wishful thinking

how many ways are there to make a wish? at 11:11 last night i told my friend, "hey it's 11:11, make a wish" it made me think about all the things that keep us disillusioned and hopeful, constantly in a state of "wishful thinking". i blame tv shows and disney movies giving false hope to kids, i mean let's count some ways we encounter wish making.

"when you wish upon a star

makes no difference who you are
anything your heart desires will come true."
-When You Wish Upon a Star

how many of you have held your breath while driving through until you turned blue just to make a wish? of all those wishes that you made how many really came true? and how many are just coincidence? i think i'm becoming more cynical because even that false hope is nothing but a delusion.

ever walk by a fountain and throw coins in to make a wish? or find random change in that others threw in? it is a collection of unfulfilled wishes that we cling so dearly to. and by the sheer amount that you find in there, you start to realize how lonely and sad people really are.

but maybe at the end of the day when you look up at the clock, or you're driving through a tunnel, or looking up at the night sky it is that little hope that keeps you going. i'm tied up by my own lack of faith and hope, trapped by the clarity of a harsh reality. so make a wish, and maybe the most important part is believing it will happen and not waiting for the results skeptically...

"starlight starbright
first star i see tonight
i wish i may, i wish i might
have this wish i made tonight."

Edit: A Few More Types

Happy Xmas

"and so this is christmas, what have you done?

another year older, a new one just begun.
and so this is christmas, i hope you have fun.
the near and the dear one, the old and the young."
-Happy Xmas (War is Over)
(The Fray 2006 Version)

we did our family gathering thing tonight. it was a lot of fun because there was so much food and everyone was laughing and cheery. then we all played guitar hero and talked about stupid stuff. took lots of pictures, had awesome tiramisu cheesecake. man...christmas is the season to eat and get fat but i guess it's all worth it because man oh man...everything was soooo delicious! christmas gifts weren't extravagant this year but that's not what matters. i feel like i half assed some gifts this year too...i used to be so good with gifts what happened? *sighs* i think i gave like 2 good gifts this year. sennheiser headphones and ipod nano. my best gift by far this year is Nip/Tuck Season 1 DVD! gives me a reason to start collecting another series. 2nd would have to be iPod shuffle, 'cept i'm not sure it was worth the collateral emotional damage. (lol) i got some of the movies i got stolen back too! that was cool because i really wanted to watch never been kissed again since i lost it because you don't really miss something until you lose it. well anyway...hope everyone has a merry/happy holidays/xmas! whatever is pc nowadays :P i don't even know anymore.

dreams

"when you're so lonely, lying in bed
the night's closed its eye but you can't close your head
everyone's sleeping all through the house
you wish you could dream but forgot to somehow."
-Lullaby (Jack Johnson)

lately i've been having trouble sleeping. i've been having bad dreams that keep me tossing and turning and awake at every hour. what is it about this time of year that makes me so restless? maybe it's the thought that this time next year i'll have graduated already, still without a plan. maybe i'll rent in la for awhile to get my act together, find a job, make some money, then move to new york. where am i going to rent? what am i going to do? i wish i could sleep and dream well so i could be that hope/ambition filled little girl i used to be. i don't remember when that part of me died, but i think that is what i am searching for again...that passion, that fire, that innocence, that will to want to do something great, even if it does seem impossible.

"i would fall asleep only in hopes of dreaming...
but reality comes crashing to the floor"
-Blind (Lifehouse)

patience

i am waiting patiently for my own christmas gift to come. iceposters.com please please send me my posters before christmas day, because all i want for christmas is my vincent d'onofrio posters!

Side note: (Current semester grades)
ISF 100A - B+
Psych 160 - B+
Psych 150 - A
LS 105 - A

"he's making a list and checkin' it twice

gonna find out who's naughty and nice
santa clause is coming to town."
-christmas classics

panic attacks

"...are sudden surges of overwhelming fear

that comes without warning and without any obvious reason."

my mom had a panic attack earlier tonight...that's why i'm awake at 5am. it is not only debilitating to her, but it is debilitating to me as well. i'm tired, cranky, and worried. i don't see what she's so anxious about because seriously...she has no real worries. everyday she's paranoid about getting a heart attack when really it's what is causing her panic attacks that seem like heart attacks because of the shortness of breath. the fear of having a heart attack only fuels the panic attacks and then the vicious cycle never ends! meaning i will never have a good night's sleep until she learns to stop worrying about stupid stuff. i fear i have her anxiousness and her paranoid delusions. damn her and her crazy. damn crazy and its genetic predisposition!

"hold on i feel like i'm getting ready for a breakdown
i don't know why.
i'm not crazy i'm just a little unwell
i know, right now you can't tell
but stay awhile maybe then you'll see
a different side of me"
-Unwell (Matchbox 20)

is it any wonder?

"i always thought that i knew
i'd have the right to be living in the kingdom
of the good and true and so on
but now i think i was wrong..."

people say there are 2 things that are important in life, your education/career and your love life. looks like i'm failing miserably in both sections since i have no idea what i am going to do in the future and my love life looks even worse. i know i really want to go to NYC after i graduate if only to figure myself out. but what am i going to do there? my friends always ask me that, what are you going to do? there is rent and food you have to pay for. i really don't know, but i need this sabbatical, this time away from everything familiar because living with too many expectations from the people around you can drive you up the wall.

"is it any wonder that i'm tired?
is it any wonder that i feel uptight?
is it any wonder that i don't know what's right?"

i think lately i've been turning my frustrations towards the wrong people. my friends and my family had to put up with my attitude and short temper. i have to apologize since i don't really mean to be taking this out on you. i'm just tired of thinking about my future. as college is winding down all i can think of is what i'm supposed to be doing after. i look around and all i see are people getting interviews for grad schools, getting into serious relationships, moving in together, and having a clear view of what exactly it is they want to do. do you know what i see? i see a blur of nothing, i can't bring myself to settle on one thing, i fear i can't make it into the law enforcement field or won't cut it as a prosecutor. one question i always get is "what are you studying?" and then, "what are you planning to do with that degree?" i fear i can not live up to my own dreams and i will screw up everything my parents ever had to give me. i live everyday like i don't care about anything, but i do. i think i just care too much about everything that sometimes i get tired to care about anything. it is exhausting...

"sometimes it's hard to know where i stand.
it's hard to know where i am
well maybe it's a puzzle i don't understand."

also i've been feeling the pressures of that inevitable question you get asked every time someone doesn't see you for a long time. whether it be family, friends, old family friends, etc...all of you singles probably know which question i'm referring to..."any serious relationships lately? any significant others?" and when you say no, you know what is coming...the pitiful, "oh it's ok...don't worry you're still young." well you know what, i wasn't really worried until you ASKED me about it. it always makes me feel like i should be getting in some sort of relationship just so i can avoid those questions, maybe i should just lie to avoid it. that has been frustrating me lately also, now that the future seems so much closer than ever before. my close friends are all in something serious and are very happy! i fear i can't ever settle down nor ever be happy. i give myself about 3 months before i get bored or they do. see another chunk of cognitive resources being sucked up.

"sometimes i get the feeling that i'm stranded in the wrong time
where love is just a lyric in a children's rhyme."

last but not least is my mom and her guilt trip trap. every time i come home she complains about something that hurts. something that happened to her, something new she heard on the news that definitely means she is dying. she uses her health as something to try to keep us close to home. it sucks because i want to get away from it all, i hate having to deal with her crap. you can't guilt your kids into ruining their own lives so they can take care of you. i just want to yell at her to go to the doctors. get checked out, find out if anything really IS wrong with her. then maybe she'll have a legit excuse for keeping us around. but no she doesn't want to go to the doctors, she likes it being ambiguous. probably because she doesn't want to find out that it's all in her head and then we'll finally get to go and do our own thing without feeling like we left her sickly at home by herself. she says shit like, "a lot of old people die alone and no one finds them for days, when they do find her the dog has eaten most of her face already." i'm like...i think you've been watching too much tv. but she makes me feel so bad sometimes, she makes me worry and i feel so helpless. i feel the more i distance myself from it, the less i have to face it, but no...she shoves it in my face every 5 min. that she'll die someday and somehow it'll be my fault.

"after all the misery that you made
is it any wonder that i feel afraid
is it any wonder that i feel betrayed?"

-Is it Any Wonder? (Keane)

oh and i am being sent back to berkeley the day after my 21st birthday because my mom doesn't want to drive me back up after winter break. i think i'll probably be in transit either on my birthday or sometime around then. so much for the big birthday party. sometimes i just can't wait to get out of here. she told me "don't worry...it's just your 21st birthday. wait till some guy can throw you a big party, when i was young i really wanted a big party for my 20th birthday but i didn't get it. your dad found out and threw me a big party for my 22nd birthday."

"happy birthday to you..."

i have so much pent up emotions i become this agitated person that snaps at every little thing and the worst part is i have no one to tell this to. the one person i thought i could relate to abandoned me a long time ago. i have too much to say but no one to say it to. i fear i will become a failure...and i don't want to be living at home for the rest of my life. even faith/religion can't save me anymore. i just need to focus and save myself from drowning in my own thoughts.

"get me away from here i'm dying...

play me a song to set me free"
-Get Me Away from Here I'm Dying (Belle and Sebastian)

tis almost a new year

...and it's time to change things up. put the past behind us and forget everything. that's the best part about the new year because you have another semester, another birthday, another 365 days to make more memories you want to forget by the next year.

"so this is the new year
and i have no resolutions
for self assigned penance
for problems with easy solutions"
-The New Year (Death Cab)

let me recap:

best of 2006

1) London Trip - Summer '06
(Fuzzy handcuffs anyone?)

2) Motorcycle Lessons - May '06
(I'm going to take the test soon...maybe)

3) Purchasing Macbook on my own - Oct '06
($1500!!)

4) Discovering Iceposter.com - Dec '06
(They have Vincent D'onofrio posters!!!)

5) Guitar Hero II - Nov ' 06
(Passed it on all modes with David)

6) Kash's Birth - Jan '06
(Congrats Staci!)

7) Workaholic status - Fall '06
(At some point I held 4 jobs at one time)

8) The Fray @ Warfield, SF - Nov '06
(Went with Henry, Damnwells were great!)

9) 15 question multiple choice final (ISF 100A) - Fall '06
9) Awesome GSI: KB (LS 170/LS 105) - Fall/Summer '06

10) Being able to start a new year fresh - Dec 31, 2006
(sometimes the hardest things and the right things are the same.)

Worst of 2006

1) Starting something that shouldn't have been started - Fall '06
(girls and boys...sometimes should be JUST friends)

2) Drinking the semester away - Fall '06
(I blame the work environment)

3) DRUNK Frat Party - Sept '06
(Where I made a vow to never drink again...and then drank the semester away)

4) Getting my backpack/stuff stolen - Oct '06
(now I sit at the very front of the class because my glasses were in there)

5) Taking everything too seriously - Fall '06

all in all it passed by extremely fast. now i get to make resolutions for the new year. but that i will save for another time.

much <3, C

presents and pasts

"i just wanna be loved..."
-am Radio

here's another past catching up with me...

the am radio past in the present:

henry and i went over to my friend's pad today. it was stupid large and amazing. he's renting a place in the hollywood hills and the view is wow. i can't even begin to describe how wow this place is. i got to see all the guys again. i haven't seen them in like 3 years. kevin, rowan, jason, joe, and even match and caroline. it was great, a lot of the past came rushing back all in one night. they shot their music video with lots of retarded footage of rocking out, airguitaring, talking on bananas, and anything stupid they could think of. then they dragged us into it. that was pretty fun and reminded me of all those good times back in the day. oh i got my hair cut today, so it actually looks nice. (haha) i have some more pictures of the night, which was mainly chillin' and catching up with people.

this is just the first floor, there are two more floors to this crazy awesome house. *sighs*

and oh apparently this used to be shirley temple's house. we were in her old bedroom area. the house is worth 4 million. man...how can they say money can't buy happiness?

religion, a mere illusion?

"religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
-Freud

i got to thinking about religion today as i fought to figure out whether faith is just disguised ignorance. people are so passionate about their religious beliefs they are willing to kill others to defend them. i remember when this topic first came up in lecture last semester, the discussion of science vs. religion. even my professor began to become angered and irritated while the rest of us sat amused and interested. especially when the bold statement: "knowledge is better than ignorance." was used referring to science as knowledge and religious people as ignoramuses. if religion in fact is just a delusion then that would mean every moral, every law, every god, every belief, every wish, and every prayer was time/energy wasted. i'm not sure if our core being would let us accept that the very foundations of ourselves were merely a delusion. therein comes the defense mech: denial.

our lives are set and controlled by a higher being or so we would like to believe because now whenever something bad happens we have something/someone to pass the blame onto. whether it's god, or satan, bad karma, or reincarnation, maybe it's because of a horrible deed committed in your past life. we would like to blame it on anything that is ultimately out of our control. so is religion really just a delusional wish fulfillment? is a belief really just something that we use as a psychological comfort?

i think religion offers us some kind of control over aspects of our lives we can't usually control, such as fate, natural disasters, death, etc...

"religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities."
-Future of an Illusion

religion is just a widely accepted paranoid delusion. one person's paranoid delusion that isn't accepted is considered crazy. religious people share the same delusional symptoms as many neurotic patients. does that mean that religious people are therefore neurotic for believing in something bigger than themselves? if obsessive compulsions are considered psychologically abnormal then what be of religious traditions? are those just as crazy? is it true that man created religion when he felt helpless and led us to believe that he was created in god's image when in reality it was he who created god in his image? when i say god, i mean it in the generic term of a higher being greater than ourselves.

"religion offers us all a mass produced comfortable illusion."

some philosophers say that humans created god in our own image without any of our human defects. eventually in our afterlife we will partake in that perfect life as a perfect being. our struggle to become something greater than ourselves has led us to believe in a perfect afterlife...but does it really exist? maybe faith is the key to open that door and those who believe will actually obtain it. or maybe we just die, and that's it. if the actions taken in our lifetime are the only things that connect us to this world, then maybe we should stop worrying about what is in the afterlife, but try to make a difference while still in the realm of certainty.

hmm...maybe it's because i'm slowly losing my faith and having doubts about my religion, but i think i'm willing to take another look at reality. by the way this is just my mental vomiting so if none of it makes sense or i've offended anyone, please accept my apology. if you're wondering, i was born and raised a buddhist.

"that's me in the corner
that's me in the spotlight
i'm losing my religion..."
-R.E.M.

weekend soundtrack

"I started to ache, when I started to think of you. Wondered how long it would take before I step into something new."
-Soundtrack to Our Movie (Mae)

Friday December 15, 2006

I’m spending the weekend in Tahoe with a few of my friends and my roommate. We’re staying at a timeshare in Reno. It’s pretty nice ‘cept the city is filled with old white people and the casinos are old and decrepit. The only thing to do out here is gamble, in which I can’t for another month, and eat buffets. Just thinking about it makes me sick.

I just found out two of my friends got together, it’s pretty cute but it’s more of a convenient relationship I think. They were good friends before and about 30% of the time they’re attracted to each other. Some people ask why? They ask why not?

There are no regrets which is good because I feel like all of my relationships are filled with nothing but regret. Especially this last one. I got in deeper than I’d ever expected to and now I have to pull out entirely.

"when it's over, that's the time you're in my heart again. when it's over...is it really over?"
-When it's Over (Sugar Ray)

I want to fall in love someday, don’t really know whether it will happen or if I’ll end up in a convenient relationship. I really don’t want that, companionate love is not what I seek.

“you make me wanna smoke a cigarette, you make me wanna be someone else. you make me wanna be somebody you would leave and I could forget.”
-Cigarette (Graham Colton Band)

We went skiing today. I got hit in the back around the kidney area with a snowboard. Now there is a big bruise and a lot of pain. I hope it’s not internally bleeding. I hate that I suck at skiing/snowboarding, and it discourages me when I can't bring myself to tough it out. Damn it, it's just the story of my life, I run away before I can see the end result.

There are so many things I want to do, as the years tack on I wonder when I’ll finally get to LIVE. I want to get a job, and I want to settle down and fall in love. I want to party, and I want to dance the night away. I want to travel the world and make a difference.

“But everything I plan just slips right through my hand and I don’t know why…”
-I Don't Know Why (Ben Kweller)

Saturday December 16, 2006

There was no internet connection at the timeshare so I had to just put my entries in word first. Today was spent chilling around the area. It started snowing so the rough edges of the city were covered with a thick blanket of white snow. It was beautiful.

"I'm dreaming of a white christmas..."
-White Christmas (Bing Crosby)

For breakfast we cooked pancakes and dinner was pasta with chicken alfredo. All in all it was a very nice and relaxing experience. Anna, pH and myself stayed up late into the night and chatted about politics, education, relationships, sex, and anything else we could think of. It was a great bonding experience because we hardly ever get to just hang out. The cold weather kept us all inside so we played Settlers of Canton. It is like Civilization only you play against other people, you trade resources, build settlements, armies, roads, and cities.


Sunday December 17, 2006

We left Reno early and headed back to Berkeley. I packed up my stuff and got ready to go home. A month in LA, I think that will be quite enjoyable. plus when I come back up I'll be 21. Ready to hit up all the bars and clubs! Anyway...it's getting late and I have to get back to LA tomorrow.

reconciliation

"sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same."
-All at Once (The Fray)

there are those who can be more than friends, and those who can only be friends. i've reconciled with myself. i think that it is for the best because usually someone will get hurt. two emotionally unavailable people should never get together. that is all i have to say about that one.

i'm in the halfway point between Berkeley and Tahoe right now. chillin' at Will's friend's house. it's a pretty nice place in an empty little neighborhood. all they talk about is work, how their job situation is, etc... i hope that i have interesting things to talk about when i get into the real world.

if only...

"oh yeah fooled again, don't know how and don't know when.

not much else to blame but wishful thinking..."
-Wishful Thinking (Duncan Sheik)