Trip with a Friend

Yes! Day three! And yes, you all can hope to see an update on how many days I have succeeded in keeping my resolution. It will probably keep happening until I get tired of writing ‘this is day 24 of succeeding in my resolution’. Though that feeling of being tired of writing the same line over and over probably will never come, for I am celebrating. Yes, I shall celebrate everyday as an accomplishment. Accomplishment of what exactly, well I will just have to see what I do that day. One can never quite know what they will accomplish each day. Well, I guess you can if you set goals, but who has time for actually sitting down and writing down goals. Not me. Well, okay I do, but I would rather waste my time on the internet than sit down and write goals. And anyway, I have all the important goals in my head. Like becoming a billionaire and an astronaut all in the same year. And yes, I am that awesome.

Now you may all be wondering what I was up to today. Well, I went out to Idaho Falls to go shopping with my friend, Aleesha. Don’t worry, we mostly went to bookstores. They just call to us, crying our names to spend all our money that we have stashed away. And like all book lovers, we spend willingly. Thankfully though, I had a gift card for my purchases. You may also notice that this gives away a location to all you internet stalkers. But do not fret, for I shall never reveal my specific location. Muahahaha. Suck on that imaginary stalkers.

Though our journey didn’t start out all peachy. We got lost. Now I know that most bigger towns/cities have a visitor center, so we searched for that. The signs came to us, all blue and white, and directed us towards our salvation. From there, an angel directed us towards the stores we searched for. We thanked her profusely, and gave her compliment upon compliment. (She looked a tad bored.) And we were off. Our adventure found once again. Traveling easily we found our destination and relished in the bookstores that greeted us. I got some more books to read, though I still need to read my other books first, but that is all right. I will get to them sometime.

We did venture into clothing stores, though only looked at their sales racks. Never will I pay full price for a shirt or pair of pants. Too expensive! College students can’t possibly pay for something like that. We need sales and lowered prices on decent clothing. The clothes at Wal-Mart is too low of quality to really spend money on, but when we are forced to, we must buy from there.

And that folks, is a summary of my day. Have a good one!

 

Policies to Life From Mollie Gower

Many of my friends are surprised at what I hold for social etiquette and compliment me on it. Most of my social etiquette rules don’t follow what other people hold. This strikes me as strange since these seem natural for me and I was raised on most of them. Some I have added over the years and have updated them from social etiquette to life policies. Some can be used in other aspects of life that aren’t always social.

Include everyone in a conversation
I got this one from my mom constantly yelling at me not to block people while she converses with them. This might not correlate with others on how to include someone in a conversation, but to me it taught me to orient my body to include everyone in the conversation. If I am even slightly turned away from someone, they might think I am trying to ignore them. I know for a fact that I don’t like being ignored in a conversation so I don’t try to do it to someone else, even if I don’t like them. Plus, to me it seems rude.

Also, if there are other people in the room speak with them. Even if you don’t know them, they might be really cool but you are giving them the signal that you are not interested in who they are. Talk about a blow to self-esteem.

Golden rule
Cliche I know, but if I want to be treated nicely then I better be treating others nicely. This of course doesn’t go as planned, because some people are just foul, but I do try to be nice to everyone I meet. The exception being, if I am in my creeper mode, I may creep people out a bit.

Stacking the plates
Sure it might be their job, but it doesn’t mean that the common people can’t take a minute to clean up their area. Having worked minimum wage jobs, I have seen how disgusting people can be. Most of the time, minimum wage workers have various jobs they have to keep track of, including taking care of you. I try to stack my plates, gather the garbage, and make sure everything is in the open. I have seen people hide garbage, and frankly it is annoying. Sometimes we would miss it and the next customer won’t. Nothing more irritating than having a customer complain while you are busy about the state of their table.

Also, if I don’t want an item, I either give it to an employee or return it myself. It is surprising what things I will find hidden around the store. Having an unwanted item in your cart does not mean you have to pay for it. Just give it to a cashier.

Try new things
With my biggest social etiquette rules out-of-the-way, I thought I might move onto some life policies. Specifically trying new things. Now people get kind of twitchy when it comes to new things, I sometimes don’t like new things depending on how tired I am. When I was younger, my mother made me and my brother try various things. When we would complain, she would tell us that no, we did not know what we actually wanted yet, and it was good for us. Looking back now, I would have to agree with her. It was good with me, and I find myself trying new things to break the monotony of life. Let’s face it, life can get rather boring after doing the same thing over and over.

Tallness in the eyes of the beholder
This may be shallow of me, but I will not date anyone who is shorter than me. This would be a me that is not in heels. If the boy comes to eye level or higher than they are good. I have been whined to by at least one boy that it is unfair that I don’t date boys that are shorter. But let’s face it, kissing a short guy is a little awkward. Plus, I am on the upper end of tall for a girl. Being three inches short of six-foot, so there is a lot of leg that you have to deal with.

Drinking
Not being of age in the states means I don’t drink at all as of yet. Well, unless I am with family and my mom or step-dad allows me a glass of whatever they are drinking. Usually wine. But I did go to the UK where I am of age to drink, and I had to set down some ground rules for myself. I didn’t have to worry about being escorted back to where we were staying, since the males that joined us were quite chivalrous and kept an eye out for us females. However, I limited myself to one alcoholic pint per night. I will admit that the first night I had a pint and a half, but after that it was a pint and no more. Being there for only two weeks, I didn’t want to find out where my alcohol limit was and wake up with a hangover. My fellow travelers probably wouldn’t have enjoyed my grouchiness either.

Powder sugar
I try to have a good outlook on situations. Of course there are days that I just wish something was over, but I try to look for a story inside of experiences. Watch everything, and possibly find that diamond in the rough. Many things can happen, and bad experiences can be turned around and laughed at later in life. Just believe.

 

Lessons I learned from high school marching band

I have had many classes, many teachers, and many stories about school. Though one thing that I always remember was band. More specifically, marching band. I know it is cliché to say I learned more about life from marching band then I did from most of my classes, but I did. Some of the lessons I learned in marching band are now ingrained into who I am.

1. Differences on being on time.
Being on time to practice meant being there at least five minutes early. This allowed for construction of instrument, getting down to the field, and being ready to play. Now in other instances, being on time meant being there right on the dot. Examples would be, competition days, striping the field, or band meetings. Finding the differences helped shape the way I would arrive to social occasions, and how much anxiety I would have before them. Until I arrive at the predetermined time, that I have set myself, I will be glancing at the clock every five seconds, making sure I won’t miss the time. The only times I will allow myself to arrive late is when I am meeting with friends. Any other occasions and I will arrive at a certain time.

2. Dwelling on failure.
The one quote I remember most from my inspiring band director, Mr. Ronk,

“Do not dwell on missing a set, if you do, you have just missed five more. Then you will be dwelling on those five more, and there goes the show.”

Or something like that. I was never exceptional at exact quotes, but I think my phrasing got the point across. With marching competitions, it is a given that we all will mess up once in a while. We don’t want to, but we will because we are only human. Ronk would tell us that the way to remedy for making mistakes, is to focus harder on the rest of the show. The easiest way to let down the rest of our band is to continue making mistakes because we let the ones before it shake our focus.

In real life, dwelling on our failures and mistakes will lead to pity parties, or that’s how I perceive them. Taking what my band director says to heart, I learn and move on from my mistakes. Dwelling on my shortcomings has turned into more a chore now that I use this principle. Life is just too short to dwell on such shortcomings. Also, when I learn from my mistakes I grow as a person. My writing has been helped by me learning from my mistakes, and improving on them.

3.Trust in your team mates.
Now I have never had a problem with trusting people. Usually if someone betrays me, I just never associate myself with them. However, what I have a hard time trusting people in is pulling their own weight. Group projects had taught me that there will always be slacker, possibly a whole group of them. Band, on the other hand, I needed to trust in my fellow band mates to pull their own weight. Usually they didn’t disappoint. I needed to trust them, because when we are on the competition field I had no control over them. I had to trust in their dedication, and rarely was I disappointed. Sometimes someone would drop the ball, but it was always a fixable ball. Trusting my band mates helped me trust others when in group projects. Having this trust, possibly helped with the success rate I soon saw.

4. Never giving up.
This final one helped me a lot with becoming a writer. Being a writer can be a lot of hit and miss, but I have to never give up. If we don’t place first in a competition, but gave it our all, then we learn from it. We would watch our performance the following morning, allowing for Ronk to critique and show us where we needed to improve. This would inspire me to work harder on places where I messed up. Forever improving my skills as a marcher. Like writing, the rejection emails I would receive would inspire me to edit my story yet again. My story would continually get better and better as I got each rejection email, until I received that one acceptance. That one acceptance, just like first place, elated me. I tried not to get sloppy from the elation, but stick in my back pocket as a reminder of what I can achieve by not giving up.