Birthday

My birthday was a couple days ago, and I wanted to make a video on the day. To keep my thoughts straight I read something to read for it....which is below. The video is here, if anyone wants to see it.

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I used to think that my birthdays would never bother me, that I would grow older without being phased by the passing time. And on one hand that's so: I delight in each new white hair I find on my head, enjoying the contrast they make against the dark hair I was born with. But although my age doesn't bother me, I've found that each year around my birthday I wonder what I've done with my life. It's so easy to focus on what I feel are my failures, so perhaps I should take a moment to think about what I've accomplished.

I'm fairly decent at writing, although I haven't been doing much of it lately. Worth mentioning though, in 2009 one of my poems was published in the magazine Cricket.

I'm told that I'm great at photography. And if I may say so myself, I am pretty good at it.

I'm talented at a variety of hand crafts, such as: needlework, spinning yarn, crochet...and more, but I don't feel like listing everything I can do.

I've competed internationally with the Sweet Adeline's chorus Pride of Portland, and in 2009 we took ninth place at internationals in Hawaii.

I'm very close to completing my English degree at Marylhurst University. I spend a lot of time worrying about what a barrier anxiety and depression are in completing my degree, since I'm very aware that I should have graduated by now. But I should probably also remember that it's taken a lot of work to get where I am now.

And, I've always managed to work my way through anxiety and depression. I still struggle, and I'm sure I'll always have my ups and downs, but to have gotten past the really tough times in the past is something.

So maybe, maybe next year, I'll be able to think about all this and my other accomplishments rather than scrutinizing what I haven't succeeded in yet.

A photo of stairs that I took on my birthday

Letter From the Past

Have you ever written a letter to your future self? I've written one. Or, I thought I wrote only one. I went looking for it as something to write about here, and instead found another one that I wrote to be opened in 2012. I'd completely forgotten this second one. Here it is, with a bit of editing, due to a) personal stuff, and b) clarifying details that wouldn't be obvious to readers here.

While I'll mostly reserve my comments for after the letter, I want to mention PoP before hand so that you'll know what I'm talking about in just one read through. Pride of Portland (PoP) is a barbershop chorus that's part of Sweet Adelines International. The short explanation is that it's a group of women spread out over the globe who love to sing barbershop, wear too much makeup, wear lots of sequins, and hold musical competitions every year. My first international competition with PoP was in Vegas, and my second (and last) one was in Hawaii. I found that Hawaii agreed with me much more than Vegas, though I was too focused on the competition to really get to enjoy the place properly.

November 24th, 2007

I'm 18 years old as I write this.

I'm currently taking Poetry and Math 60 at Portland Community College. By the time I read this I hope to be working in a library, and possibly making plans to major in English at a 4 year college. I've not even begun to think about which one I want to go to yet.

I went to my first poetry reading today! It was at [I'm keeping this private], and I read my poem "He Fought His Heart" for the group. I plan to continue going to that group.

Working on music for PoP is a challenge, but hopefully I'll get better at it, and am already making progress on it becoming easier. Last year in Vegas we took 14th, and next year we go to Hawaii! I'm excited.

I'm thinking that I just might get some of my poems published. But it'll be a while before I try to go about it, I think.

I wonder -- might I be married, with kids, when I read this? Or will I still be single? Currently I've never been on a date, and never been kissed.

To date I only have one poem memorized -- Ogden Nash's "The Turtle," or I think that's the title. Anyways, I think my future self will know what my current self is talking about. :)

Well, I might add some more later, but that's it for now! 

See ya!

Sarita :P

"See ya!"

...and the above letter is exactly why I have trouble making long term plans these days. Give it a few years, or less, and my plans evolve into something else.

At the time that I wrote this letter I was pretty intimidated at the thought of going to a university. It seemed like a huge commitment (which yeah, it is) and I wasn't sure whether it was for me. So my idea around this time was to maybe get a two year degree that would aid me in getting a library job, then maybe think about going to a university. And of course I was thinking an English degree since that's what I was taking every term at Portland Community College. May as well stick with what I was already nuts about.

I'm certainly not complaining about my decision to pursue an English degree before getting settled in my own place, as I believe was assumed though not stated in the letter. But it's an example of how a long term plan I have one year isn't what I want the next year. Another example is when I picked out my Music Therapy degree, then eventually realized that it was a bad idea. I guess I just don't know for sure what I really want, career wise, though something in a library still sounds awesome.

As for poetry, Fall 2007 was the term I got really into writing poems. It all started when I turned a dream into a haiku immediately after waking up one morning, or maybe I started writing the poem in my dream. Whichever way, that opened the floodgates, and I wrote a lot of poetry until my inspiration more or less dried up. Some of my poems were good, most of them not. One was good enough to get published in the magazine Cricket less than two years after the above letter, which I was beyond excited about since it was my favorite magazine at the time. The poem mentioned in the letter is still unpublished, however, and revisiting it recently I could see that it needs some TLC.

Oh yeah, and "The Turtle"....shame on younger me for not knowing the name for certain. Come on, how difficult could it have been to remember the two word name if I memorized the poem itself?

I'm still unmarried and there are no plans for kids, but I'm definitely not single and am lucky enough to be very much in love with an amazing man. ♡

Have you ever written a letter to yourself? Future or past? What did you put in your letter?

Sweet Adelines jewelry

While packing and unpacking for this move I came across some jewelry and medals that I haven't really looked at in a while. So I guess this is my "show-and-tell" post. :)

 

Here I've got two medals -- and some jewelry -- that I picked up during the years that I competed with the Pride of Portland chorus. Pride of Portland (PoP) is part of Sweet Adelines International, which is an international organization of women who sing Barbershop music. PoP is the best chorus locally, and whenever they compete regionally they always take first. Always.

 

Blue regional medal

This is my first place regional medal, on top of the blue chord it came on. When another chorus won the following year I put it on the gold chain. (The winning chorus has to sit out a year, so even though PoP always wins someone else gets the blue medal every two years.) As you can see, though, I've kept the blue chord it came on. And yes, that's a golden butterfly attached to the chord.

Wild woman

There are four parts to be sung in Barbershop music: bass, baritone, lead, and tenor. At conventions we like to wear pins that show what part we are. I'm a lead, and mom got me this wild woman pin that says "LEAD".

A tamer lead pin (with rhinestones)

I love rhinestones. What Sweet Adeline doesn't? It's sort of a prerequisite. Rhinestones and sequins. :) Though I think this pin needs some cleaning...

SAI pin

PoP is part of Region 24, and since this has the region number on it I think we got it at a regional. The pin reads:

WOMEN'S A CAPPELLA
REGION 24
HARMONY
SWEET ADELINES INTERNATIONAL

Another pin, this one covered in flowers and saying "Aloha Vancouver 2008". I know we had a regional competition in Vancouver Washington, and that may have been the year that international competition in Hawai'i...I'm going to run with that theory, and say that this pin is probably from a regional competition and that the theme was due to the upcoming bigger competition in Hawai'i.

 

9th at international competition

This is my medal from when PoP went to the international competition in Hawai'i. I'm rather proud of it. That competition is sort of like a battle of the titans, so getting into the top 10 is quite something.

If I ever wear the medal again I'll put it on its own chain, or find a necklace that can display both it and my regional medal. In the meantime I'll leave it on the light blue medal that I got it on.

Someday PoP will win the gold at international competition. That's the plan, anyways. Maybe I'll be back with them by then. In the meantime there's the slight problem of that I never seem to have both the time and money to compete with them anymore.

Looking at these brings back memories, though sharing those would make this post far too long.

Do you have jewelry or medals that bring back memories?