The Unadventures of Tracie

Do you ever have days where you feel like you’re doing everything wrong? That despite your best intentions, you’re just a massive screw-up? I’ve been feeling that way lately. Feeling like I pretty much despise myself. Feeling like I do everything wrong, say everything wrong, that I’m just wrong, wrong, WRONG in every way, shape, and form. I like to say that I don’t care what people think of me. But it’s a lie. A complete and utter lie. I want to be liked, to be loved, to be understood. The thought of someone thinking poorly of me destroys me. So I have this overwhelming urge to be perfect. Be such a great and wonderful person that no one ever thinks badly of me. That they’re never angry with me, never disappointed, never hurt, never frustrated. Guess how that’s been working out? I know I shouldn’t be upset that I’m flawed. We all are. But I am upset. I hate that I’m selfish sometimes, that I can be lazy, unreliable, incompetent, jealous, or mean. I hate that despite my best inte...

In high school I wrote the following poem: Achieving Perfection Always too much to do Never enough time Placed in a box by well-meaning family and friends-- trying to help, only making it worse-- Walls closing in Suffocating Trapped This still encapsulates how I feel today. There are many themes in this short poem that apply to me and my life. But the part I want to focus on is "placed in a box by well-meaning family and friends." I think there is something about human nature that wants everything to be neatly labeled. Things are black and white. You are a Blue. This is evil. This is good. I am right. You are wrong. In a blog comment on one of the blogs I read, a commenter said on the topic of discussion (which is irrelevant to this post): "We all love simple answers. We all want guarantees. But maybe there are none." And I agree. Life is not black and white but rather multitudes and meritudes of shades of gray. And within these shades of gray are darker tones...

Hi peeps! (otherwise known as the handful of friends and family that read this) I know, I know. I've already failed at my goal. But don't worry. I'm going to try to make up for it this weekend by posting lots of totally cool stuff that you'll just love for all sorts of reasons. As a warning, this post won't be that cool. I need to just write and let myself ramble on about stuff because that's how I roll yo. I had a sleep relapse last night. Bad Tracie. But the good news is I went almost two weeks at going to bed at a more decent hour (which many of you would consider "late"). And the other good news is I regretted it so much because it became extra clear to me how sucky it is to be so tired. So no more! I WILL get better at this. Dude, there's nothing I can't do when I set my mind to it. Because, yeah, I'm that awesome. I've been thinking a lot lately about a lot of things. About my life, my passions, my desires, my ambitions, my fe...

I interrupt this message (and everything else I need to do right now, including finishing other very long, important posts and a book-long reply to an email) to post this . This is a link to a short story on Glass of Random , written by ME. This is the first piece of fiction I have written in 7 years. It's not polished or anything, but it's done for now. I wrote it in one night (not that impressive considering it's two pages long). This is a HUGE DEAL to me. Why? Because I have always loved to write, as soon as I could put pen to paper and form words. I spent much of my childhood writing silly stories, plays, and poems, loving every minute of it. But I have been afraid to write for years, ever since after having a disastrous creative writing class at BYU. Since then I have been so afraid of failure that I haven't even tried to write for a long time, too long. So this was scary and wonderful and frightening and exhilarating for me to do. I didn't realize h...

I went to all of church on Sunday. I had many mixed feelings about being there. Overall though, I think I want to continue to go again more regularly. Though there were some things said that bothered me, I did get one nugget out of the whole thing. In Sunday School, the teacher mentioned one thing that I thought was a good and helpful analogy. I'll paraphrase because I don't remember exactly what was said: Going through life you should treat God as your steering wheel and not your spare tire. They're both pretty important things to have on the journey of life. But one is a constant. Yes, you need that spare tire and it's so helpful to have. And you'd be pretty stuck without it during an emergency. But you only remember it when you need it. And once the emergency has been "fixed," the spare tire isn't relevant anymore. On the other hand, the steering wheel is something you constantly use to get where you need to go. This is all pretty obvious st...

I write more blog posts than you think I do. In fact, I've written so many things, not just blog posts, it's amazing. But where is all this text you ask? In my head. Yes, it is a fact that if there were an invention that would somehow convert thoughts to text I would have many writings attributed to my name. Why is this? Well, because I'm most creative and can write the best when, ironically, I'm not trying to write. Say for instance, right before I go to sleep. I wrote a whole page of a novel yesterday before going to sleep, but it doesn't exist anywhere besides in my own brain. And even that has gotten fuzzy. It drives me crazy that I can write out whole ideas, plots, concepts, articles, witticisms, etc. in my head and yet when I sit down to write I draw a big blank. My creativity is drowning in my own brain where it can't escape and will never live among the concrete things we call the written word. Today while I was resting, I wrote 3 blog posts that you m...

Agh! I'm doing horrible at this whole thing. It's past midnight so this will now post on August 4th instead of the 3rd. I vow to be better! Random thoughts/musings for Sunday: The mountain is on fire again. It seems to happen almost every summer. The sunset was absolutely beautiful tonight. I got to see it as Austin and I took a walk around my parent's neighborhood. My neck is absolutely killing me. It's completely stiff, and I have no idea why. Tomorrow is Austin's first day at a new job. Everyone wish him luck! I feel much better about things. I want to get a gym pass. Comcast's Internet isn't as "blazing fast" as they advertise. I joined my first ever hate group so I can post on its forums. I can't say what it's for since it's something that's very popular among my readers. Charity, you know what it is. I promise to make up for my lameness in blowing my goal the second day into it.

Today at work I got tired of sitting on my butt, so I walked down all 16 flights of stairs and took a minute to walk around outside. It was glorious there. It was warm (unlike the often subarctic temperatures inside) and sunny with a gentle breezing carrying the scent of what I like to call “the great outdoors.” I then bemoaned the fact that I spend much of my life inside during the wonderful daylight hours. How I mourn for my lost youth. I miss having a summer: no school, no work besides maybe 2 or 3 hours, and all the free time in the world to spend outside. I can’t wait until I can be a stay-at-home mom if nothing other than the fact that I will be able to take my kids outside several times a week so they and I can enjoy one of God’s greatest gifts. (p.s. I do understand that being a mom is time-consuming, entails hard work, and requires lots of patience. My desires to be a mom go beyond my simple desire to quit my 40-hour work week plus 2-hour daily commute job.)

I had an interesting thought about habits last night as I tried falling asleep. Of course it wasn't an a-ha! moment as I'm sure I'm not the first to ever think this. But why is it that good habits are so hard to make, but bad habits are as easy to acquire as breathing? I've found the converse to be true as well. Good habits are easy to break while breaking bad habits is as difficult as trying to see with your eyes shut. Case in point: exercise. Trying to begin exercising is tough, but once you are in the habit it can only take one little thing to break it. I remember 8th grade (or was it 9th?) anyway...I started doing sit-ups, leglifts, etc. every night. I did it for like two months. And then I sprained my ankle. I stopped my good habits because it was too painful, but even after the sprain healed I didn't do my exercises anymore. It's easier to maintain laziness. I think part of the reason why good habits are difficult and bad habits are easy is because...

There's nothing worse than having to wait. I still have 20 minutes until my last class of the day starts. The worst is having to wait but not having anything to occupy your time with. Or you have something you want to do, but you know you just don't quite have enough time to do the thing that you want to do while waiting for something you have to do. Really isn't waiting horrible? Waiting in line at the grocery store, the bank, the movies... You don't have to wait in a line for it to be horrible. (Though sitting down and waiting is much preferable to standing in line.) I don't even have games I like to play on my cell phone. So I spend my time trying to find useful things to do. Like doing hw or checking my email and hoping that someone somewhere has written to me. These hopes are usually in vain. I'm not that popular. I've decided that I'm going to start writing in my blog. I mean I have THREE, and I don't ever write in any of them. I ...