just alyssa

Every once in a while I find myself caught up in the world and everything seems to be spinning around me so quickly, that I can barely catch my breath. When this happens I often "go off the grid" as I like to call it. I had many times like this in college when the outside world became too much so I shut people out by deactivating my facebook and silencing my phone. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you simply let go of everything that's holding you back. I love helping people and I am all about what people need. Sadly, I let myself get caught up and so absorbed in other people that I often forget to take care of myself. I internalize everything which I know is a HUGE issue. I bottle things up until I'm  ready to explode. I hate sharing things with people, so I've learned my own way of coping. "Going off the grid" is a brilliant strategy I developed for myself to just take time for self reflection. I always seem to learn more about myself e...

Time; life's biggest constraint. It holds us hostage with it's limits. When we have nothing to do it seems that there's so much of it, yet when we're having a good time, there never seems to be enough. Every day is one, giant, revolving clock. Each moment that passes is taken by ticks of the clock. I sit here idly listening to the clock strum its own vigorous melody as I think about how many things I'm missing. I think about the friends I've missed seeing, messages I've failed to answer, paperwork I've not completed, appointments I've never made...so many things to be done and yet, here I sit. I, much like most of the world, am yet another victim of time. I don't know whether I don't have enough of it or if I've just been using it wrong, all along. There's the saying that you should "use your time wisely", but what does that mean? What takes priority? I always have to do lists, but I never know where to begin. I've alwa...

Guilty Pleasures. We all have them. Whether it's a tv show we watch, songs we listen to, or habits we have, we all have those embarrassing things that we just can't get enough of. I seem to have a lot of these things that I'm embarrassed by and often keep to myself, but what's the fun in that? So here's the upfront and embarrassing truth of my own, now guiltless, guilty pleasures. 1. I am obsessed with X-games sports. Today, I watched a Skateboarding tournament for an hour and a half, completely enthralled by the flips and tricks. This is not my first time, cheering on the guys with baggy pants. I ventured into BMX, skateboarding, and roller blade tricks in high school and I just can't get enough. There is something disturbingly attractive about a guy nearly injuring himself to flip a skateboard off a bar, under his feet, and landing perfectly..........it just gets hotter and hotter. I can't even explain it. I could watch Tony Hawk and Ryan Sheckler alll...

Optimism and Desperation are 2 extraordinarily different things, just as being lonely and alone are very different. Optimism gives us the hope that something good will come in our future, so we wait for it, and pray it's what we've always wanted. Desperation is when we're eagerly seeking ANYTHING to fulfill even a small portion of our needs. We reach out, ready to grasp on to the first thing that comes our way, becoming like leeches. There's some huge misconception that because you're not dating, haven't dated, currently single, or have been single most of (okay, all ) of your life, that somehow you're not happy. That being single makes you a one eyed creature. You're obviously completely lonely or SOMETHING has to be wrong with you. This is the only explanation people seem to have for singlehood. It couldn't possibly be that you're waiting for the right time in your life or that you have too much going on or that you're just simply no...

Selfishness: the act of concentrating on one's own advantage, excluding and having no regards for others. Lately I've been looking back at some notebooks I had from college. Some of them have notes in them from classes, others have my plans that I drew out for myself. I've always been so goal oriented, driven towards success. I had everything planned out. Go to college, get a job, save money, go to grad school, get a better job. Each thing was so incredibly monumental for the history of my life. I'm the first child in my family to go to college and receive a degree and I'm the first to go while I'm young. My parents went back to school when I was in high school, so for our family, this was a pretty huge success story. In December, I reached the peak of my life in so far. I'd done it. I'd graduated. I suffered through hard classes, no sleep, struggling financially, working 3 jobs, adjusting to roommate differences, and the peer pressures of college...

I. Am. A mess. My entire life I have been aware that I'm just a little bit different. Growing up as the middle child I always believed I had "middle child syndrome", constantly trying to break out of the crowd. For a while, I was quite shy and very quiet. I always hid behind my mom and avoided talking to people at all costs. Somehow, over the years that changed and I quickly became a loud mouth that literally could NOT stop talking. It's like my brain was so overactive all the time and I had to get all of my words out. My family tried to be patient with me, but I knew that listening to me was exhausting. I was in love with words and looked for ways to express my thoughts. I often retreated to the solitude of my bedroom and began writing anything and everything. I wrote short stories, poems, and songs. My life was spelled out through pages and pages of endless words that reflected my endless thoughts. This was always odd for a kid and I had trouble relati...

Feminist: someone who advocates political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men. I've spent many hours trying to explain this very subject to people and I still get nowhere. Whether it be a guy that I am arguing with or even my own girl friends, people seem to be 100% confused about what it actually means to be a feminist. I wish there were an easy explanation, a quip of a few words that I could spat out at people so they'd literally  understand it instantly. The best version I have of that is this: EQUALITY. That's it, people. It all comes down to equality. When I say I am a "feminist" or that I share feminist values, it does not mean that I believe I am superior to men or that I'm a lesbian (those are huge misconceptions). It simply means that I believe in equal rights for everyone. The same goes for different races. I believe that women should have equal rights to men just as I believe that blacks should have equal rights t...