So...not much is new.

I moved to San Francisco, CA last Thursday night. I am looking at Golden Gate Bridge right now through my living room windows. I work at the Whole Foods across from Golden Gate Park off Haight and Stanyan. My roommate is pretty cool and our flat is really badass. Skylights, rooftop access, I can see GGB, blocks from the ocean, working a at a really cool store...etc etc. I'm really happy.

You've come a long way baby uh-huh!

Well...now that I've updated a little I feel inspired to update a little more.
What's new...
I'm taking 9 hours this semester at UT. I took 12 last fall, and had intended on 12 this spring, but I ended up dropping my statistics class-the homework was taking me 2-3 hours three times a week and I did not want to put myself through that. Last semester was rough-if I wasn't working or at school I was overeating, drinking, and/or smoking to deal with the stress. As of tomorrow I will have gone 100 days without smoking pot or drinking alcohol. Crazy, huh? I haven't gone to meetings or even thought about sobriety or anti-sobriety on a daily basis...just have other things I'd rather be doing. Every now and then when I'm exhausted and just want to zone out I think about smoking but in the end I find something else to do. I'm on campus Monday through Friday and working Thursday through Sunday nights...life is busy. I have been kind of down lately because I don't have much free time or energy to do intense workouts and be *in shape*...but I guess school is my main priority right now. That and saving money. I haven't had a car since December 28, 2010 and it's been okay. I do however now own two motorcycles, a 1981 Yamaha SR185 and a 1974 Honda CB450. I love them and have been learning so much about mechanics! I am being as safe as one can possibly be and taking my time getting comfortable driving around town. I'm a junior at UT now... I'm in the International Honor Society... I'm in the College of Education for Kinesiology and Health Promotion. I want to go to grad school for Exercise Science or Nutrition...something to do with a holistic approach to wellness. I want to move around. I'd like to live in Brooklyn...that's my plan for when I graduate December 2012. I'm saving lots of money now that I don't have a car payment and I'm working more. I'm officially off of community supervision March 19th...didn't fuck up once *knocks on wood*. Overall I'm much better. I'm afraid I'm just wearing myself out lately... always trying to find a balance. I've come a long way and I don't give myself enough credit!!

1. Make a list of 5 things that you can see without getting up:
- my old raleigh road bike
- my kitchen
-my breakfast-cinnamon toast waffles (first time in YEARS!)
- Lucy my cat
- yoga mat

2. How do you style your hair?
lately...bleh. shampoo (every other time), CONDITION, mousse, silk therapy hair serum, and it eventually ends up in a messy bun :/

3. What are you wearing now?
jeans, flannel shirt, sambas...basically what I worked in yesterday :X

4. What's your occupation?
full time student, venue server @ whole foods

5. What do you hear right now?
my neighbors, birds chirping

6. Who was the last person you hugged?
a friend from work

7. What is/was for dinner?
granola! ha!

8. What did you do today?
just got back from walking to the store for some breakfast foods...talked to my dad for about an hour on the phone...hmm..

9. Dog person or cat person?
cat but i wish i had room for a dog!

10. If you had to change your name, what would you change it to?
Hmm.. I used to want to change it to Roxy HA terrible I know. I think I'm okay with Whitney. I like Whitney.

11. What was the last thing that you bought?
food!

12. If you could afford to go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
I'd go on one of those 365 day cruises around the world! <---these exist?! That sounds amazing. I would go to Europe and go EVERYWHERE!

13. Where do you see yourself in five years?
OUT OF SCHOOL! traveling!

14. Where's your birthmark?
on the back of my right leg...although you can't really see it anymore!

15. What are you doing this weekend?
working...

16. If you could play any musical instrument, which one would you play?
piano! some day i will!

17. How tired are you?
worn out...no energy. hate feeling like this!

18. What is/was your favorite thing about today?
so far, talking to my dad :)

What a day. Woke up to the sound of my alarm buzzing at the ass crack of dawn/six this morning. It was like any other Tuesday morning-wake up extra early, make coffee, shower, get a good hour of studying in before my biology lab quiz, catch the bus at 7:30, arrive on campus around 7:45, take said quiz. So I did just that-caught the bus at 7:30, actually right as it was pulling up and distinctly said "ah ha!" to myself for having such good timing. Arrived at the usual PCL bus stop around 7:40 and went to class, like any other day… In hindsight, if I had missed that bus, if I had been 1 minute later, I would have had to wait 13 minutes for the next bus, and thus would have arrived right at the time the shooter was first seen on campus, running down Speedway towards the busy intersection PCL is known for. My 8 AM class went as planned, until about 8:30 when a girl next to me showed me a text from the UT alert system regarding an armed shooter on campus. I didn't think too much of it…who the hell knows why? I guess you figure someone in a higher position will have a better idea of what's going on. Lesson learned. To my credit, I received a the same text moments later, a professor ran in confirming said shooter and at that moment I decided I needed to listen to "me" and find a safe, locked room. A couple of us found said professor's office and decided to duck in for cover. Here we spent the next three hours watching the news, listening to the radio, receiving/sending mass texts, facebooking, and eating grapes. I even got to pee in a Dixie cup while the teacher smoked a cigarette out of a crack in her window. Thankfully some humor can be shed on this situation considering no one was hurt other than the 19 year old gunman, Colton Tooley, who ended up taking his own life with an AK-47 on the 6th floor of PCL (which also happens to be my favorite quite place to study). Let the controversy over concealed weapons on campus begin...

Feeling all mixed up right now. One foot is in the past, the other is in the future. Yes, you guessed it, I've been pissing on the present.
Anxiety, depression, binge eating, purging, overexercising, under exercising, bloated, hungry, tired, restless...These things have followed me around for a good ten years now...
I feel hopeless. At the same time, something tells me to get up and keep going. But I'm at a loss. I set out to get rid of so much shit a few weeks ago-amusing as it is, my clean-up mission was sparked by a short bout of an online dating experiment. "Who am I representing? How have I changed? What do I need? What do I not need?" Mostly, "what do I want my living space to say about me?" There goes the pirate flag hanging over my window, goodbye stuffed animals (seriously!), and pretty much anything that had dust on it/a cartoon character on it was promptly thrown in a box and placed in my storage unit. I've spent the last 4 hours rifling through said storage unit, throwing out plenty of trash, old receipts, dirty clothes, forgotten trinkets, Christmas decorations, etc. What am I preparing for? I guess I'm fantasizing about walking away from it all. Move away to a deserted place, live simply, work on an organic farm. I know plenty of friends that are involved in the WWOOF organization, a world wide organization that is comprised of thousands of farms and farmers/volunteers networking together. The farms I am mostly interested in are located in Hawaii and are pretty simple-you work for 2-6 hours a day and are given a place to live and food to eat. Perhaps I have totally lost it. I'd like to say I have thrown my hands in the air and caution to the wind but that is not entirely true. I start @ UT in a week, I'll only be at Whole Foods 3 days a week, I'm "working towards my future." Perhaps I've been watching too many things like "No Impact Man", "Out of the Wild", and reading things like "The Food Revolution", all centered around questioning the norm, questioning our lifestyles full of waste, greed, unhappiness, gluttony, and complexity.
I just feel so stuck. Must work, must go to school, must get a career. I don't like playing this game. Do the means justify the ends? Will I find out too late?
I started sorting through boxes upon boxes of old clothes with the intention of getting rid of them, thus giving myself more space, less clutter, more room to think and live clearly. This was definitely not the case. Holding a pair of jeans I wore only once, I am taken back to that time, and with almost all of them I remember still not feeling good about my body. I can't remember the last time I was perfectly happy with my body. It's been well over ten years. This feeling of inadequacy has followed me around, having a roller coaster effect on my emotions and relationships and creating a wedge between myself and the outside world.
I can't remember the last time I was truly happy for a prolonged amount of time. Only short spurts of happiness over trivial things like weight loss or retail therapy.
Getting rid of all of these things, I can't help but think about people who are preparing to kill themselves. A warning sign is an impulse to give away all of their belongings. IDK why I thought about this. Sure I think about killing myself but there's that stupid glimpse of hope that keeps me hanging on for another beating. With that said I don't know if I'll live past 27. I don't think I can take doing all of this over and over for that long.
The only thing keeping me in Austin right now is school. I figure I'll give it a chance before I completely walk away.
Sorting through all that shit, I realized I've felt so few emotions for so many years. I just wanted to feel alive. Feel something. Some kind of emotion. Going through all that stuff only made me feel more depressed. My life has been this way for so long I don't know if it will ever change for good. Where does one go from here? I guess I'll just keep going through the motions, it's the only way I get by now.

I GOT ACCEPTED INTO UT FALL 2010! AHHHH!

I'm excited and extremely nervous! So much pressure!! I've been the worst/best? procrastinator this semester!

I don't even know if anyone reads this thing anymore, sad really! But I wanted to come back and declare my state of clarity, motivation, and creativity. I've been sober for a little over a month now, just because. I haven't told myself I can't do anything, I just haven't wanted to. I'm keeping myself busy with school, physical exercise, maintaining a clean home, staying positive, exploring Austin, saving money, working five days a week at Whole Foods (still...almost two years!) I can honestly say I am at the top of my game right now. My mind is in a good place. And life is not perfect. I am still paying $140 a month to the state of TX for my "obstruction of a highway" last August. I am still trying to find a balance between exercise and food, but it's not like it was before, not even close. I've let go of many negative relationships and sprouted many positive ones. I'm growing up dude. My nails are clean, long, trimmed. My teeth are flossed. My apartment is clean. I save money. I eat well. It took a long time for me to get here man. I love to learn. I'm appreciating the good and the bad in life.
Some things do change.
Hope you guys are doing well.

I can't stand to read old journal entries, most especially ones I wrote when I was 17-20. I hope I'm not that wild or angry anymore. I'd like to think I'm much more mellow now, and a wee bit wiser. Lots of things have changed since I was 19.
I applied to the University of Texas-Austin last week. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I get accepted for this Fall. I need some sense of direction. If I don't get in I think I might throw all of my stuff in my mom's garage and travel the world! Well, that's what the superhero in me wants to do anyway. These rose colored glasses sure do make things pretty, but I can't seem to stop tripping over my own feet.
In just a few short months I will have successfully worked at Whole Foods Market for two consecutive years. This is a huge milestone in my life, haha, being that it is the longest time I've ever worked at the same place. I can't really see myself working anywhere else in Austin, TX, but I will admit I daydream constantly about working less, spending less, saving more, and making my health a priority, all whilst finishing school. Then I remember how well I do with idle time and it all falls to pieces.
So much changed, but then again so many things are the same.
I'm afraid some things will never change.

rough draft. been writing 5 hours straight. will edit later. but read! and enjoy :)

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