Grab a cardigan and go live life.

Sometimes I forget that I wrote a blog post at 2:00 am, so when I'm about to make a new post a week or so later, it pops up and I need to finish it. This is one of those times. So, enjoy this.

Just yesterday Mary, Julia, and I were saying we wished we were blogging more. I suddenly just developed a list of things to blog about!!
A few weeks ago, Hank Green (of the Vlogbrothers) was visiting the Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum on the University of Montana campus. When he posted a video containing a Miss Emily Graslie, the internet fell in love. Nerdfighters everywhere immediately requested more of her, and more we've gotten. She was given a web show of her own, The Brain Scoop, where she has been working with wolves a lot lately.

She, and others!, made this video this week. (CAUTION! It's very gross.) After watching, I began thinking about something very important. What makes animals so different from humans?
I got on Tumblr and asked this question, and she responded so much sooner than I anticipated. It honestly seems a little incomprehensible to me that someone I admire so much read something I wrote, AND responded to it.

I bet you're currently trying to figure out why I admire this lady so much. And also why I tweeted about this ordeal 5 times in 20 minutes, as well as posting about it on Facebook, and am now blogging about it. In all honesty, I'm not sure.

My whole life, I have loved history with a passion. I have only fallen asleep in a history class once (we were watching a really boring video, not my fault) and I'm always at the front of the class paying attention. Because of this, I'm like a walking book of random stories, facts, and trivia that I've absorbed. My mom has been telling me, for several years, that I should go up to our local museum (the Plainsman Museum) and volunteer. Since my mom was telling me to do it, I assumed it would suck, so I never did. I have never regretted that decision more than in the last few weeks!
The first week or two of January, I went in and asked if I could volunteer there. Megan Sharp, aka the slightly older version of me, seemed genuinely excited by this and said I was welcome whenever I wanted to be there. Starting the following Tuesday, I have been there every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and most Fridays since. I'm estimating that I have spent close to 150 hours there in the last three months. This is on top of school, musical practice, and my actual job, but it's been the best 150 hours I can imagine. Obviously, I was born to be in a museum.
I did a little soul searching and decided that this is what I'm meant to do. I NEED to find a way to get paid to be in a museum, cleaning antique bowls, cataloging newspaper articles, researching local families, I need to do this forever. I feel like I am incredibly lucky to have found what I believe to be my life's calling at the ripe, young age of 17.

How does this all tie in with a lady with feather earrings and a scalpel picking away at a rotting wolf's pelt? Emily Graslie feels the same way about zoology and taxidermy as I do about my little museum. She loves it so much that after she graduated with a degree in painting, she went back to school to get a degree to allow her to get paid to work at the museum. That's right, she doesn't get paid to do all of this nifty stuff either. I guess that's why I like her so much. We're floating in alarmingly similar boats. Except hers just went from being a 'me' to being a celebrity in the eyes of Nerdfightaria. Emily and Hank and Michael and everyone else who supports these videos are the reason I even thought of going into Museum Studies! She was kind of the eye-opener that said, "Hey. If you really love it, don't talk yourself out of it. It's not just for old people anymore. Grab your cardigan and go live life!

Leadership, or my apparent lack thereof.

In case you were unaware, I'm in the second semester of my senior year. (78 days left until graduation!) This entails A LOT of essay writing. I was fortunate enough to get accepted to the only college I applied to and also received their top scholarship, the Board of Trustees Scholarship. It covers all of my tuition and I think fees, but I'm not sure. Interestingly enough, room and board costs more than tuition. Sensical? No. But thus continues the scholarship hunt!

There are literally thousands of scholarships out there. At least a third of them have something to do with 'leadership' in the requirements. My resume consists of a C average grade point average, 8 years of clarinet, and nothing else that is particularly exemplary. (Unless being a Nerdfighter and an avid Internet-surfer gets me anywhere.) Needless to say, there's not much 'leadership' happening here.

So most nights after midnight, I get really nostalgic and philosophical. (Incidentally, it's 1:15 as I type this. Coinkydink? No.) One night I was up thinking about my lack of leadership roles, and I remembered a conversation I had with a friend during one of my classes that day. My friend, Trey, and I were talking about some good times we've had with some of our other friends. These friends are the type that guidance counselors parents, and public service announcements on NTV tell you to stay away from. One was literally a convicted arsonists who also taught me everything I might ever need to know about drugs and alcohol. (Including the fact that after you puke because of a particular drink, you never want to drink it again.) We kept talking about all the bad decisions we had all made and he turned to another friend who was not in our group back then, Taylar, and said, "Shalyn was literally my mother for all of freshman year." Then it dawned on me, THAT'S my leadership role!

I was never president or officer of any group. I didn't run in the right circles. I got caught up in a bad crowd, but I managed to pull myself out of it, pull some others out of it, and keep our heads on (even if slightly tilted). I can honestly say that I kept several friends from dying. One from overdosing on cough cold and congestion pills, though not before he permanently gave himself ulcers. He learned to tame his violent temper by talking to me instead of punching the nearest solid. At least two of my friends would have committed suicide and/or continued self mutilating themselves.

So I tell ya what, Mr. Scholarship Granter, I may not meet all the requirements you want. I may not fit the mold of the perfect child you want to help. But those children's mommies and daddies probably are going to wind up paying for their education after they flunk out from partying when they should be studying. Not me. I have crappy grades because I've spent my entire life caring for someone, practically mothering every friend (and half the family members) I've ever had. I put them before my future. And now I'm paying for that?

No. I refuse to believe the fact that because I've cared, I have to continue suffering. I've given myself ulcers from worrying. I've gone days without sleep to stay up with friends to keep them from killing themselves and still managed to go to all my classes. I was the DD, I was the babysitter, I was the shoulder to cry on, and now I'm going to be the student. I am going to completely separate myself from all of them so I can make my life better for a change. Now don't deny me the opportunity to finally make my life better. Or else all of this will have been for nothing, and I can't accept that.

Whatcha doin'?

     Do I really need a purpose?

 (side note: that is possibly the first time I've spelled 'purpose' correct on the first try in my entire life.)

     I feel like a purpose is something only important people have. I'm just a 17 year old high school student. My thoughts and opinions don't really matter yet. But I suppose that someday, with any luck, I'll have a purpose.

Poor kid. If only life could be this easy.

     When you're growing up, you always seem to know exactly what you want to do with your life. You want to be a princess or a doctor or Ninja Turtle or an astronaut (sorry kids, that dream's now impossible. Thanks NASA.) or, in my case, a country music superstar. That's right folks, I was dead set on being a famous singer. But then I grew up and realized how bad of stage fright I have. Dream: crushed.
      So as I grew up, I always knew exactly what I wanted to do. I've planned on being a genealogist, an architectural historian, a neurologist studying how music affects the brain, a stay at home mom, a lawyer, a writer, a paranormal expert, a writer, a reader, and a politician. My dreams and desires seemed to change faster than some of my friends' relationship statuses. And here I am, December of my senior year of high school, trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, and I'm coming up with zilch. I don't really understand this phenomenon. Why do we know exactly what we want until it's time to officially decide?

It's just all so confusing!

      I guess if I had to pick my purpose, as this assignment asks of me, I would say it could be a lot of things. It could be to work with little kids (God knows how much I love them). It could be to study things for fun and not do well in actual classes (ask me anything about quarks or tardigrades. I'll blow your mind. Ask me about MLA format and I'll make you cry with disappointment). It could be a lot of things. But right now, I think my purpose is to find my purpose.

      Something I've noticed this week is that I'm always either the best of the worst, or the worst of the best. It's like I live on that fine line between great and terrible. I'm the in betweener. I'm the one who's the screw-up of the good kids, but the crowning jewel of the screw ups. As I once wrote in an essay for Mrs. Vetter's freshman English class, I am made of contradictions and discrepancies.
      (TANGENT TIME!) As Augusten Burroughs said, and John Green mentioned in his super awesome book The Fault in Our Stars, “I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” That could probably sum me up about as well as anything else. I think that could be my purpose, to just mess up with the best intentions in mind. I'd be pretty dang good at that. I'm the best at screwing up.

     Back to the subject. One purpose I've, unfortunately, overlooked is to be awesome. As mentioned in previous blog posts, I am a member of Nerdfightaria. It's like, the coolest internet community ever. Everyone's made of awesome and no one would ever want to do anything that wasn't beneficial to more people than it hurts. Hank Green, the science-y brother who also has a beautiful way with words, once said ". . . Maybe that's what we should be trying for. For the world to be less good without us." I don't know about you, but that seems like a pretty good goal for life. But, as he also said (in a totally different video) "Some people are so intent on leaving their mark on the world that they don't care if it's a scar." That's pretty not-some. It's the complete opposite of awesome! But the sad part is that it's true. Some people just don't think about how the things they do effect people, and we all should! Maybe that could be my purpose. I can be the one that calls people out when they're not being cool. I can be the local version of John and Hank Green! But in all actuality, my purpose is to be me.

For better, for worse, forever. I'll be me.

I didn't want to do this. . .

So my previous post was very classy and elegant, but missing 3 of the 6 pictures I was supposed to include in it. I'm just going to place them here for the time being.
My Home!

My lovely barn :)

This was after that epic snowstorm in January of 2011.

My School:

Our school logo

This is the sign that sits in front of our wonderful high school

My Community:

Another depiction of Nerdfightaria Island (The coolest community ever!) :)

The West side of the Hamilton County courthouse! 

My State:

It is a pretty great life here :)

It's true, we still use wagons. NOT! I have a Rendezvous and a Chevy.

So that's it. My leftovers, if you will.

I'm not lost, I'm taking the scenic route

     "We're not lost, we're taking the scenic route," is one of my most/least favorite things to hear on long car rides. My mother always has the latest edition of a big laminated atlas with our route drawn out, but we don't necessarily go that way. This leads to some pretty awesome adventures. You get to see sights that you would have otherwise missed, but you also end up being late getting to wherever it is you're traveling, which is not generally a big deal.
     That's kind of how my life is. I have all these big ideas and plans, but they don't generally go that way. A road is closed or we take a wrong turn; a kink gets thrown in my plan or I realize it's not what I want. Things happen. Life happens. But it leaves you with some super crazy awesome memories, that's for sure.

Who cares where you are when you're traveling?

I don't think the physical location of my person is very important most of the time. I like being places and experiencing things. I like traveling and moving, I like the craziness of being unstable. It's a constant adventure. Unfortunately, I'm still in school, and that means I need to stay put so I can go to classes and all that yucky stuff. But rest assured that the day after our graduation, a mere 163 days away from this very day (click here to see the nifty countdown I have going!),  I will be packing my things into my cute little mom car and preparing myself for some epic adventure. I will go do something and experience all life has to offer. I will go to seek my very own 'great perhaps'. (If you didn't catch that reference, go read Looking for Alaska and figure out your life. Also, it's a quote of François Rabelais.)

     In the mean time, I'm here. "Here" is kind of a boring place in the middle of Nebraska. Most people have never even heard of Aurora, let alone Murphy. That makes sense though, because Murphy is technically not a town anymore. Yet for the handful of us that still claim Murphy as our home sweet home, it's a very real place. We may only be comprised of a church, an elevator, a few families, and more corn and cows than we can count, but we are still there! I live on the only non-highway blacktop road in the area, North K Road. I could probably drive that road with my eyes closed, and I probably have just to prove my point.
     "Here" is also Aurora High School, the place where I have spent more time at than my home in the last four years. It is the last leg of the marathon of schooling that is the Aurora school system, beginning with elementary school, moving on to middle school, and now, finally concluding with high school. It is where I have met a very large amount of my friends, and where I keep many many memories of days gone by.

Welcome to Nerdfightaria, my friend!

     "Here" is also Nerdfightaria. Nerdfightaria isn't necessarily a physical location so much as Utopia that many people believe in. This video and it's comments can describe this place much better than I can, so instead, I'll inform you about Nerdfighting in general.
Nerdfighters are followers of the Vlogbrothers, two brothers (John and Hank Green) that dared each other to go 365 days without communicating via text.One day, Hank posted a song about Harry Potter that gained a lot of attention, and followers came. We are people who are made up of awesome. Like, instead of bones and tissue and blood, we're just a lot of awesome. We believe in decreasing world suck by doing things like Project For Awesome and helping people who need help. Overall, we are a group of internet friends that want the world to be better when we're done with it. A world that's more tolerant of each other and more educated about things that matter.
     But "here" is only relatively stable. I mean, up to this point I've moved quite a bit. Never anything super drastic, but enough that I never had an opportunity to settle into a house. That's one thing about my mother, you never get bored when you live with her because just when you get comfy, you move. But now that I've been living with my father for four years and I'm really comfortable, it's time to move. It's time to leave this place that I've known my whole life and move on to something bigger and better, like college.

     So I guess you could say that I don't really know where I am. I'm somewhere on the way between where I started and where I'll end, but I don't know how far into my journey I am or where I'm supposed to end up. It's all up in the air right now, and I'm okay with taking the scenic route.

Miceless!

This is an update on the mice situation, for those just tuning in. (see this old post for the background story on that)

So after about a week of living with Rexy, our relationship went sour. He was scratching on all the wood in my room and chewing up things in my drawers, it was nasty. Needless to say, he'd overstayed his welcome. I, by some gift from God, didn't have to work that weekend, so I planned to clean my room. Friday night was an away football game and I had no plans, but I ended up spending my day on Facebook. Saturday, I was supposed to go to a paintball party with my Travel Camp buddies, but I slept until about 1. When I finally woke up, Dad said he would let me have some money to go shopping (I'm not a spoiled brat. This is the first time that's happened in quite a while. Just sayin'.) so we went to Grand Island for the evening. Sunday rolls around and I'm not wanting to do anything. I lounged around in my sweatpants all morning (it was daylight savings time weekend, so I was up relatively early) before I finally decided that it was time to clean.

I don't clean my room very often, and here's why. I started out just throwing everything that wasn't grossly dirty onto my bed, like usual. I then picked up everything off of my floor and found a place for it. I filled four shopping bags full of other shopping bags (the plastic ones. Do you know how many bags you can fit inside of another bag? A lot.) and another four or five shopping bags full of trash. I took the ugly old chair out of my room and vacuumed it off after taking all the things off of it, along with the floor and inside of my drawers. That's right, I vacuumed the insides of my drawers. 

Usually my clothes are in a giant heap on my floor, which the dirty ones still are right now, and that's okay with me, but for some reason I decided that it wasn't working anymore. I hung up all the shirts I like, put all my shorts and tank tops in a box in my closet, and filled a tote with t-shirts that I don't wear a lot. I also filled a smaller laundry basket with undergarments, my lucky Spongebob boxers included, and it's sitting at the end of my bed. 

I bet you're trying to figure out why I didn't just put my clothes in one of the three dresser-type things in my room. It's because I like to collect things. Not anything in particular, just things. And not even collect so much as acquire. I guess it's a family trait. But I've managed to gather an impressive selection of neat books because of it, which is what fills all my drawers.

And because I have so much "stuff", I don't have any room in my bedroom. But somehow I managed to find everything a home that afternoon. I even changed my bedding for the first time in an embarrassingly long time, though I regret that choice because my new bedding leaves annoying lint everywhere! If I just kept my room exceptionally clean all the time, this wouldn't be such a production. But I don't, so it does.
That night I heard Rexy rustling around in my room, so I ventured downstairs to get a glue trap. I sprinkled some chocolate chips, his favorite, onto the trap and set it out. A few minutes later I heard him squealing, so I hollered for my dad to come upstairs and get him. I choose to believe that my dad let him go peacefully, but I'm willing to bet that he just left little Rexy in the yard for my cat to munch on later.
So yeah, that's the story of how I got rid of a mouse and my clutter.

Let's talk about me.

 Who am I?

Well I suppose that depends on who wants to know. To my brother, I'm his twerp kid sister. To my sister, I'm a role model (though not a good one). To my parents, I'm growing up to fast. To my friends, I'm snappy and sarcastic. To my best friends, I'm a listener and confidante. To Nerdfightaria, I'm just another person made of awesome. To my favorite author, I'm an awesome person who bought all of his books (and shares them with everyone I know). To the world, I'm just a nondescript teenage girl that has absolutely no idea what she's doing with the life she's been given.
But the real question is who am I to me? Who do I see when I look into a mirror and study the reflection? I suppose you could say I see what everyone else sees. They see a short, plump girl of barely five feet. They see long brown hair that has a mind of it's own. They see the pimply bumps that coat my face. They see a big smile that isn't always smiling. They see my eyes of two different colors. But what do they see when they look into my eyes?
I suppose you could look at my deep map, which I created specifically for the purpose of answering that question, but we'll get to that later. I 'm not done talking about me! I don't generally have a captive audience, and when I do, I'm to scared to say what I think. But armed with hopefully nonjudgmental readers, and the shield of the internet, I'll just suck it up and keep going.

Somewhere I read that we aren't made up of ourselves so much as we are made up of every book we've read, every movie we've watched, every word we've heard. Basically everything in the world shapes us more than we think. It's true. Each time I read a book, it's like I just found a piece of myself. It's like a tiny missing fragment of my being was just put into place. It's amazing to say the least! Needless to say, whoever said that wasn't wrong. I mean, I think they may have exaggerated a tad bit, but it's pretty true. 

"I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed." -John Green, Looking for Alaska

That is just one of the many, many beautiful quotes that John Green has blessed the world with that say more than I'd ever be able to. I think that quote, especially the part in color, describes me, and everyone in the world, better than I'll ever be able to. We have to admit that we are much bigger than the sum of our parts. That the quotes we've heard and the people we've loved do not make up who we are.

My deep map. It's deep because of the water, get it?

In case you can't see it very well, I'll describe my aforementioned deep map for you. Here we've got one of the best scenes in the universe, a fishing pond. It's all very symbolic, because I'm a very deep person and all, but there are literally so many minute details that I could never explain them all to you, so I'll just cover the basics. The water is full of things that I could potentially do with the rest of my life. I am the fishing pole, the line is my choices, the dock is Aurora, the hills are my challenges, and the sun is the positive things I want to absorb in life. The dock is covered with things that mean something to me or represent me in some way. The path represents my friends and family, and how they all try and influence me to go their way, but, as you can see, I chose to step off of their path and go fishing. It's quite poetic, really. How I try so incredibly hard to go against what people want me to do and forge my own path, casting my line into the vast unknown. (I'm absolutely drenched in sarcasm today, but there is a nugget of truth to every word I've typed thus far.)

But speaking of family, I'd better talk about that too! You see, I have this cute little list of things I'm supposed to include in my blog, so I shall. I probably sound pretty angst-y, but I'm not. Not today anyhow. I'm just trying to make sure that this post all about me isn't prim and proper, because that's the last way I'd want to be remembered. Anywho, let us continue.

My beloved star. Incidentally, my beloved pickup is sitting there too!

So I live in this house that's been in my family for years and years (see this previous post to learn all about that) and my grandma once lived here with her parents and siblings. As it turns out, my grandma's dad was a tinkerer, much like my own father, and he liked to build stuff. There's a huge windmill (actually, it's just an average sized windmill, but it's pretty big compared to my house) and it actually used to pump their water and all that ancient stuff. Well when they got a new-fangled water pump, they didn't need the windmill. So instead of tearing it down like everyone else, he built a huge star to go where the blades used to be! Isn't that just nifty? I'm going to pretend you agree, because if you don't, you're wrong. When my dad inherited the house he kept this star. It's a landmark of sorts -to me if no one else, and whenever someone needs directions to my house in the middle of nowhere, I just tell them to look for the star. It's even easier from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve, because it's lit up with a few hundred light bulbs! Well my grandma obviously doesn't live there anymore, so she wanted a piece of it in town at her house. How does one mange that? Make a mini-star. She has this five foot replica of the star that sits in front of her house from Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve, though hers doesn't light up. It's covered in silver tinsel instead. We even have little ones that are covered in tinsel to put out at the graves of our family members; my grandma's really good about decorating each headstone in our family for every occasion. Which brings me to my next bulleted item on my list. A song from my life soundtrack.

How was that a smooth segue, you ask? Because the specific song I intend to share with you will always be tied to my grandpa's death.

The Impossible by Joe Nicols

Unfortunately, I can't post the essay I wrote about this song. I mean, I could, but it'd make this post twice as long. Lets be honest, it's already too long to read the whole thing. I suppose I'll just summarize it. My grandpa was pretty much everything to me. Whenever I was hurt, it was he I cried out for, not my parents. But he got sick several times and in several ways. In the end, there was nothing I could do but love him and pray to every god in existence to let me have just one more day. But alas, my numbered days ran out. My cousin picked me up the day of the visitation and played this song, and for the first time, I realized how true it was. It was the most painful time of my life, and this song will always bring a tear to my eyes, but the most beautiful feeling is when I can listen to it and smile rather than cry, because my grandpa was an amazing man, loved by many and respected by many more, and I get to live my life knowing I will always carry his undying love with me.

Oh I can't just end it like that. Happy endings are cute and all, but life doesn't have happy endings!

How should I wrap this up then? With this.

Rub some bacon on it, a song by Rhett & Link. That's a good way to fix anything, including a bad ending to a blog.

Note: The pictures of me were taken by Jenny Elge, not I.