July 6, 2016

Today I made up my mind. And maybe it's because my mantra the last few months "I don't like this life" has grown a little tired and redundant. I have never, nor will never be, a person who won't make the necessary change to be happy.

I am not going to renew my lease in Chicago. I am going to box up my belongings and store them at my parents house - which I know will please them so. In the beginning of fall, I will travel to South America to work/travel Colombia with Madeline.

You know on a hot summer weekend at a popular lake with boats and jet skis and barbeques? The wake is never-ending, but then everyone goes in for dinner around sunset and the lake becomes a glass sheet.

That is how I feel about life right now. Content, calm, and reflective as a sheet of glass. Time to wake up things up again.


February 13, 2016

I want to tell you about a book that truly changed my life, the reason why I am sitting at my computer typing this personal statement, a letter of intent as to why I desire so much to attend your university. It is called Think and Grow Rich, a tell-all book that relays a secret of how to pursue one's passions in order to be rich with happiness. Money just so happens to be a bonus - a decorative passage that drives the novel.

Although never clearly stated, the secret situates itself into each chapter, for those who are ready will be able to uncover it. Napoleon Hill discusses Edwin Barnes was so driven by desire he "had to win or parish!" (21). Quite a dramatic statement, if you ask me, but in Barnes reality becoming Thomas Edison's associate was his one true desire. You see, writing is more than telling stories, exploring a new world, creating complex characters, hero journeys, having good grammar; writing is about teaching something valuable. I discover something new about myself every time I read, forever changing, forever growing.

It is what I desire the most: to touch lives through my writing, to help people feel something on their own through my words, to implant a seed much like reading does for me and have it sprout into a beautiful desire so they too may think and grow rich. I want others to feel something they've never felt before and ultimately learn something new about themselves.

"Strange and varied are the ways of life, and stranger still are the ways of infinite intelligence, through which people are sometimes forced to undergo all sorts of punishment before discovering their own brains, and their own capacity to create useful ideas through imagination." (28)

I turned to writing as a means to escape the world. I escape time by reading and freeze time by writing. The sour seed that was sprouting weeds and thorns, would blossom a rose here and there.


February 4, 2016

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for – and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool – for love – for your dreams – for the adventure of being alive." -Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Myers-Briggs Personality Test. I am ENFP, the campaigner.

Aquarius, ENFP personality, outgoing introvert, middle child, ambivalent raconteur

if I were to comb through these with a fine-tooth comb, I would find plenty of establishing traits that build who I am, but none of them will ever truly define me, Deanna.

My experiences.

Constant development, shifting, swinging the different pendulums within my constructive mind

January 26, 2016

Jan. 26

As I sit here in the last few dimes of minutes before my 24th birthday, I ponder on my favorite things:

I love my lava lamp - I enjoy the colors, and watching it move about. Changing and morphing, the idea that it is hot lava gooped about by heat and kinetic energy. It lightens me in a firey spirit.

I love my room - I could sit in here for hours and look around. I love to bring people in here, gaze at my various art, artifacts, play the piano, lay on the cloud, show some of my collectibles, admire my book collection.

I love being in the fresh air - something about the crispness brings tears to my eyes. Nature is beautiful, sunsets over the horizons, snow-capped mountains, green grassy fields and rolling hills.

I love my family - we are a bunch who is never afraid to be themselves. We truly are one of a kind. We fight hard, but love even harder. A tough crowd.

I love my friends - individuals I never have to hide who I am.

I love who I am - I smile as I write this one, I am so happy and proud of myself. I'm content with the person that I am, I always know that no matter what I may do to let myself down, I will always be there to pick myself up. It is important to love yourself above all things, for you are the only person you are with your entire life.

Cheers 23, you weren’t so bad.


January 25, 2016 - Friendship

Friendship is faith, understanding, and safety.

Friendship is honest, open and kind. Friendship is saying what you want, and hearing what you don't.

Friendship means never saying sorry.

Friendship is forgiveness, acceptance, and trustworthiness.

Friendship is finding a reward in the challenge, friendship is continual growth.

Friendship is protection.

Friendship is a judgment-less zone of free expression.

Friendship is not painful, tiresome, or scary.

Friendship is not a competition or a comparison.

Friendship is finding so much of that person in you that letting them go would mean losing a piece of yourself.

Friendship is knowing you always have a place to go.

Friendship is true love.

Friendship is knowing you always have a place to call home. '

Friendship is insurmountable heights of unquestioned loyalty.

Friendship is feeling warm when you hug, kiss, smile, wink, or tell them you love them.

Friendship is not judging your friend when she cries into her bacon-less salad.

Friendship is delivering pizza to a friend when distance bids you from hugging them.


January 21, 2016

Jan. 21

I cannot sit still. I am restless. I have come to be on very good terms with myself, my aspirations, my passions, dreams, desires. I have found this: my dream has changed immensely from when I was younger. I used to want to get married in my early 20s, have 5 children, live in a big house in the burbs, and live the “American Dream”. I wanted to be a doctor, or more practically a nurse since I have so many children and would need to raise them to be good people and mend them because if they are my offspring they’re bound to be clumsy. I long to help people, in any way I can. Towards the end of high school and early college, my body and mind started changing, I almost couldn’t keep up. I turned to writing as a way to sort through the complexities and understand my thoughts. This planted a seed of creativity inside of my mind, one that has blossomed and grown and taken over my entire existence. I realized I didn’t have to cure people or save their life in order to help them, I could simply touch their soul through inspiration, friendship, laughter, stories, experience, my words, my kindness. I became a raconteur longing to explore the world. To revel in the marvel as I embraced new cultures, tasted new foods, shook the hand of a stranger of a different color, cried at beautiful landscapes I may have never seen. I am daring. I am bold. I cannot sit still.


January 18, 2016

Jan. 18

I hate reality Television. The irony kills me, the editing worries me. They have pre-determined drama for the viewership because who the hell wants to watch a show of people just.. living? There has to be a particular dynamic that lures an audience. I won’t have it. I prefer improv-driven shows, like Curb or The Office, where the actors are so in touch with their characters they can act as them on their own. Judd Apatow, one of my favorite producers/directors believes in improvisation as true comedy.

She was a cypress growing from a swamp; she manipulated her roots and though twisted, she grew strong and mighty above the thick swamp beneath her.

Here is a semi-mild description of a place:

We lived in a quiet region surrounded by rolling hills and redwood forests, just south of a desolate town most people drive right through on their way from the city 80 miles east, to the grassy beaches 10 miles west. Highway 22, known to the locals as the lonely road because of its dense emptiness and vacancies throughout. It was re-routed through Swollen Hills when wildfires took life in the forests surrounding the highway. A dangerous back-alley the bold natives use to avoid city traffic, now an overpopulated expressway. But it’s far enough away.

Spent my evening with Tina, talking about everything and nothing, like we had to spill our guts or something. We want to live in each others heads, which is both riveting and frightening. We like pretty words with meaning. I got her into the revels of following her sun sign, but we also studied the dynamic of Druid Sign. She is a true Nutwood.

I am a dazzling emblem of moxie.

January 17, 2016

January 17, 2016

Today I made a homemade hair-mask with coconut oil, honey and egg yolk and used Eliza's grainy face-mask from Whole Foods. I came up with a business idea: a cute little boutique shop where you can find homemade organic face and hair masks, essential oils, lotions, candles. And we host events where you can make your own candles, oils, masks, and also a spa in the back where bridal parties, prom groups, middle to late aged white woman can gather to drink and cleanse their skin and breathe aromatic oils. We shall call it Sage & Aqua (after Sagittarius & Aquarius - Eliza and my sun signs).

Today was a day of self-cleansing and self-realization.

I want to be an author.

We watched a movie Stuck In Love where a family of writers and hopeless romantics explore the dynamics of love and living. The father, played by Greg Kinnear, is a famous writer who pays allowance to his kids to write journals - checks the dates and holds them accountable. He says "a writer is the sum of their experience" which sparked a whole new fire within me.

I never sat suckered down by the troubles of my world, of my crooked reality. I observed the world around me and etched out my life each day. Forever changing.

"I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat their making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark." -Raymond Carter, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love


January 15, 2016

"My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it, but not take part in it. That's how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive." -Judd Apatow

January 13, 2016

Scarily precious, or is it preciously scary? Life, that is. We can go our whole lives knowing what we want, how to be happy, and then it will all be over. Or we spend our whole lives searching for the purpose, the meaning, the light or whatever. It ends up finding us in the end. We can never win, so we might as well live playing the best game possible.  “All I ever wanted was to know that you were dreaming”

January 12, 2016

Corporate America is a big baby, and it is sucking on my soul like a pacifier.   

Everyone who is anyone needs to read Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”.

I, amongst the many specks of dust we are in this vast universe, think I am special.

I’ve had the passion to write for as long as I can remember, from pouring my creative imagination into homemade movies as a kid, with riveting plot lines and character development (for an 11 year old), to nurturing my passion while studying English grammar, prose, and creative writing at the University of Iowa where I earned a Writers’ Certificate.

January 11, 2016

Today I read somewhere “The Earth is 400 Million years old, we lived at the same time as David Bowie” which was a sappy pardon to all of the mourners of the world today when he died. Another legend gone, so it goes. He celebrated his 69th trip around the sun, released a farewell album, then ceased to exist 3 short days later. Death by cancer, the dance is quite romantic.

January 10, 2016

There is a strange sense of silence when you cannot reach out to someone. Like a stranglehold that leaves you breathless, even when all you do is breathe. Heavy and loud sappy sighs.

The Golden Globes gives me major FOMO.

Leo needs to ask me to marry him already. Deanna Di Caprio. Beautiful ring to it. Plus I’ll be 25 soon and “too old”.

Two-time Golden Globe award winner Jim Carrey makes me happy. "You can't not know who the winner is once I've said it" JUST OPEN THE DAMN CARD, CAREY. REVEAL THE WINNER, CAREY.

It reminds me of my life right now and everything I need to say. I'll say it, locked in my room, looking into the eyes of the imaginary someone I am speaking to. I'll say it, rehearse it, familiarize myself with the taste of the words as they come out. I cannot unsay what I've said. I can't unmeet someone I've met. Rocks in a river, they are there for a reason; they sit still, and never meet the same water twice.

January 9, 2016

Jan 9.

I am no longer a rocky ship at sea; this dark abyss has swallowed me whole.

I need someone irrelevant to the rest of my world. To tell my secrets to, relay my dark thoughts, to be my steel trap. I need someone who I feel threatened will destroy me at any moment, but never will because they will come to protect and love me too much. In the end, I can know you as the best friend who was put into my life by this crazy field of chance. And I need someone crazy in my life to level me out. Normal makes my skin crawl. Normal makes me pull my hair out. Normal makes me realize  that life is an endless jig-saw puzzle that I will never have enough time to solve. Crazy lets me know the reality, the truth, that the pieces will never fit and that I need to live free and happy instead of trying to figure it all out. I need someone crazy. I need someone psychotic.

Silly nilly.

In unrelated news,

I feel like I just lost two weapons, two of my greatest confidants have morphed into one and I can no longer use this mega power.

So I decided to write a poem:

Time

It stands besides me

And whispers loudly

Hurry

Go run and hide

So precious, sweet nothing

Take me everywhere

And then let me go.


January 7, 2016

January 7th and A love letter:

I am not an easy person to love. Some days I will whisper how beautiful you are while planting gentle kisses all over your body. You will giggle and try to fight me off and in that moment my heart will have never felt so light.

But other days when my mind is a storm cloud threatening to explode, I will be a bundle of emotions that I cannot quite keep contained. I will be cold, distant, and you will look at me like I am not the same person you fell in love with.

I am a broken light-switch. My moods flicker without anyone flipping me on and off. I wake up each morning and wonder which me you will encounter that day. I always hope it is the one who makes you want to stick around.

I am not easy to love. But what I need you to know is that whether there is a war waging inside of my mind or I am the kind person you fell in love with and adore, I will always love you.

I will love you in the morning. I will love you when you cry. I will love you when I am angry. I will love you when you're being stubborn. I will love you when I don't even love myself. I will love you.

I know that there will be days when you want to give up on me, but I am asking you please don't.  You see, you are the only one who has been able to settle the storm inside of me before I even realize it is surfacing.

I am not easy to love but I promise that I will always put up a fight. And I will love you no matter which me my light switch flips on that day.



January 4, 2016

January 4th

I woke up from my sleep in the middle of the night reaching for something. I was leaning on the end of my bed with my left arm extended out, reaching out for.. something. It was quite daunting and quite frankly intriguing that I was directing my reach towards Grandma's healing bead hanging on my wall. Was she with me in that moment? Was I with her in my dream?

I drank NyQuil before sleep, maybe I hallucinated? Maybe I was in deep REM or maybe it was the fact I went to bed at 8:30pm. In any case, I miss grandma. I miss her a lot. The kindness of her voice, her funny demeanor, her adorable cackle. I miss her blue eyes and her sweet smile. I hope I was talking with her in my dreams.

Ray Lamontagne is a tortured soul. I wonder what he's been through. I wonder what his childhood journal looked like.

Oh the winter blues, they shimmer in the bleached white snow.. the innocence of the new, fresh year. They give me all sorts of vulnerable feels. Some sweet, crisp and vulnerable blues they are.

I can go unseen. Like a white bird in a blizzard.