 am stressed and crying. It's a mood and I HATE IT. Anyways, I spent the last hour and a half looking through various scholarships because ya girl needs some way to pay for London and I'm not stressed at all hahahahahahahahakillme. Wait, I don't think I've updated you gays about that yet! Okay, that brings us to our second topic today: I got into my dream study abroad program and I'm going to study in London for an entire academic year starting this September!!!! I've been dreaming of this since SIXTH GRADE and now it's really fucking coming true like I'm really living out my dreams and I'm going to be in London with one of my best friends and it's going to be CUTE! What's not cute is the $38,000 program cost I have to pay by May 10th but it's gucci because I'm just not thinking about it!! Okay, fine, that's a lie. It's most of what I think about. Granted, I can totally use financial aid, and I'm applying for scholarships out the wazzo, but my university is being rude and hasn't released my financial aid award notifications for 2019-2020 yet, so I have no idea what my general base line is. Plus, I made a spreadsheet to keep track of all of the scholarships I've applied to and how much they're worth and apparently my list is up to nearly $50,000, but of course I haven't applied to all of them yet. I think I've applied to enough for around $20,000 if I win them all, but of course that's very unlikely. Thankfully, some of these aren't due until the summer, so I have more time to procrastinate them. Also, it's April tomorrow???????? What the FUCK my dudes I refuse to think about that. But, that also just means that I only have a little over one month left of school, hallelujah. I'm not saying school is killing me, but uh school is killing me. And it's not even that bad it's just that I keep procrastinating!! I really need to stop and actually do my fucking work, but we all know that's not gonna happen because I am the absolute worst. Hopefully by next month I will have a better post up but rambles are fun too I guess.

Hey girls and gays how's it going? I hope it's going well and if not then I hope it gets well soon!! Anygays, for this update I thought I'd talk about something I'd say I'm well-education on: concerts. Since 2016, I've been to 24 concerts, with five in 2016, six in 2017, 11 in 2018, and two so far (with six more planned before June) in 2019. Can you believe that? It's so wild to me and I'm so lucky to be able to attend so many great shows, so I thought I'd share some of my very own concert essentials and hacks.

Most concerts don't let you bring outside food or drinks in, so I always bring my reusable water bottle and a snack and leave it in my car for after the show. It's always really helpful.

Sometimes when parking downtown you come across a cash-only lot and even though you can usually pay with your card, it doesn't hurt to have cash on hand, even though I hate cash most of the time.

Okay listen, this might just be a me thing, but whenever I get nervous I get nauseous, so I always have a barf bag with me. My mom works at a hospital, so she brings me extra whenever I run low. Usually just having one with me calms me down a bit.

This goes with the last one, but I always carry peppermint essential oils with me. Sometimes I'll even throw in my lavender oil.

I've started loving crystals and although I don't know about the spiritual/healing properties of all of them, I know that amethyst offers protection and healing, so I've started carrying a small one with me wherever I go.

I also have Spotify send me emails when people I follow come on tour near me. By utilizing these apps, I get emails when people I follow tour in Dallas.

This is something that I've really taken advantage of lately. The reason I've been able to go to so many concerts is because a lot of them are in smaller venues and tickets only end up being around $20. Plus, the smaller the venue the closer you feel.

I don't know if venues will confiscate your pepper spray or not, but I always just hide mine in one of the zippered pockets of the small purse I bring. I don't know if it's a big hack or not, but I've found it helpful.

Let me know if you have any other helpful concert essentials/hacks that I might have missed. Thanks for reading I love you.

~Maddison