thanks anita;) I am working on improving my circulation so I don’t feel so cold during the the winter. I have a friend who is taking the laidback route in school. he is also encouraging me to not worry so much about my grades and enjoy life more. I typically worry about my grades and there is so much competition in school these days. it’s sad that my special friend and i are seemingly drifting away because every time we see each other in school, we always look at each other awkwardly or sometimes quickly look away. it’s like both of us has changed and we don’t know each other anymore. i have become the confident girl who is trying to be an honors graduate for senior year and taking many ap and honors classes and being immersed with school work and friends who value education. i used to be more carefree and shy, but that side of me seems to have become dormant and he’s not sure if he likes the new me. I have found a solution for my mural project that I thought i had to abandon because the lotus design would be too hard, now i can find a way to pay back to the high school that has given me so much. after finishing the ap world history quiz after school today, i met members of the art club and also two of the advisors, they were making a mural outside the new wing downstairs outside of the history classes. I told them that i wish i could be as artistic and one of the teachers, whom i knew said that i was artistic, i just enjoy making things such as sewing and pottery rather than drawing. the other teacher introduced herself and she said that it wasn’t hard to make a mural and she told me that she scanned students drawings into a computer and used graphics to make the image more visible and colorful and then used a projector to project the photo on the wall where students could trace the lines with marker. i think i will join art club so i can do things like that. one of my friends is in art club and i think i can ask him if he can help me as well. I think the quote that applies most to my life right now is “Don’t be afraid to take risks and lose some things because you will always acquire something new and better and you have the satisfaction of at least trying.” I think I have lost some of my friends and some of my teacher friends (english and history), but i have discovered new ones who like math and science, working out and community service as much as i do. it is sad to know that my special friend enjoys english and history more as well and i feel bad for knowing him so long and now it’s like i’ve become a totally different person to him. there are teachers and my parents who tell me that i will never do well in math and science, that i should focus more on history and english, but those subjects don’t appeal much to me anymore. last night, i had a really cool dream about physics and wind powered generators. in this dream, i was experimenting with a wind turbine and i was calculating physics equations to figure out how much wind power would turn the generator. the dream was so cool, that i slept later and missed my bus because i wanted to figure out more of the equation. the next day i went into physics honors class and the teacher had a poster on wind power and he explained it to me when i asked him about it. it made me really upset this morning when my special friend said “you’ve changed so much. i’ve never would have thought you would be the girl to pursue math and science. i never thought you’d be the girl to be interested in criminal justice. i feel like i don’t know who you are anymore.” i was quite upset, but i understood how he felt because after meditating and realizing that my path lies more in math and science, it is quite a change for him, yet i feel upset that he had a limited view of me and the way he said it and how he couldn’t even look at me made me feel pained. this is why i feel like the quote “don’t be afraid to take risks and earn the satisfaction of trying, don’t be afraid of losing something because there is always something valuable to gain.” comes into play into my life. i feel like i have pursued so many goals in life and some of them, i couldn’t achieve because they weren’t meant for me, but i continue to set goals and know that if i lose one goal, i will achieve another. i have currently lost my goals of going into an english or history career to discover that i really truly cared more about math and science. in seventh grade through eighth grade, i lost the goal of wanting to play hockey with my special friend because i didn’t have time in my busy school schedule, but i managed to make two best friends and build my confidence in eighth grade and also i met my special friend in seventh grade. i lost the goal of getting into the junior national honor society, but my gpa is still high and i have acquired many intelligent friends. i am currently focusing on learning how to do reiki, improve my immune system and circulation and my health and doing well in school. there are times when i wonder if i am going to be able to do well in the semester. i stayed after today for ap world history and one of my friends who is on my bus saw me and asked me if i was staying after because she was as well. i told her i was for ap world history and i think she must have seen the stressed look on my face because she asked me if i was okay, i told her i was fine, but she didn’t believe me. she told me that i could tell her if i wasn’t okay, so i told her that i was stressed with the competition and also the idea of making goals and losing them, i told her that my special friend seemed distant and i wasn’t sure if i could do well in this semester. she listened and told it was going to be okay and that life is like that, a road of goals which some can be achieved and the ones that can’t be, just leave them behind and move forward and learn from them, life is meant to be lived. she told me that i was smart and that i would do well in this semester, that i shouldn’t stress too much and that with time, my special friend and i may become close again. i told her that i wished i could be as optimistic as she was, but i’m realist who tends to look more on the pessimistic side at times and that sometimes it was hard to believe in myself when my parents saw so many inadequacies in me. she told me that no matter what happens, that i would succeed, that she believed in me and that she saw that i had hope and potential, i just had to have the courage and will to keep going. when i told her that i wasn’t sure if the hope i was holding on to and the goal setting was worth the losses i’ve experienced, she told me that life isn’t an adventure without sacrifices and that i had so much hope and potential in me and that it doesn’t matter what others think, the right people believe in me and also she says i have an inner strength that prevents me from giving up. when i feel stressed, i try to live my this quote “when you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” i feel like there are times when the currents threaten to pull me under, so i must build a boat to stop them if they become to big for me to swim, if i feel like i’m just hanging on and drifting through life, i have to build a knot of hope and hang on, if i have a mountain in my way, i have to get a sledgehammer and turn it into a molehill. she really comforted me and i realize i am going to do whatever it takes to build the life i want, going into gene therapy (parents think it may be too hard for me, but i find the topic fascinating especially if it relates to cancer research and stem cells and rewiring dna or creating new ones) and reiki (which my parents don’t like wicca or buddha anyway because they are christians and they think spiritual life interferes with education) and also police force (which my parents think i am not strong enough). I think they have so little faith in me that it makes me annoyed. i also had a dream that i was confident and that i was in a science lab researching microbiology and pathology and ways to detect diseases within a person’s dna. i think my dreams are leading me into my career and i have high hopes of attaining it. i also had a dream last night that i felt like i was falling from the sky and there was a net that caught me and entangled itself around me and wouldn’t let me go. finally an old wise man spiritually enlightened (had a halo around his head) came and told me that i was falling through life and that i would lose a lot of things, but he would be my spiritual guide and that he would help me along my path to my goals. he told me that i had to believe in myself, not let others get me down and he took me on a journey through beautiful woods and he showed me all the cool sights i would see along my path. he was the one who introduced me to physics. he told me that right now it was okay that i was stressed out because everyone has a period in which they are happy and period of stress. he told me that i should take the stress and use it to help me on my spiritual path by meditating. he told me that whatever path i chose i would always be supported and not to worry. i was lifted on this beautiful purple light in my dream and it cleansed and healed me and i was back to my own world feeling more relaxed and hopeful.