Another long period of time going by without blogging… I don’t know why it is so difficult to keep up with… This semester was incredibly busy though! I’ll have to post pictures of all my projects And got a new haircut!

I’m taking this summer a little bit slow- working on campus and taking a summer class. I’d like to work on my art more as well… I’m still a little bit amazed that I’m not a college senior. It’s crazy!

In any case, I’d really like to work on my blog more this summer and start writing again.

For now, I will leave with a quote:

“It is none of my goddamned business if a random 400-pound (or 150-pound, or 90-pound) woman is healthy or not. Just as it’s none of my business how much money she makes or how her sex life is going. Health is private. Period.

What I do believe – and what I feel perfectly qualified to proclaim from the rooftops – is that every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to be treated with respect, deserves to feel loved, deserves to make her own decisions about her own body. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to have a fabulous time exploring her personal style and honing her unique look. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size can define health for herself. And, above all, every woman at every weight, shape, and size deserves to be happy. Every woman at every weight, shape, and size CAN be happy. And anyone who claims that happiness is contingent on weight is foolish and misguided, prejudiced and small-minded.

I’m not interested in quantifying the health of other women. I’m not qualified to make decrees about the health of other women. But I’m making it my life’s work to make sure that other women are happy. Happy with their lives, their bodies, their very existences.

Because happiness trumps everything, and we all deserve a piece of it. ALL of us. Including you.”

- The Question of Health

Here’s a good summer.

I’ve mostly been super busy with school work and getting everything done for this semester. I had two final art projects that took me a while- sadly, I wasn’t really completely happy with how either of them turned out … I focused on the word ‘Compression’ and went with the idea of women being compressed by corsets and how we are supposed to fit into this very narrow definition of ‘female’. Originally this was just going to be for my Illustration project, but then my Papermaking professor told me I should work with the same concept. So I ended up attempting to make a corset out of paper… Which is a lot harder than it sounds! I spent a lot of time on the damn thing, and it just didn’t come out the way I had thought it would… And for Illustration I didn’t really do what the professor was looking for (although he said most of us didn’t)… I guess I was just disappointed in myself that neither of my final projects were as good as my earlier ones. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of it, but once I go back next semester and get a chance I will take one.

But, on the positive side, I have gotten all A’s in all of my classes (still waiting for the Papermaking grade, but I’m pretty sure based on the fact that I had As on all my projects, I’ll do the same there).

So yeah, last Monday was the last day of the semester, I had one final on Tuesday and worked on Wednesday, and came home Thursday night, and Sunday night had my first day back working at Target! Talk about crazy- I was there till 11:30 pm last night. Whole damn store is open till midnight until Thursday- it’s ridiculous! Seriously people go buy your shit at a normal time! But at least I only have to work two more days before Christmas, then normal hours will be back and hopefully some of the crazyness will die down….

Other news: I’ve been seeing my ex a few times… I guess after I went on my last date afterward i just thought how much I missed my ex. I broke up with him for a few reasons- one biggie being the whole school business, but now that is not as much of an issue since I’m not a crazy nursing major anymore. I know there were some small things he did that would annoy me, but I never spoke up about anything, and I think I’ve done a good job of changing that. I guess I just feel like the off time was necessary, but now I wouldn’t mind giving it another shot- I feel like we’ve both changed and I just feel better about everything.

Then the other half of me feels like I’m being a bad person for wanting to try again or that some of my friends tells me it won’t work (although others are very supportive so that’s kind of a toss up- my negative side just clings to the naysayers)… I don’t know. Right now I just feel happy spending time with him, trying not to rush anything, not being afraid to state my opinion or talk about things. (Maybe I’m just happy with the fact that he got me a unicorn pillow pet for Christmas and that he said he would read this feminism book that I bought… and he took me to see Harry Potter again. lol. All good marks!) But we’ll see where it goes.

hmmm… Not much else too exciting going on. Got most of my Holiday gift shopping down, saving my school friend shopping until after Christmas when I’ll have, um, more money to actually spend lol. Funds are getting lowwww. But I actually got all of my immediate family something, and got Emily and Nikki’s gifts (though Emily’s probably won’t be here in time :/).. Also just bought all of my textbooks for next semester and spent UNDER $100! It’s a fucking miracle! Last semester for all the nursing books put me over $1,000, and most previous semesters averaged around $300 I would say. I’ll still have to buy some art supplies, but not too much. So I’m really happy about that!

So that’s life for now.

Oh! Also dyed my hair darker!

… Not really the greatest picture, but it’s the best I’ve got as of right now!

Since, knowing me, I won’t post anything until after the 26th probably, I hope everyone has a Happy Holiday (or at least a good winter!). Ciao for now!

Now that I’m back to school I need to get back to work. Have two big projects for my art classes due at the end of the semester so I really want to finish them up- I am pretty excited about them though!

As of right now- I have a date tonight! Woo! Exciting! Little bit nervous, but I tend to be like that all the time anyway…. We’ll see how it goes.

In any case- tomorrow I plan on uploading the pictures from the photoshoot with Nikki I did a week or so ago. Hopefully I won’t run out of time!

Hope everyone had a good week

(woo casual date night attire! Date actually happened pretty last minute and I don’t really feel like changing my outfit! Got the tank shirt at Target for $5! Jean from Old Navy, Cardigan thing from Kohls)

I’ve been really busy with my classes- mainly Papermaking and Illustration. I made a really awesome paper book that I am really proud of- I want to take pictures of it soon (I have one on my phone, but that’s not really going to help!). I can’t believe how much work actually goes into this class, it’s crazy. My professor (who also happens to be my new advisor), liked my book and asked me if I would want to participate in a Women’s art conference thing between nearby schools (since my book deals with mirrors and body image- once I upload a picture it should make more sense!). So I’m working on ideas for that- which is a big project! Need to make 25 sheets of paper to make a wallhanging- I just hope I can make it work.

I used my body image theme in Illustration as well, and my final project will focus on that. He had to pick a work from a list, and I choose ‘Compression’ and went with the idea of a faceless woman wearing a corset. I thought it fit really well with the idea that women are compressed into corsets to fit this idea (which is compressing in and of itself without the physical corset). And after we presented our ideas to the class we got feedback and now I’m also adding another layer underneath where you can see the damaged it does to the organs (going to use frosted acetate and colored pencils for the top, ‘beautiful’ outside corset layer, and the single tone pencils for the bottom)… I really hope it will come out okay.

So that’s what I’m mainly busy with right now! Lots of work on my plate. And, I’m happy though, because I actually want to do this work. I’m excited to do it. Not my normal moan and groan oh I have more work to do. It’s a nice change.

There’s just so many exciting things that happened this past month! The first week of November I had my Junior Ring Ceremony, where I finally got my school ring!

(It’s so prettay!)

(as you can see, I was ridiculously excited! Mostly because our college President is the one who gives us our rings, and our President is amazing. And yes, I am a total spazz.)

Not to mention last Thursday night! Harry Potter midnight release in IMAX! AWESOME! Here’s more spazzing from me (and my bestie Emily being all normal and such!):

But yeah- lots of good times the past few weeks.

I also got my MRI done this month as well, and I’m going to the doctor’s tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll find out more then. But all in all, it’s been a past great month. Now if I could only managed to write more than once during it that would be great. I have made great strides in my journal writing! I used to write in it twice a year, and now I’ve been writing pretty regularly since August, which is great.

Also working on Black Friday from 3:50 am until 1:00 pm. UGHHHH. Sucks. A lot. But not much I can do about it and at least it will be a paycheck. I’ll just be Zombie Liz during that time. That’s TOO DAMN EARLY!

Hopefully I’ll post again soon! I do have a lot of pictures to post!

Then on Sunday I went out shopping with one of my best friends at an outdoor type mall place. It was such a beautiful day outside!

I wore my funky Tshirt that I bought while in NYC the day before (at Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya). The leggings and zebra hair flower were from Torrid, and the sweater was from Kohls.

Yes, it does say ‘Attack of the Killer Donuts’.

Yay makeup time!

My friend got this delicious cupcake at Starbucks- I only stole a bite, but it was really yummy!

I decided I would dress cute again the next day…

… and wore this crazy outfit! Shirt from Torrid, skirt from Salvation Army, and leggings from Old Navy.

And here’s just a closeup of the leggings!

I’ve been trying to dress up more lately and wear things other than just jeans and a hoodie (normal college attire), and it’s been a lot of fun. Makes me feel better about myself I guess? I know I’m not the queen of fashion or anything, but it’s so much fun!

As for the rest of my life- I’ve started my accelerated classes this week, so my schedule is getting a little more back to normal! I went to my campus library and was just looking at random books and found ‘Fat: The Anthropology of an Obsession’, so I checked that out and am attempting to read that soon!

… And I can hear girls yelling in the dorm asking if something is ‘Self Cannibalistic’… Okay…

Anyway, I think that’s all for now. Hope everyone had a good weekend!

My life has changed a lot since last semester. I started dating a boy about a month before summer break, which last until I returned to school. I feel like I changed -and learned- a lot from that relationship, but things just didn’t work out for me and I ended it. Initially things started out great, but they just went downhill from there. I found out things that I really shouldn’t have had to deal with for a 1 month old relationship and there were things he did that bothered me. I guess after I while I felt like I stayed with him because of my insecurities rather than because I really liked him. I’m sure I could blather on about it more, but I don’t think many would want to hear. Maybe a story for another time.

In any case, I learned from it that I can’t be afraid to speak up for myself, that I shouldn’t rush into things, and that I should trust myself more. Right now I’m trying to make myself comfortable with being alone. It’s hard, and I always tend to slip right back into feeling as though I need a boyfriend to feel beautiful/sexy/anything complimentary. I know I shouldn’t think that way, but it always seems to happen. I did go on a date a few weeks ago and really liked the guy, but after going out on two dates he told me he didn’t want to deal with the distance since he lived rather far away. Which made me bummed because I really liked the guy. But I guess it still helps to make me feel more ‘normal’ with the dating world- I really feel lost when it comes to that.

Which leads me to the other great change in the past year (really, most of these changes have occurred in the past two months of my life)- I officially withdrew from Nursing yesterday. This semester started out okay- I had been feeling very anxious about everything but I just attributed that to the fact that it was the beginning of the semester. I made it through orientation and my first week of classes. First real day of clinical I was very anxious. And again, I attributed it to being the first day, etc.

The next week clinical rolled around and I had an anxiety attack before having to talk to a patient. I started feeling light headed and pretty much spent ten minutes uncontrollably crying in front of my instructor. Which was horrifying. My instructor was amazing though and helped me through it. I talked to her afterwords and she recommended that if i didn’t feel better to go Health Services on campus. At the end of the weekend I was still feeling extremely anxious just thinking about the next week, so I made myself head over to Health Services and set up an appointment with the therapist there. Spent the week still feeling a lot of anxiety, until I woke up one morning and wanted to do nothing other than sleep. I don’t know how the hell I made myself go to class, but I did. I really would’ve rather been anywhere else but in my two classes that day. At the end of my second class while talking to my friends I broke down crying again, and my Mental Health professor saw me and took me into her office to talk.

Really, all of the people I talked to throughout all this are amazing people. Even if they don’t know it, they really helped me. I basically continued crying (I swear, I cried more in that one week than my entire life) and telling her everything. She told me that I wasn’t crazy, etc. that I should get help. When I told her that I didn’t know if Nursing was what I really wanted to do, she told me I had a choice. She helped me decide to take a break this semester to figure things out. For the longest time I felt like I was trapped on a path in a nice little box, and when she told me I didn’t have to be it was such a freeing feeling, silly as that may sound. I just had so many worries and thoughts going through my mind up until that point I couldn’t handle it.

So I took that choice and withdrew from my nursing classes. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I feel like a lot of my anxiety stemmed from the fact that I knew deep down I didn’t want to do what I was doing. Some people there really had the drive and they really wanted it- I just wasn’t one of those people at all. I didn’t want it that badly. I thought I would like it and I thought I would’ve been good at it- but I didn’t like it. I thought my family was proud of me for going that path and that they would be ashamed of me if I went with something else. I thought I would end up with nothing because I wouldn’t be able to find a job with a different degree. I felt vulnerable with my nice boxed path crumbled up and thrown out the window with nothing to replace it.

But here I am now! I’m still talking with the school therapist once a week, which I think has really helped me, even if in small ways. I am working right now to help with my fears regarding talking on the telephone- and I feel like I have gotten better. I spent the past few weeks thinking about what I wanted to do, and one day it just clicked. I had thought about switching to a Psychology major, because I loved my Psych classes and with that major I could still graduate on time, but I wasn’t sure about it. Then I realized that my best friend is an Art Therapy major, pretty much a combination of Art and Psychology. The more I thought on it the more right it felt, and I submitted the form to declare it as my major officially. While this brings along with it feelings of guilt for feeling selfish for changing (not to mention the guilt over money- I hate how everything comes back that), and fear of things turning out bad and not being able to find a job with this degree, I just feel lighter about everything.

I feel like even if I can’t get a job related right away or if I go to get a Masters, at least it is for something I can be passionate about and be excited to learn about. I can relate to Art Therapy, as I feel like through art I really learned to love myself more, and it would be amazing to help others do the same. Art therapy ties together my love of art and can relate to body image, self esteem issues, feminism, etc. and that is something I love about it. I guess even if I end up having to work at a crap job unrelated to my degree, at least I will have learned what I love and had two good years of it.

So it will be interesting and exciting to see how my life goes- this is such a big change.

But I am starting to feel more comfortable with myself- I feel like I am more of my old self again, and it feels good.

I wore purple today to support gay teens, as did many of my friends. It was awesome seeing so many people on campus wearing purple! (Also making a wonderful face here!)