I wish to spend the best possible quality of time with my family while i am in Seattle for the holidays.  I want to grow close and talk a lot with my sister and mother, but my sister in particular because she will be moving to California soon and going off to college.  I'm really going to miss having her around when i come home from Alaska, and it'll be weird and sad not having her here. 

I also wish to get things in motion for a new, fun, profitable job that i can start next Spring semester. 

The last pieces of art that impacted me were the gorgeous grafitti of Valparaíso in Chile.  One in particular actually stuck out of the wall, and dozens had shards of glass, which gave them a very unique and retrospective flair to them.  It amazed me to think that people actually took time out to make their city more beautiful and artistic, instead of tagging or spraying an obscene phrase on them. 

I guess I oinly consider my immediate, biological family to be my "family".  I don't really say "he/she is practically family to me".  I feel like family should be people who love you unconditionally because you are stuck with each other for better or for worse.  However, I know that I am bleessed enough to have loving family members and that not every family has members such as that.  Being gay, I've heard my share of horror stories of families that cast out their gay members, and then these shunned people find close friends to build a new family. 

I feel like families should stick together, because they have this bond, this strong, deep-rooted blood bond, that supposedly keeps them connected.  I find it so sad to know that i have cousins and aunts and uncles out there whom i haven't met, and who have no interest in getting to know me.  Both my mother and father's families live far away in other countries, so i think we've always just had each other for so much of our history.  I want to grow closer to my relatives, as i consider them to be family. 

The idea of heaven is so appealing- this place where you have no problems and everything is bliss.  It's so hard for me to believe in; like a Utopian society or something.  But of course I've always pondered what it would be like if it existed...

All my life, I feel like I've always been happy thinking about past (happy) memories- like being constantly in a state of nostalgia.  It's like, reliving the past makes me happy because I know everything that happens, and I can omit certain unpleasant instances.  So I suppose heaven would be a construct made up of nostalgic memories, blended with the "present", whatever that would be. 

It can be used as an excellent energy source.  I was angry for so much of my childhood and adolescence, and when an opportunity came where i had a chance to forgive and let go of all that anger, I didn't want to, because it had been such a driving force for so much of my life.  I know it may sound a bit corny, but I love a line from the X-Men movie, "X2": "Anger can help you survive... So can love."  It's like, anger CAN help you survive a lot of emotionally turbulent times, but after a while, it becomes damaging.  Better to replace it with a more positive energy, like love.

I found that, instead of thinking and wanting to be a certain change, it works best if you just BE that change which you desire.  For a large part of my life, I would look at others with such positive and resourceful attitudes and personalities, and I would wish I could be like or emulate them.  I would wish and write down, "I want to be more ____", and I think for some things, I did eventually obtain them, but for 90% of them, I still wasn't acquiring them.  I discovered recently, that I just need to BE what I want to be, instead of wishing so heavily to be a certain way. 

A Scrubs episode sparked this epiphany- Elliot was wanting to be more mature and less helpless, and the janitor told her exactly what i just wrote. 

For example, for a while, I was struggling with the fact that I believed I didn't have a millionaire mind- that I didn't have a good money blueprint, or that i didn't have the mindset to be abundant with money.  I felt like I could never have that kind of mindset, and then over a few days I just started saying to myself that, "YES, I DO have a financially abundant money blueprint".  And I've been applying that already-obtained/is attitude ot a lot of other things as well.

Actually, one of the hardest promises I've made, was to my boyfriend, that i wouldn't use his log-in information.  I would use it to look at porn, and when I felt guilty and told him that I'd been using his information, he asked me not to use it anymore.  It was SO HARD not to use it and look at the porn on the site, as I have a mini-addiction to porn.  But I did it!  I never once accessed the site again, and I felt really proud of myself.  :-)

I've been wondering about this recently.  I'd like to believe that everything we do has a reaction and consequence.  Like a law of physics, I've always thought (or maybe blindly believed) that no good deed goes unrewarded, and that no bad deed goes unpunished.  But after taking political science and history classes, I've seen what desparate and horrible situations over 75% of the world lives in, in large part due to somebody else's fault or neglectfulness.  Take the constantly corrupt governments of South America for example- ruthless dictators, greedy puppet presidents, and diabolical generals and police officers make the lives of their countrymen a living hell with no money or education to rebuild themselves.

When bad things happen to me (bad things meaning actions done to me by other people), I like to believe that they will get theirs sometime soon, and that I won't have to worry about payback.  But, I don't know, I'm wondering now if that's just one childhood belief we all desire to cling to, and while we all sit and pat ourselves on our heads, others more wise have already learned that you have to take justice into your own hands and see to it that the guilty are punished. 

Karma calls into question our humanity, integrity and responsability. 

I love seeing my family and old friends.  Spending time while on a walk, or at a coffee shop and catching up with changes in each other's lives. 

I want an idea to make lots of money.  I want a continuous stream of ideas to come to me all my life, so i can make lots of money and live in abundance and help millions of people around the world.

I met him on an online chat room.  When he sent me his pic, I didn't think much of him, but since he was coming by my area, I wanted to at least meet him.  We met at a mall, and before I arrived, there was this great big Chinese family eating at one of the restaurants, and he initially thought I brought the whole family to meet him.  :-)  We ate at Red Robin and he asked to see my ID, since I looked so young.  Hehe.  We ate our very first, out of many, meals together. 

Can't think of any specific piece of art that captures my current mood.  But since I am feeling calm and steady, I would say any illustration depicting water or the ocean.  Right now I am listening to Feist, and that suits my current mood; Death Cab for Cutie always seems to put me in a peaceful, chill mood.

Christmas day 2008 and I can't sleep.  Had a little fight with my sister today, and that's just made me more nervous about seeing my brother.  i feel like there is this heavy premonition that some awful fight will break out between the two of us... sometimes I get these heavy feelings and can't shake them, and as a result, I am constantly worrying about hte future and not living in the present.

All slushed in today; I am hating this.  I feel so antsy from not walking or getting exercise, or seeing my friends and going places and doing things!!!  I want ot return to Alaska so i can be with Michael again, but I don't want to be longing from him while I'm missing out on present company of my family or just living it up while I'm down here.  It's been wonderful hanging out with my mom; I only wish my sister wasn't working so much so we could hang out more.  That was my goal this winter break- to hang out the most I could with Erin and really bond with her before she moves to Cali.

I feel like I haven't been using all this free time to the maximum.  I could be writing more, or replying to emails.  Why do i feel so lazy???  I really really want to go on a walk, but can't because of all the slush.  I don't like to complain or whine, but, I dunno, this snow is just really immobilizing me, I feel. 

It's funny how, when we were younger, I think we looked forward to being older, because we saw all the advantages and upgrades you obtained.  But now that I'm past 21 and can buy porn, cigarettes, alcohol and gamble... I don't see anything to look forward to.  Hehe.  Well, just kidding; sort of. 

I suppose the greatest thing about getting older, will be to witness the changes in history and mankind, and have the experience and wisdom of all my years, to compare and contrast things.  It would be incredible if, 50 years later, time or space travel was common, and we could all see and experience such new things. 

For me, the most difficult thing about loving someone (not including my family), is that I feel myself getting sucked into the perfect image of love- that is, once I feel like I've achieved being "in love" with someone, i tend to think that everything is just downhill from there, in terms of the relationship.  Not that I'm saying things are all uphill, but I think a lot of us have been brainwashed from tons of Disney and Hollywood movies, to believe that love solves everything, which is an overly general statement.  Love takes committment, VERY clear communication, and nurturing, in order to stay afloat. 

Another difficult aspect about love (which I've never personally experienced), is the warping and changing of that love.  It's so weird for me to hear a married couple of 20 or more years, saying how they just fell out of love with each other... I wonder what that feels like.  It's funny how we use the same instantaneous verb of "falling" to describe going into and out of the state of love. 

What I've been wanting to learn more and more everyday, is how to start up and maintain a successful business.  I want to learn more about business and accounting, and learn which trends are popular, and then use that knowledge to start up or buy a business, and start my very first passive income stream.