BOOM smile

Example sentence from my class presentation when reading from a paper:

"These measures are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process and are proven safe and effective."

Example sentence from my class presentation when improvising:

"And that was kinda like 'whoa'."

Yeah I was never what you'd describe as"debonair" when it came to presentations in front of the class. In fact, fast thinking constantly failed me whenever I was in an uncomfortable situation, so I tend to keep my mouth shut in new situations. This is why my voice in this Kanga sounds different than my voice in real life! I'm TELLIN' ya!

But blah blah introspective silly-nannies. Yknow what that group presentation in my CriticalThinking class indicates??

Winter Break!

It starts now! For me, anyway. It was my last final! My final final, if you will. That means 5 weeks of partying it up with friends, family, and of course, Santa! For me, anyway.

One of the things I'll miss about good ol' Whitney High School is the last school day right before Christmas break. It's like BOOM present there BOOM more presents there BOOM holiday flood of cheer! I talked about this last Christmas, so I'll spare you anymore detailed BOOM descriptions, but that day was always something to look forward to.

For CSUF, the week before winter break is finals week, so it's more like BOOM take this test BOOM turn in this project BOOM go home bye. No bags full of gifts. No dressing up like Santa. No Christmas parties where you bring food and end up pigging out on hard cookies, Ralphs brownies, and Ruffles chips. It's the magical festivities that I'm missing and the magical festivities that I miss.

Fortunately it hasn't reached that point of sadness. Actually, oppositely, yesterday I was incredibly happy. With everything. Which I believe sounds peesey weesey ham on cheesey, but I'm incredibly satisfied with where I am for these following reasons:

• Fwends - BUH yeah I'm talking about friends again, but I like em! One of the best things about commuting is that if I make new friends at school, we can just go like "hey, wanna hang out during winter break?" "Sure. I live right over there." HAH take that, dormers with friends-from-different-states! One for the commuters.
• Fwends - The Whitney ones, because they're still cool, and they shan't be replaced.
  
• Painting class - Next semester I'm taking a painting class, which I was DREADING more than Dread Pirate Roberts (although I don't think Westley was actually necessarily fearing anything, the title probably came with the position.) But now, it doesn't seem so bad! What if I become a great painter! WHICH IS TOTALLY POSSIBLE. Though I'll never leave graphite - my first love.
• Art in general - I like art. I am glad I am an artist. No need for elaboration here.
• Work - I've said it before and I'll say it again (my name is K-E-V-I-N!), I feel super lucky to have the job that I have. I actually enjoy it very much, and I'm not used to associating pleasure with "work" (sorry, Quest kids, but teaching you guys were like trying to direct a storm).

The weird thing was that these thoughts came about between finishing my art piece final (which turned out kind of bad) and preparing for my marijuana presentation (which turned out okay), which, contrary to popular practice, would not usually occur during a moment of great stress. But it did. Not sure what that was all about.

Since I'm getting distracted with these Barats&Bereta videos after some Googling, I'll just end with this list I thought to make right now.

How to Handle Happiness
1. Identify it. Make sure you know everything that is making you happy and understand why you're feeling that way.
2. Let others know. Put on a good attitude to make others feel better. BUT DO NOT be a douche about it, bragging about great you feel, especially if someone else is not having such a fantastic day. If you act douchey you'll end up being a douche. Speaking of which, I find jokes about douches hilarious. Now you know how to tickle my funny bone.
3. Capture it. The thing about emotions is that they are constantly changing. So the most important step-thing is to value what you go. Milk it out for all its worth because you never know how long it'll last or if you'll even get it back again. Never take happiness for granted.

Something's good.

I don't know why, but today I was driving home from school and thought... "Huh. My life is pretty great right now."

It could be because I didn't have any homework and I was going home to learn some Actionscript like a bonafide nerd, but still, that isn't reason enough to contemplate the awesomeness of my life! (BTW, sorry if I'm coming off jerky if I talk about how happy I am? People sometimes get pissed when other people are enjoying themselves, so if you're one of those people... I'm sorry... and stop it.)

I'm thinking part of my happiness is the result of me being a lot more on top of things this year (that's what I said!). I've been trying really hard to DO stuff when I'm SUPPOSED to do stuff. Ysee, this used to be one of my philosophies:

"As long as I'm doing as good as the guy next to me, I should be okay."

Sadly, this does not apply to most things. Cross Country races? Homework? Growth? Hot dog eating contests? No. What if the guy next to me failed at EVERYTHING? I'd be a slow, dumb, and short kid who can only down half a weiner a minute. That would suck. Especially since I want to be an artist when I'm older! My new philosophy is now:

"As long as I'm one step ahead of the guy next to me, it lowers my chances of getting totally owned in the shins."

Getting owned in the shins is the worst.

So this school year I've been trying to follow that, and for the most part, it's been working. I don't know if this was the real cause of my satisfaction but... whatever! Might's well post about it before the feeling goes away!


Sidenote: WHOA how often do I write a post dedicated to my emotions? About as often as the consumption of cheap food at an amusement park, I'd say!! I read other people's blogs and most of them have so much stuff about how they feel, and I guess it's good to vent. But for me, my Kanga is more of a place for... random entertainment tantamount to a scoop of delicious ink blots in the form of a strawberry filled funnel cake...

Go ahead and quote me on that.