It’s 3 o’clock in the morning and I’m sitting here studying for my bio midterm that I will be taking in 2 days. Got a little sidetracked though and I stumbled upon my couple of my high school friends’ facebooks and got a glimpse of what they are doing now currently. 

It’s clear. There are those who are living life to it’s fullest and those who are taking it as it is. For some they carry on a life as an extension of high school and some have taken advantage of the ability to explore life for the first time—solo and treated as an adult.

Some of the things my most driven friends are doing…

- a girl who is taking a gap year in Ecuador working as a student leader to help out the community
- a girl who is working as an au pair in France living with a family and teaching the children english for a place to stay and food to eat
- a guy who took a gap year to work on various organic farms across the U.S. helping the farm owners out with labor for food
- a girl who is in San Francisco taking a hold of every opportunity/internship, making a name for herself and achieving far more than other freshman can imagine

Seeing my closest friends live lives like these inspires me. Though I’m at Irvine, the easiest place to drown in mediocre-ness, my friends inspire me to live the life God has given me to it’s fullest and to always remember that there is more of the world to see than just Irvine, California. 

“A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her.” - Maya Angelou 

Temptations. There is no easy way out. They are called temptations for a reason: they tempt.

In the end you have to decide what you want more.

How important is what you stand for? How important is why you stand for?

“The moment when you think you think it.

The moment when you think you know it.

The moment when you know you know it, but you can’t yet say it.

The moment when you know you know it and you can’t keep it in anymore.”

I love How I Met Your Mother! I’ve never been there, but I will say falafel one day. :)

It’s one thing to be thankful for what you have, but coming to terms with your life and lacking, without investing efforts to change, is equivalent to wasting your life away.

I lately have been just accepting, compromising, simplifying everything so that it is easier for me to process and handle—to be comfortable. But I challenge myself from now on to not give up because it seems too hard, but work towards the higher goals; not be okay with “this is how I am,” but think this is “who I want to be and am going to be”; not analyze and compromise, but believe. Because God wants malleable hearts that trust that He can do works not limited to the ability or understanding of man.

This past/first quarter in school, I only did enough to get by, but now I determined to do the best I can do in my studies and really soak in the subject of study. I also want to push myself to meet many different types of people and show love and compassion towards them, even towards the less loveable.

Not to loiter in comfortability.
Challenging myself not to be complacent. 

Letting John Mayer do the expressing cause I have no time and energy to do that during finals week. He is truly a lyrical genius and provides the ultimate study music.

I want to go to a John Mayer concert. On the bucket list!

I’ve been watching a whole lot of Friday Night Lights lately because that show is just pure goodness. In one of the episodes someone mentioned the phrase “Don’t cry over split milk.” I remember it sticking to me because I’ve been saying “spilled” instead of “split” my entire life. 

This past week we had turkey bowl practice 3 times throughout the weekend. And it seems like the closer we get to game day, the poorer I have been doing as far as receiving the ball. I catch them okay when just running our routes while warming up, but in scrimmage mode, I become miss butter fingers or butter body (whichever I try to catch the ball with…). This has been on my mind more than most people know. Maybe it’s because I’m a competitive person, or because I have high expectations for myself, but I’ve been thinking about my mistakes on the field every hour of the day. Someone pulled me aside during practice and told me this, “Diane I know you’re really frustrated with yourself after you drop the ball. But you can’t let it affect the next play. Every time someone scores an ace on me in a game, I think to myself ‘Can I even pass?’ But you can’t think that way or else you really won’t be able to pass the next ball. I know you can catch a ball I’ve seen you do it. So you have to brush it off, it’s all about the mentality.” 

A few days later, I was feeling weak, sick, and defeated. I mustered up my last energy to go to the commons to grab some food to reenergize my body. When I was two steps away from my desk in my dorm room I spilled all the milk in my cup that I brought, on the carpet floor. I felt myself wanting to cry saying, “Why Lord?!” But then something clicked in my head… “Don’t cry over split milk.” And my brain took a leap and made even more of a far fetched connection and told me you have to brush it off. 

The girl who pulled me aside to give me advice that day during practice is one of the best athletes I know. And I realized, all good athletes have an ability to brush it off and work even harder the next time around. This is what I want to see myself doing.