Dorienne's Log

With only laying out just two major goals for myself as of 1/1/11 (be a better child of God and write every day), I think I have done a decent job so far: I managed to get to church on Sunday and I’ve written something every day.

I suppose now is as good a time as any to set some real goals for myself, though not for the year, but for just the month. A year is a really long time when you think about it and so much can change in a year. Houses could be bought and lost, weight could be lost and gained again, families could be shattered or started…a lot can happen in just 12 months. So, since I am desiring a change (one of them being the current theme of this blog and the state of DorienneSmith.com), I think the best way to set goals is to create some realistic ones and follow-up once a month to make sure I’m on track.

This month’s goal, on top of the other aforementioned daily ones, is to get a least a twenty minute workout at least once a week. It doesn’t sound like much, but after this weekend, I realize I may need to start slow.

I was playing Kinect with my little cousins Friday night and Saturday morning I was in so much pain that I could barely move. At first I thought it was just some new side effect of a caffeine headache, but then slowly I realized that it was just moving around with the Kinect the previous night. I have been so sedentary these last five or sixth months that just fifteen minutes of activity that I used to be able to do at a moment’s notice was too much for me. I was worn out after the first round of games with the kids and, while I’m no spring chicken anymore, there’s no reason that just a little physically activity should leave me in paralyzing pain the next day. It’s time to stop the madness.

A workout a week is barely anything at all, but I at least have the plan to place what I need to go straight to the gym after work in my car so that I’ll have no excuse. Hopefully next week, I can stretch it two weeks and maybe even add a new goal, but if I can just manage this through January, I can look back on the start of this year proud of what I tried to do for myself.

According to this article, making New Year’s resolutions often do more harm than good. What people mostly experience is that they can never live up to the high expectations they set for themselves and become depressed and embittered as the year continues because they fell off this bandwagon or went right back to doing what they had resolved to no longer do. I am quite guilty of making resolutions without having the resolve, willpower, whatever to stick to them and this year I just said, “To heck with it.”

My mother always told me the superstition regarding how one brings in the new year. Essentially, how you bring in the year is how you will live the year. In some regards, this is true. For example, I rang in 2005 drunk, a little depressed and drinking with people I really didn’t like and most of my year was spent drunk, a little depressed and around people I just wanted to punch in the face. On the other hand, I rang in 2006, not wanting to spend another New Year’s in some bar surrounded by people I didn’t like, in the church and ended up joining the church and discovering how awesome God is.

In most cases, though, this idea is all superstition and completely false. Every year since I can remember, I have spent the majority of December 31st cleaning like mad to make sure the house/apartment/townhouse/whatever was as clean as possible to ring in the new year and every year since I can remember, the house/apartment/townhouse/whatever ended up just as dirty throughout the year as it was on December 30th.

This year, rather than say, “Hurray! A new year! Let me make all these resolutions I’ll never stick to and such!” I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing; that is, going for my major goals. The house is a mess right now, but to be honest, cleaning it up on one night was not going to keep it clean all year. I have to be in the mindset to keep it clean daily. I don’t weigh what I want right now, but I’m very healthy and if I keep eating how I should and exercising regularly, my body will adapt. After all, I didn’t put on the weight in a week, so I can’t possibly expect it to come off in a week either. My novel is still not complete, but if I just keep writing something every day my ultimate goal of having a novel published by 9/26/2010 will get accomplished.

I still went to church tonight to ring in my new year, but I also still made sure my daily chapter of the Bible got read and I am still going to do my stomach crunches and light lifting before I go to sleep. There really is no difference between 12/31/08 and 1/1/09; I’m still going to keep doing Dorienne and still strive for my goals. Or, like my pastor often says, I’m going to remember to keep the main thing, the main thing. 😀

Today, I had my first Sunday School class. I was so excited and nervous and scared, but mostly excited. Last night, I had this terrible nightmare where everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. I’d forgotten my Bible and all my notes and the pastor didn’t like any of the things I had to say and a whole mess of other crap was going on that just didn’t make sense. But, thankfully, everything went fine. We started out with just two at first and then another two showed. Several others told me they’d be coming around next week. I really hope they do. It’s the Young Adult class and I think it’s completely necessary since there are a lot of us young adults in church and there was always that feeling that there was no place for us since we didn’t want to be with the “old” people in the main adult class, but we were all way too old to be in class with the twelve year olds. I’m so excited to be teaching it and this forces me study the word every week. It also keeps me accountable to my church and not just for me. People will be depending on me.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #3
As I delved into this third week of vegetarianism, I felt this urge and absolute weakness. This craving for meat seemed to overwhelm me and I nearly broke this afternoon. It’s getting close that crimson tide and the Skyline craving was quite strong. I drove past one as I went to my parent’s house and I almost veered off the road just to sink my teeth into a chili dog. Then up the street, there’s the gathering of a Panera, a Chipotle and, of course, a Wendy’s, all on the same block. It was close, very close, but I stood strong.

What I do find interesting is that I do feel a bit weak just like that girl in my class said I would. I’m beginning to feel like my body is missing something important and I’ll be looking into a multivitamin tomorrow. I’m not sure if the reason I ended up sleeping for five hours after church has anything to do with this weakening of my system or if it was just stress from everything. Speaking of stress my cousin slash niece slash second cousin-niece was baptized today and she passed out a bit later. I was very worried and was still worried even after her mother told me she was okay. Children collapsing is so unnerving.

I bought another hundred dollars worth of groceries again and I didn’t even buy anything worthwhile. I’ll cook tomorrow, probably cabbage and some wild rice, something is simple. I am very worried about this weakening of my system, though. It’s not like I’m hungry all the time or anything, but it’s just a bad feeling overall.

Writing
I haven’t made much progress on the SVU fic this week, which is unfortunate because I haven’t done anything else either. I feel like I’m coming to slow point; all the creative juices have stopped flowing. I know it’ll start again, but I can’t help being impatient. I want it all and I want it now.

The past week has been more than stressful for me. I missed church yesterday. I hadn’t meant to, and I was actually dressed, with Bible in hand and was heading out the door when I had the infinite intelligence to check the mail prior to leaving. The letter came today and while everything is not definite, it doesn’t look good. I was just so depressed that I just leaned against the wall below the stairs and cried for a good ten minutes. It was so terrible and I was simply depressed, but instead of just lying in a ball and crying for the rest of the day, I went to work. I needed to do about a million things, but only accomplished less than half, but the important thing was that I reset a lot of my priorities. I just wish I had done so without having to miss church. I feel like the rest of my week is going to feel like this and I feel like I’ve let down everyone in my life by missing for one day.

My father came to town yesterday and we had a nice talk. It wasn’t as stressful as I thought it was going to be and we actually had a conversation like a father and daughter should. I finally feel like that relationship is what it ought to be.

Training is still going and going and going. If the situation all works out, I’m still not sure what I’m going to do. I may have to go over the head of one of my professor’s….but honestly, it’s rather ridiculous to have just one section of a class that all majors would need. They could at least have the decency to hold the class at various times throughout the year. The school is supposed to be accommodating, but really it’s all crap.

I’m beginning Week Two of giving up TV.com forums in favor of more productive things. I also feel like this huge weight has been lifted off of me since now, I don’t feel like it’s imperative that watch House and SVU exactly when they come on so that I can comment on them later. I can now tape them and watch them at my leisure, like a normal human being.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #1
I have also decided that I am going to be a full-fledged vegetarian. I came to this idea this Saturday past and my last “meat” was a Wendy’s #6 Spicy Chicken sandwich, of which I have been having deep cravings ever since. It has been three days and I feel like I’m starting to crack, but I’m trying to remain diligent. The thing is, I’ve got to get this weight off of me. I can’t even say that it’s starting to get out of hand; it’s already out of hand, out of control, out of whatever. I normally try to cook and eat healthy, but eventually, I’ll get lazy and stop cooking and I end up hitting the vending machines at work or ordering 20-some wings from Donato’s or Wings Xtreme and devouring them all myself for dinner. But, what I have noticed is most of the things to which I turn when laziness begets poor eating habits are meats or foods with meat. Subs, wings, Skyline, Wendy’s #6…hmm, Wendy’s….they are all meat and I go to them time and time again. I figure if I just pull meat out of my diet altogether, I won’t even be able to go to those places. If I really face it, even though I hadn’t been eating red meat or pork for ages, I would always splurge when it came to subs and such. Even though I would adamantly say I refused to eat red meat, that buoyant voice always faded away as I sank my teeth in a Grinder. Taking all meat out of my diet means that if I slip and hit Skyline, it will have to be an active choice to eat meat, removing my ability to say, “well, this red meat’s okay, because I really can’t see it.” Either way, this is a big dietary change and although my mother reminded me that there are a lot of really fat vegetarians, I still think this has some potential.

**Sighs**
On the fifth of this month, I took down my weight and all my measurements including my BMI and body fat. Every Tuesday, I will reassess everything. Sometimes there will be changes, hopefully in a negative realm, other times there will not. The goal is just to have something in front of me, so that I can see the changes. I’ll also take a picture every month because I’ve this master plan of making a little animated gif of my “transformation,” and I need to start somewhere.

height: 61.5 inches
weight: 215 lbs
waist: 41 3/4 inches
hips: 49 1/4 inches
neck: 15 3/16 inches
BMI: 38.73
body fat: 45.3 ~ I know there’s no way that this could be right. No human being could possibly be 50% body fat and live, but at least it’s a number to gauge some kind of progress.

**Rolls Eyes**
On a side note, and by side note, I mean actually “the main thing,” today I was able to do…it. I asked for help. It was time for prayer requests following our choir rehearsal and I was, finally, able to do it. I think it was just because there were so few of us there today, that I actually felt more comfortable than I would have with all of young adult around me, but the point is, I did it. I also asked for help from my mother. I have been so set on being independent that it feels like I’ve failed at life knowing that I need help, but I suppose on the other side, at least I can turn to my mother.

**Laughs**
For the past few weeks, I’ve been praying for God to give me the strength and the words to pray in a group. For every auxiliary of which I am a member, we always end with prayer requests and an individual leading us in prayer. I have long dreaded the ends of meetings because I always knew the time would come when I would be asked to lead the prayer. I had just been praying and praying that the words would come to me. Others have a…gift when it comes to leading our prayers and I always felt like I could never be a natural and encompassing as I needed to be should I be asked to lead. I was asked to lead for both our usher board meeting and our choir rehearsal. The first time, I intentionally looked away and was, of course, called upon to lead. It was short and I felt like I might have missed some things, but I got through it. The second time came far more natural and I felt the words come to me; the way I’d prayed for them to come to me.

Not much has happened in the past week: my step-brother got married, and that was kind of nice, especially since they have two kids together, but the fact is they did get married. The reception was nice though because I got to spend some time with my step-sibs and cousins and it’s always nice to hang out with a bunch of people my own age for a while. I had a little to drink at the reception, but between the ride home with my parents and the sobering conversation I later had with my mother, all was well for the drive home.

Classes are wrapping up, but I feel no closer to achieving anything, so of course it’s time to set some deadlines/goals for myself.
1) Finish A Ten-Minute Speech by 26 September 2006
– this one is not important in the present, but it could mean the difference between doing what I want to do with my life and doing what I have to do just to make ends meet. Not to mention that this is way overdue. I first put pen(cil) to paper for this thing when I was eleven years old, and eleven years later I still don’t have it completed. NO book should take that long. I’ve “finished” it a couple of times, but it’s never truly been complete. It’s not just the act of completing the book by this deadline, it’s the act of completing something in total. I can’t remember the last time I actually successfully completed anything save for a sentence I was speaking. My birthday marks the beginning of my adult years, and if I can’t complete SOMETHING by the beginning of my adulthood, I might as well stop now. If I can’t finish this book, I have no business even pretending like I want to begin writing others.

2) Get an A in my 139 class.
– There’s no excuse for me not getting an A in this class, and at this point I think I simply need it for my psyche. It’s like, if I could just get the ball rolling, then everything would fall into place.

3) Lose ten pounds by my birthday.
– I’ve been trying to lose this weight since I started to gain and now that I’ve got nearly 100 lbs to get off of me, things are starting to look dire. I went shopping with my mother yesterday, I just looking at myself in the dressing room mirror, made me slightly naseous. I remember when not too long ago, I would have looked at someone who looked like me and giggled to myself wondering how anyone could ever let it get so bad. I guess I had never counted on depression weighing in on the subject. Get it, weighing in….Anyway, a month is MORE than enough time to drop ten pounds. It’s the same old, same old: eat right and exercise, but the when and where causes the issues.

4) No more McDonald’s breakfast. Period.
– If I’m ever going to make a dent in #3, this is a must. I must give up McDonald’s breakfast forever. Given that it was the only thing I ever ate there, I think I just have to go with edict that I just can’t eat at McDonald’s ever again. Probably not ever again, but at least until my birthday in ’07. There’s not nutritional value from it and really it’s not even that satisfying. Feeling the grease and fat from an Egg McMuffin or a hash brown, makes me feel my heart actually congealing. I don’t want to put myself in a position where I could have a heart attack 20-25 years before that should even be a concern. I can do better. I will do better. I guess this isn’t so much a quitting McDonald’s idea as a living a better, healthier life.

5) Read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
– I started this goal a few years ago, and got wholly bogged down by the pages and pages of “begets,” but I think that all Christians should read the whole thing from beginning to end (literally). Even if I don’t understand all of it, even if it does contradict itself, even if it inevitably makes me question my faith in the end, I’ve got until 26 September 2007 to get this goal accomplished. I’ve even got a Bible-reading guide. There’s no reason to get this one done.

…and the little things before the end of this year:
a) Finish my The X-Files website
b) Recode my Calvin and Hobbes website
c) Get an A in Ochem
d) Do Something Great

…time to go a-complishing.

I’ve been busy, naturally, and I honestly, I can barely remember anything signicant happening the past couple of weeks. Yesterday however fell just short of amazing.

I was sitting at my computer, trying desperately to make the lightbox on my church’s website work, when time simply caught up with me. I missed Sunday School, the first time since I had started going, and no one from the church had gotten back with me about when our young adult choir was supposed to meet and where I was supposed to go and everything….I guess it is worth mentioning that I did join the young adult choir the saturday before last. The choir director even gave me a special part to sing on my own….

Anyway, I’d made up my mind that I was just not going to sing and by that point, late for Sunday School had turned into late for church in general and I was feeling worse and worse. When I finally left for church, I was in a ridiculously foul mood and with no viable food in the house, I had to eat McDonald’s again and by the time I got to church I was ready to burst into tears. Nothing was wrong in particular, the day was just going horribly. I snuck in just before the choir was about to come in and basically kept my head down. I just felt angry and upset and in just a poor mood. When they started singing, however, I could feel my demeanor changing for the better and when it was time for the announcements, the choir director motioned for me to come up and join them. I was going to hesitate, but figured I’d go anyway. The look on my pastor’s face when I started to go up to the choir stands was priceless. The song with my little solo was already over, but I was happy to be up there singing with everyone else, regardless of the fact that I didn’t know the words. By the end of church, I was in such a good mood it was unbelievable. That much of a positive influence from two hours of church…..it’s still amazing to me. My good mood has been ongoing since I left the church yesterday. Perhaps it’s because I can’t seem to get our church songs out of my head, but nevertheless…..I don’t know…

My mother said to me while we were at dinner on Sunday that “something” knew that I was about to sing in the choir and didn’t want it to happen. I’m not one to always assume that the devil makes me feel negative. I am still under the belief that there’s enough straight negativity and evil in people without there being a need for some supreme evil being. I think it’s far more plausible that God was punishing me for my vanity and pride over a choir practice that surprised myself. Anyway, all that matters, is that now I feel good….for once.

That vanity thing though…sometimes it’s ridiculous. I wonder how someone like myself, who’s not overly pretty, can be so vain so often…

…and there goes my good mood.

I’m still going strong right now. I’ve got my plans in place and we’ll see how this goes…

I’m still off fast food for the month. I’ve actually gone hungry instead of stopping at a Wendy’s or something, but I know it’s for the best. I caught myself wondering what I would be like at the end of the month. Will I be so accustomed to not eating fast food that I wouldn’t even notice when the end of the month came and perchance I could make it two months without any fast food? Doubtful, but there’s always the hope. I’m pretty sure I’ll be standing at Chipotle’s front door waiting for it to open on August 1st, but there’s still hope.

I’ve been finessing a lot of things lately, especially the code the websites I’m doing. One of the people on Coding Forums, brought up a good point to me as I was attempting to give advice to another. I know CSS and its basics, but I don’t know the theory behind it, so I end up with a lot of redundant information in my code. I get the style, just not the cascading part, but that will soon change.

I’m planning to start another blog, but the new one will be run completely by me since I’ve found the code to make a perfect blog under my own domain. It’ll probably be blog.doriennesmith.com, but I haven’t decided yet. It’ll be a lot on how the website is going and the “hows” behind a lot of my updates.

I’m taking a web class right now, I try as I might, I can’t resist the temptation to show off a bit. Hopefully, my instructor won’t mind that I used XHTML 1.0 instead of the crap code they suggest in the book. I mean I want to scream just looking at the code they are suggesting for their readers; especially since the book is no more than two years old. In fact….okay, the book was published in 2002, which brings up a whole new set of issues. Why on earth are we using a book that’s this old in the first place, especially when the class is on the internet and standards and such change every few years. I mean, honestly: the book is telling people to use uppercase letters and inline presentational code! For a class like this, all the textbooks should be less than a year old. Otherwise, the information is most likely ridiculously out of date by the time class starts. For that matter, I don’t see why a textbook is needed when the W3C is online all the time and holds free information for anyone who wants it; not to mention something simple like w3schools.

Speaking of being annoyed by this web class: we are forced to create our web project. (basically just a simple web page), using Geocities, which both “sucks and blows.” It is so irritating to go through all the work of creating beautiful code that validates using a Strict doctype and have to throw the whole thing in Geocities, which flays my code into some horrifying monster with its stupid and unvalidating side bar. Speaking of validation, I don’t know why I love, or am obsessed over having my code validate. It’s as if seeing the green “Passed Validation” page gives a bit of validation to my life….

Anyway, I always feel bad when I do work on my own website instead of making more progess on my church’s site. I think it’s just that there’s so much more to do for the church site. I mean I’m practically rebuilding the entire site. I’ve got the layouts already sketched out, but it’s matter of going through the daunting task of making my designs come to life in the code. Some things just are feasible from my inexperience, which means loads of time asking questions on Coding Forums and then waiting for answers, not mention all the new things that I need to create my “vision” for the site. (Sigh) There’s just so much to do, but one step at a time I suppose.

Last week looked like the end of my relationship with my mother. Honestly, it looked like we may never be on good terms again. That is, until I got a good look at what other people have to go through with their parents….It was only then that I realized how lucky I was to be in my situation, but have a clear, defined way out of it and with the support needed to keep me from failing. I’m just glad that Jesus helped me stay calm enough from going off the deep end and saying or doing things that could not be taken back later. I was so emotionally I had to revert back to the “Tweety Book,” my old handwritten journal, mostly because my language was getting slightly out of hand and there were things I need to write down that really are not meant for the internet. That’s something I think a lot of people don’t understand about the internet and blogs. EVERYONE can read them, and even if they’re are private, if someone wanted to, they could get to it still. I’ve never put anything on the internet that I didn’t want to be shown to the world. Pictures I would have problems explaining or truly personal moments don’t belong on the internet.

Anyhoo – It’s time to get ready for Sunday School. I haven’t been to Sunday School, literallly since I was seven years old, so this will be a sort of adventure in itself. We’ll see how it goes…

So, I couldn’t even achieve a goal I wanted to achieve….I don’t even have anything to add to this. I could rant on about what’s the point of going on when I can’t do the things I want to do and such, but I won’t. Life sucks, people suck. It’s these bright sunny days that make me really want to do it….

Whew! Got those stupid license tags renewed and the pain in the ass that that entailed….
I’ve decided to not get a new fish, but the whole thing does piss me off since I just spent all this money on a brand new tank for the damn thing, but the tank is far too loud for my bedroom, so maybe it can be a living room thing someday, and I cannot return anything because I’ve already thrown out the boxes and crap. Lesson learned: always keep boxes and receipts until I know for certain whether or not I intend to keep the product.

I skipped two classes today. I had intended to do some writing, but ended up sleeping instead. Oh well. I need to start exercising more. It’s kind of, well more than kind of, ridiculous that I have so little energy, but I’m 21 years old. I should be at the prime of my life. Tonight, however, will be spent doing work of both the curricular and extracurricular kind. So, I’ve decided to setup a timeline, so that I can feel bad about myself when I don’t stick to it this time:

April 15, 2006: Complete second edit of A Ten Minute Speech ~ this is way over due. I should’ve completed this YEARS ago and I don’t know what has been holding me back. I just need to sit down and do it. I’ll be proud of myself in the end.

April 30, 2006: Have two chapters written for the first “Luka” book ~ this isn’t really asking too much of myself. Again, I just need to set aside time to do it.

May 5, 2006: Finish typing up Oreos and Twinkies ~ given that I’ve decided to completely change around the plot, the title, the characters and the book’s underlying meaning, this is also waaaay past due.

These are important, not so much for school, but to put myself in a position to be able to realize my dreams. Without meeting these goals, how will I ever achieve what I want in life?