From The Archives,  From The Heart

The way my brain works

Hello!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where my life is headed and about the path that I have chosen for my career- or at least what I have decided to study. I do really love acting, but more than that I love singing. I feel that I can do so much more with singing than I can with acting. I don’t know what possessed me to forgo the idea of being a vocal performance major, but I do know that I have to stick to what I’ve picked. I’ve finished my first year of college (which in itself is a huge accomplishment in my life) and I don’t think that I can, or even want to, turn around and change my path. Perhaps if I do not get accepted into the program that I want, then I may decide to switch areas completely. A few of the things that I have thought about include majoring in English, Anthropology, Philosophy (I know… Some of you know that I hated my philosophy 150 class… My attitude has changed quite a bit about it and I am realizing just how valuable that class was to my writing.), History, or even Broadcast Journalism/Communications.
I know that I am not a math or a science person, since I find myself frustrated when I can’t make sense of the numbers and I am not particularly fond of dissecting the remains of an animal. The interesting part of this is that if I wanted to, I COULD look into math, since once I finally get how the math works I usually do really well. In my first college level math class I was the second highest scoring student, next to an Econ major. Granted, the class was not a “hard” class, but I still felt like I did pretty well, considering that my high school offered Algebra 1 only as an elective. (And yes, I took it.) While I felt like I did poorly when I made a 92 on a paper, the rest of the class seemed to be struggling to get by. As far as science goes, I love the periodic table of elements and I love knowing what makes things the way they are and how they work on a micro scale. I like atoms, okay? Chemical reactions are interesting to me.
I have a lot of things that I am interested in, that I don’t think that people realize about me.
Another thing that I absolutely love is writing. I may not be the best at finding the correct words when I speak, but when I have time to sit down and write my thoughts I could write for hours! I have always loved writing. Seeing my thoughts in black and white (or blue and white, or gray and white, or sometimes a colored pencil on a piece of paper) excites me. I have so much going on in my head sometimes that it is hard for me to go to sleep at night without writing it down. When I first started writing in my journal, I was 12. To be completely honest, I wish I would have started sooner. I love going back and looking at all of the things I wrote about and laughing at my own naivete when called for. Life is exciting! It is wonderful that we have the opportunity to keep our memories alive with a pen and paper. (Or a laptop, as some might use.) Language is an extremely important thing. Sure, we can communicate via body language, but I am talking about words. There are only so many things that can be expressed without words. Our words open a door way to new possibilities that lie in our uncharted imagination.

Imagination is something that I simply cannot live without. (Perhaps it is why I love babysitting so much?) Without imagination, this world would not be where it is today. Dreams are important, especially the big dreams. I dare you to think of one thing that was made or invented or written that did not take a little imagination, or wonderment.
I seem to have a knack for using my imagination a little too much sometimes. Like Princess Ariel, I tend to have my head in the clouds day dreaming quite a bit. I like to think of all the possibilities of what could be, instead of focusing on the things that need to get done sometimes. We all have that tendency, but instead of just thinking about these things, I end up creating entire worlds in my head. The problem that I have is that ideas flow so quickly in my mind sometimes that I can’t write them down fast enough!
An example of this comes from when I was about 11 or so.

Throughout my entire life I have been a “Barbie Girl.” I have always loved dolls, but Barbies were my favorite dolls to play with. When my friends would come over, we would always play Barbies. One of the common themes in my play was that I had the same set of characters every time. Though the plot line changed as I grew older (from the prince and princess who were separated by the evil witch/queen, to the high school drama years as I grew older and started watching WAY too much TV…), I always had my villain my least favorite Barbie), my damsel in distress (my favorite girl Barbie who was always named Andrea), and her knight in shining armor (the only Ken doll I had with good hair… His name was always Adam). As I grew up a little, I decided to write a book about these characters and their fictional lives. The book title changed frequently, as the characters matured (along with the writer.) and the story line got a little deeper. Though they were the same, somehow they were all very different by the end of my fascination with their world, including who my favorite characters were. My two favorites became weak and the sidekicks (as you will) became more interesting as I learned more about who they were in my head. After many months of forgetting and returning, I found that I no longer liked the “High School Musical”/ soap opera plot line that I had created with my friends, as they too added to the story with their own characters. Once, my best friend and I decided to actually create a book series together, where I would write my stories and she would write hers to go along with mine. Eventually, the whole thing fell apart, but I still have those memories of an 11 year old who tried to write a book. I think that the reason I could never finish the story is that the characters kept changing on me. They had become living things in my mind who I could not change without feeling as though I killed who they once were. Every now and then I still remember the fun that I had and contemplate actually finishing the story I once started 8 years ago, but I know that I will probably never finish it because it would then become an ending to a part of my childhood.
That’s all for now!
Savannah

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