So Much to Do, So Little Time

Thunderweek is now over. Seems like just yesterday I proposed hosting a week at the beach for Thunderheads. That was back in February. Everyone has now gone home, and I've heard that most have arrived safely. It was an amazing and busy week full of laughter, happiness, and friendship. Hopefully, one day, we'll get to do this again. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll even get to have Thunderweek in Ireland. How cool would that be? But today brings me back into the real world.

I have been dealing with attempting to register for a foreign language class at university for the past two months with no avail. Only freshmen are allowed to register right now, not transfer students. Also, only today was I able to finally get someone to tell me that the 101 class is only offered online except in the fast summer session. How disappointing. Taking classes online is not the point of going away to university. Looks like it's my only option though. It's upsetting as I do not excel in online classes. But I suppose it's time to bite the bullet as they say, and just take the class. Otherwise I'll be staying at university all summer. Not that I may anyway, but without this class it's a definite. Hopefully things will be easier after this semester. Right, who am I kidding. But so far this has been the biggest hiccup in my transfer to university from a two year institution. Not too much to complain about overall. Other than the fact that the head of the foreign language department now probably hates me since I just called her the wrong name in an email. Oops!

Now I'm just waiting on hearing back about my roommate assignment, as I will be having a roommate. My parents gave me the option of having a single dorm, but the only ones available to transfer students were non air-conditioned with old baseboard or radiator heat. No thank you! Plus I was accepted into something called a living-learning community. You have to write essays to apply, and there is work involved over the semester. Plus you must maintain a certain GPA to be in the community for the academic year. Should be a good adventure! So I know my dorm, but not my roommate. The dorm is one of the original buildings of the campus, but has since been renovated. It has central HVAC (yay!), a piano in the building, and the original hardwood floors in the dorm rooms. No asbestos tiles for me! Haha!

As of right now it's precisely fifty days till I leave for university. And no, I don't have a single thing together. I should, but I don't. I'm sure that I'll pack everything last minute like usual. I have to be sure it all fits well in whichever vehicle I'm taking since I don't actually have someplace to stay for the 4 days between orientation and move in day. Another detail that I must figure out. I also still have to pick a meal plan. It's such a challenge. I don't want to eat at the cafeteria all the time, but I don't know how much money I'll have to cook my own food too much. Good thing I'm perfectly alright with cereal for breakfast. There's so many little details to figure out. I wish there was someone around who could just help you out with these things. But alas, part of going to university is part of growing up. They expect you to be able to handle all these things on your own. It's time to push you out of the nest and see if you can fly!

Anyhow, as I said, it's back to the real world today which means lots to do. Hope you all are well out there in cyberland.

Peace,
Elina

This picture is "at the end of the world". The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare.

The Things of Life

Well, I was doing fairly well writing here for a time. Seems like the last few posts make me not want to come back and write more. What depressing topics. Yeesh. But anyhow, 2010 has been a fabulous year so far, and we're not going to allow a few trivial happenings to alter that. Even if it certainly seems like they could. Something we must always remember is that we are the master of our own feelings. Sure, it's difficult to change the way we feel about something, or someone, but it is quite possible. Not without effort though. Being angry, upset, or sad doesn't change anything (upon other things, my best friend moved 4 hours away and neglected to actually tell me). It merely wastes your precious time. Someone please be sure to remind me of this upon occasion. You don't even have to be nice about it.

Alas, this is not to be a philosophical or insightful post. This is simply one to get back into the habit of writing here again. It's almost exactly two months till I leave for university. Eight weeks, one-half of a semester. It's going to be here so fast. It's time to start gathering things to take with me, and begin ordering dorm essentials, like those extra-long sheets, a throw rug, and a memory foam mattress cover. There's so much to do, and so much I want to do, with very, very little time! (Time seems to be a reoccurring theme throughout my blog posts doesn't it?)

As you all know from the title of this blog, the beach is where I call home. Too bad when you live here you don't really get to see it that much! Next week (aka 4 days!) a bunch of my Thunderhead friends will be here for a time they've aptly dubbed "Thunderweek". I can't wait, even though I only get 2 full days off to have with everyone. I'm quite looking forward to all of this. I'm also looking forward to seeing the new Eclipse movie at the midnight premiere with one of my besties!

Anyhow, seeing as I've nothing more to really say right now (or I'm too tired to think of anymore), it's time to call it a night. Tomorrow bring the morning shift at work, and maybe an hour at the beach before class tomorrow night. It's gonna be a long day!

Peace,
Elina

PS: If you haven't heard the new album from The High Kings titled Memory Lane, go order it now. Yes, it's a pricey import from Ireland but 100% worth every penny.

This charming cottage is someplace in Ireland. It looks like precisely the place I'd love to be right now.

Is It Possible to Care Too Much?

So much has occurred these past few weeks. I graduated from my 2 year college with highest honors, and a very special award where the faculty and staff choose the recipient. But today is not a day for talking about myself. No, today is a day for contemplation and introspection.

Recent events and those past have got me to wondering, what is love? Can we truly define it? The Dictionary attempts to, describing love as "an intense feeling of deep affection". Sure, that may be the main definition in the English language, but once again words fail us where emotions run wild and tangle in innumerable and unforeseen factors. There are so many different kinds of love in this world. The love of friends (our chosen family), the love of a parent, the love that is truly joy for a personal passion, the love of blood family, and romanic love. Any of these have the ability to bring us great happiness, and yet, simultaneously bring us more pain than we ever thought was possible.

The first and the final of these can be two of the most destructive. With your friends you want to be there to help them, you don't want to see them be harmed. But I've learned sometimes all you can do is watch your friend walk off the edge of the cliff, then be there to pick them back up when they fall. This is a feeling of helplessness brought on by how much we care for those friends we love. To be helpless, powerless, to do something, anything, it hurts. You want to take your friend into your arms and tell them it will be okay. But truly it is not just your friend you wish to convince, it is yourself. You're trying to console and comfort your own fears, bring hope to yourself when there's nothing you can do except be there.

With someone you love, that love that drives you mad, that love that makes you do crazy things, this one is the one that changes you. It causes you to make rash decisions without thinking, and to ignore the good advice of your closest friends. Even when you know they're 100% right. This love is the one they talk about most in developmental psychology class. The one that happens in stages, and never really goes away, even when it fades. But what happens if such a love is unknown if it is shared, or even unrequited? This can be so inordinately painful that it in itself can drive us insane. When you care to a point that you just hope to the powers above that the other person is happy, even if it's not with you...it's awful. It's difficult to get over, to move on. It's even worse if this person is a friend as well. If time does not help, then what will? If you don't listen to the good advice of your best friends, then who will you listen to? Not your heart. It's too torn and confused. This is what most folks tend to listen to however, getting caught in a boomerang cycle that rips anew every time you believe you're properly healed again. In this case you have choices to change your life, to turn it around. Find someone new, let go of that which can never be and continue to be the best friend that you can be. Or you can stop all contact. Cut the person out of your life completely. Doesn't sound to appealing if this person has been a long time friend does it?

Time with those we love, is somehow taken for granted while we are experiencing it. Children want to spend time with their friends not mom and dad, grandchildren (no matter the age) wonder why they must go visit their boring grandparents once again, and we always feel as if there will be another time to spend with our friends and relations. This is unfortunately not true. That precious time can be ripped from us as fast as it was given. Love is something that as much as we may want it to know time upon occasion, does not. Do not sit around waiting for love. Go out and make your own, and never take time for granted.

This photo is from Whitepark Bay in County Antrim.

So It's Been A Year

Mind you, this is not the day I joined the pub. But rather the day I was introduced to Celtic Thunder.

This day one year ago, my friends and I were driving through the pouring rain to an awards banquet over an hours ride away. Being that we all had different tasted in music, we played "iPod shuffle". This is not an iPod on shuffle mind you. It's where each person takes a turn playing whatever music they want for a certain amount of time. We had the music turned low so the three of us could talk, when suddenly my 2 friends were chatting animatedly about the members of the group that was now playing over the speakers. They giggled about "the blonde one" and swooned over "the 'bad boy'". My curiosity was peaked, but frankly, I forgot about the whole thing other than a tune I didn't recognize being stuck in my head for a week. As was/is my "addiction" I was perusing iTunes for new music, when I remembered my friend mentioned this group...Celtic...something or another. To YouTube I went, and clicked on the first video with an icon featuring the so called "blonde one". The song was Heartland, and I was hooked at the first peal of thunder, and the roll of the drums. What was this amazingness? I needed to see more! Being that my friends were so giggly over Keith, I (naturally) had to watch all his songs first (at this time only The Show was released). Well, needless to say I didn't, couldn't, stop watching. Hour after hour, evening after evening, I was on YouTube watching these five ridiculously good looking Irishmen sing. After about a week I had most of the songs off the two albums that were released at the time, but alas! I wanted pictures. Who were these men who could so enrapture young American women. A few keystrokes into a Google query brought me an answer in the form of an official website complete with forum and a chat room. At this time I daren't enter the chat room, I'd never been in one before and I was wary. This aside, I began reading forum threads after checking out all the official news, the store, and of course the photographs. Still unsure of the entire chat & forum (I'd just gotten a Facebook the previous November), I became determined to read every post in every thread...and I did! This process took all of about a week before I joined up with these other folks who found this music, and the gentlemen singing it, so interesting. Still too shy to attempt the "chat room" I began posting around the form and started to find wonderful, kind, people. A few weeks in I became bold enough to venture into the chat which at the time, was separated from the forum and required a separate login ID. Never could I have anticipated what I'd stumbled across. Crazy birthday parties, chats till 4am (and later at times!), pub ghosts, virtual drinks, [blue] chats with the lads (yes I'll admit I thought it was fake at first. So sue me), but most of all there were the people...the Thunderheads.

People I am now proud to call my friends. I don't know what I'd do without you all! If I needed cheering all I had to do was login to the Pub and it was guaranteed I'd be laughing my bum off in 5 minutes or less. Sarah H, Sarah D, Essie, Beth, Cathey, Kelly, Maggie, Tri, Katie, Ghosty, Queeny, Maureen, Esther, Heather (all 3 of you!), Steph, April, Bern, and everyone else I can't can't possibly remember, you all helped me more than you will ever know. This time last year I was ready to quit school and was looking at 2 options. Getting a job here, or taking what little I had and moving overseas and working. Thanks to how you all impacted my life I stayed in school and am headed to university in the fall! I've also done many, many things I'd never have done before. If you'd have told me that I'd get in the car, drive (of all things!) to Canada, with people I'd never truly met before, to hear a group of five Irishmen sing, I'd have laughed in your face. But alas, that's precisely what I did! Perhaps the fact that my parents let me go without question should be even more surprising, considering it was the first time in my life I'd ever skipped class. But I think mom was just happy to see me happy again. These guys must be really good for this to have happened! Sure I'd spent tons of a gorgeous summer in front of my laptop as opposed to on the beach, but hey! I was laughing, smiling, what's this?! Not only did I set off for Canada, but also Baltimore, and Nashville (for a 24 hour trip no less!). That was just last year! This year I've already been off to QVC headquarters in PA to see the lads sing and ended up staying for 3 days, missing 75% of my college classes over St. Patrick's Day. But oh what a trip!! There was not more laughter to be heard for 10 counties at least. Later this year is already bringing a few other shows including a trip to Chicago. I've never been! Thanks to Celtic Thunder I've seen more of my gorgeous country in the last year than I have in my lifetime.

One of my friends who introduced me to Celtic Thunder just sadly shakes her head when I talk about the lads, or about the next adventure being planed to see them preform once again. The second, on the other hand, is all set to sit right up close with me at a show (with Meet & Greet) this November. Thanks to Celtic Thunder our friendship is the strongest it's ever been.

So a big giant THANK YOU to the lads, to Sharon Brown & Phil Coulter, but a massive THANK YOU to my fellow Thunderheads. You all are amazing, never forget that! I hope to be able to call you all my friends for many years to come. We're all very different people, with very different goals, all brought together by one thing, music. It's a powerful thing, and speaks to us on all levels. Never forget that, it's about the music, and no matter what the future may bring, we have that, and we have each other.

Now, I must get some sleep. Tomorrow is a girls night in with some friends, and the rest of the week holds visits from family, a graduate luncheon, an awards banquet, the graduation ceremony, Riverdance, and martial arts training. It's a crazy week ahead!

As Keith would say keep 'er lit!!!

Peace,
Elina

Here's the song that started it all.

How to Save a Life

It's been nearly a month since I've written here. Between exams and life in general, there just hasn't been time. My last final exam is tomorrow morning at 8am, and graduation is later this week. It's crazy. Everything is changing so fast. School, work, my friends...

Here's the question. What do you do when your friend is destroying themselves? Do you intervene and try to help, or do you let them continue towards the end of the cliff, and be there to pick them back up when they fall? Both have consequences. Stopping a self-destructive behavior can cause anger towards those attempting to help. Getting involved too late can be precisely that, too late. Both paths are risky in a friendship. You want to help because you care, because you don't want to loose your friend. This of course, does not just mean loosing a friendship. This means the true loss of a friend in the emotional, and purely physical, sense.

One of the worst things than watching a friend hurt themselves, is not knowing where to start, what to do. You can't simply sit back and do nothing. But you can't go charging headlong into something without a course of action. Not knowing the precise reasoning behind such ruinous actions makes helping even more difficult. Watching someone you care about, someone who has been in your life for a very long time, spiral down into darkness is a tough, and extremely painful thing to see. The only thing we can do is our best. We can be there through it all. Through the anger, the pain, the hurt, and finally the joy. The joy of being free of a torment which can crush until we no longer feel anything. Either that, or we feel so much we are simply incapable of taking anymore.

Peace,
Elina

This photo is from Killowen Point in County Down.

What's A Girl to Do?

Today I received an email congratulating me on my acceptance into one of the most prestigious universities in my state. Talk about major excitement! After calling my parents, grandparents, and "adoptive mothers", I texted my best friend. Not to tell her of my acceptance, but to ask about our lunch plans. Of course she'd canceled on me yet again. Sometime in the middle of our conversation I asked if she had checked her acceptance decision yet (she'd applied to the same university), she had not. After that I never heard back. She didn't get in, and I don't know what to tell her. This is something entirely out of my control, and something she has every right, I suppose, to be upset (or even jealous) about. This feeling though, of getting something someone so badly wants, it's difficult. I won't stop being excited for myself, but knowing that this was/is my second choice school (the other does't send decisions for another month)...I just don't know what to tell her. I wish I did. This just isn't something that words can make better. Especially not words coming from me.

Now is not the time I need to not have one of my best friends not speaking to me! There are things going on that I've never been through, and she has. One of those times that only someone who knows you better than you know yourself can really understand. Not having that...I think I'll go mad. If it wasn't for all this dratted homework I've put off I'd be at her door tomorrow with food and a chai tea. Okay, or at least a really big bar of dark chocolate. Alas, homework keeps me on the island (distance is never an issue in such personal matters). That and a broken foot. Not fun let me tell you. A hazard of being a martial artist. Unfortunately dedication to training is what is now keeping me from training for nearly a month.

Well, it's very nearly 3am and I'm prattling on. Definitely not a philosophical post this go-'round. 2010 is shaping up to be quite the year, and it's not even one-quarter through!

Peace,
Elina

The photograph above is from the famous library at Trinity College, Dublin.

In continuing with the disjointed, random post:
A favorite of mine from a fairly well known Irish band, The Script.

Don't Let the Last Dance Regret Be the Last Goodbye

Regret. Guilt. Although they hold different definitions in the English language, it seems in life they are synonymous. We do things, say things, that we wish we could take back. However, we can't unbake the cake, or unbreak the egg. The words can not be unspoken, nor actions taken back. The reason for the action that caused regret is not always clear. We are human, emotional, rash, and sometimes foolhardy beings. We act and speak without thinking, but this may be with deep passion, or even for reasons which we yet have the inability to comprehend. Whatever the reason may ultimately be, we may still feel the wave of shame and regret. This can be so strong we feel crushed by the behemoth to the point that our past actions consume our thoughts and are forefront in our minds, leading to stress, pain, and a desire to make recompense for our actions. We hurt those who mean the most to us because whether we are thinking clearly or not, we know they are the ones who will forgive us and still care.

We are told many times over that our actions are what truly define us. Is this true? Is every action being judged, every step measured? If this were so, no one would ever be unmarked for a misstep or misdoing. Perhaps it is instead how we handle our mistakes that truly defines who we are. Are we strong enough to face our mistakes head on and lay claim to them? It is such a difficult task. No one likes to be wrong, but we can not unfortunately, be right every time. This is not necessarily however, a question of it being better to ask forgiveness later. Such a cliché is only appropriate when we are conscious of our behavior. To me it appears we feel the most remorse towards things we have done in times when reason and rationality was not foremost within our concerns. These are the times in which we can make complete fools of ourselves, show our true fight and passion, lie with precision talent, or tell the truth because it can no longer be kept locked away. This can be cause for such confusion and fuel the flames of guilt. The times when we can not even tell ourselves whether we were angry, telling the truth, or if even there was truth within our lies and accusations.

Perhaps it is not simply forgiveness which should be asked. There is always an underlying reason for our spur of the moment actions. Maybe along with apologies we should ask for a lent ear. A time to bring to light the cause for our actions. If approached correctly there is always a chance to make things right again. This may bring about drastic change. Change is good, and is the natural order of all things. One action does not define a person. It is a lifetime of actions, those over an extended amount of time, which elicit the true character of a person. If you remember nothing else, remember this: "Yes, the past can hurt, but the way I see it, you either run from it, or learn from it."

Peace,
Elina

The photograph is a sunrise someplace in County Derry.