On Health Matters and the Spread of the Nerd Virus in my Body

Since my last post, I now find myself to be 20 years old, unemployed, still not in school, having moved back to Nevada from California, with a new boyfriend, and have been through a lot more mental, emotional, and physical problems.

I've had a lot of personal issues to deal with that got really extreme, leading to a hospital visit and staying for some time in a psych ward. However, I did meet some interesting people in there, and earned myself my first nickname: French Fry (for being so tall and thin). Sometimes, I also got called Google because I'm smart and knew a lot of things.

On the last day of visiting Josh, my boyfriend, for spring break in Sacramento, I woke up with bad pain right where you'd expect my right kidney to be. Sparing you the nasty details, it turned out I had a kidney infection.

I still currently have a kidney infection, although I'm pleased to say that today I was starting to feel a lot better. Today was also the first day in what seems too long that I had a 100% happy or content day.

I built my first Magic The Gathering deck, and started playtesting it. However, since I'm a bit shaky on the rules still, and my teacher, Josh, still remains in California, where he (and I) belong(s), I may or may not have gotten some things wrong here and there. Luckily, Josh had a lot of free time today and I got to have a long Skype call, that, while mostly just us doing separate things with some chatting in between and smiles slipped in, was quite pleasant. Not to mention, he got to remind me on a couple rules I'd missed out on. Though he was quite impressed on how easily I grasped the mechanics of the various deck colors and how to utilize them well.

My deck is mostly white with a few greens, from what I have tested so far, is good at holding off your opponents from attacking with enchantments and regaining life easily to keep yourself at a good range, even against a point-taking-heavy kind of deck, like a red deck, which is what I was testing with. While your opponent's bigger creatures are being held off, the smaller ones picking at you with their work easily undone with the easy life regaining, eventually the big guns come out to play on your side. Almost entirely flying, vigilant, with a few first strikers in addition to the others, with medium mana costs and high stats make up my aggro team. Then, along the way, the enchantments holding back your opponent's monsters are also considered Aura's, and a couple cards work together to make some already pretty tough monsters almost unstoppable. And that's how my deck works. :D

When I was in Sacramento with Josh, I got to spend some time with his friends a couple times at a comic book shop they frequent on weekends to hang out, eat some fast food, play nerdy games like Dungeons and Dragons, Magic, Dominion, Settlers of Catan, and anything else you can think of, if they have it. It's really fun and his friends were really cool.

Josh's family, his mother, father, and would-be aunt, Robyn, were all lovely and really liked me, which is a first. Normally friends' and especially boyfriends' parents dislike me, despite being polite to them, not being into any drugs, alcohol, and partying. This has gone back to when I was a kid, even. Maybe they can sense the crazy in me. o____O

In updating on nerdy things, I've also seen The Hunger Games movie. I saw it with Josh in Sacramento, of course, because that's where all happy memories I have come from if you look at the past couple months in my life. I might do a separate post on that if I have the energy/willpower/desire/time/care.

I believe that is all for now.

Until next time,
Bekah x

Choose the Path Less Traveled on and You Mess Up Your Google Maps Directions to Success

The idea of having my whole life ahead of me has never been a comfort to me. I always hear it when I talk about how I don't know what to do with my life, and a much wiser, more experienced, and youth-challenged human being will let me know that it's alright because I have so much time to decide.

I may only be 19 years old, but it seems to be the first and foremost duty of every adult figure that I know to remind me again and again that I need to figure out my life. Decide a "life goal," as my dad would say.

The phrase "life goal" drives me crazy. I may have a wide variety of interests, but that's just the thing. My inventory of activities, hobbies, or even things that can translate well over to a lifelong career, is full of conflicting ideas. It's hard to pick just one. I don't know how comfortable I would be doing one job for the rest of my life, unless that job is one that morphs regularly as I go along.

When I asked some other kids in my age group how they decided what they currently say they want to do, they all seemed to use the following approach:

1. Pick a concrete trait. ("I want to help people.")
2. Translate that trait into a career path. ("I want to become a nurse.")
3. Choose a degree, college, major, etc. that helps that career become a reality.

When I express my indecision of a life goal, other people so willingly put a trait of mine into career language for me.

"You love languages! Get an English degree! Be a writer for a living!"

"You are really into YouTube and all that. Why not be a director/actress/screenwriter/producer? There are degrees for that, right?"

"You always joke about marketing and come up with good ideas for commercials and stuff like that. Go into communications!"

The problem with this process, for me, is that picking out a single trait and then basing your entire college life and beyond on that trait seems to be naive. I don't think I'd be happy doing any of those jobs. I don't think that picking your life path that way necessarily is what people think it is. Now, seeing as people have been doing this for years, and successfully at that, I doubt that I've come across some hidden secret. Maybe this is why people change their majors so often.

But it brings me to a horrible conundrum. How do I figure out what I want to do when none of the dominant traits in my personality translate to a career path that I would find myself happy in?

Or perhaps, as usual, I've set myself up to fail without even trying. Maybe when I find a way to start going to college again, I'll actually throw myself into some possible majors before deciding it's not for me. All the more reason to stay in California now that I've moved myself over - there are so many more opportunities here, perhaps even for my seemingly infinite supplies of negativity.