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Carlela
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Name: Carla
Interests: I love beauty. I love art and I love color. I love sun dresses and flowy fabrics. I love rain and I love sunshine. I love downtown and I love, love, love the mountains. I love saxophones, banjos, harmonicas, and djembes. I love coffee houses and being "bohemian". I love contra dancing. I love the way I think and learning the way you think. And I love to be lost in my own thoughts. I love people and their different personalities. I love free spirits, possibly because I am one.
Expertise: Observing. Escaping. Or at least wanting to very, very much.
Occupation: Artist
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  BeautyOfLettinGo
Member Since:
3/29/2004
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| I always want to write, but never do.
It's my last couple of weeks here, and things are moving awkwardly like a painfully badly acted high school play. Everything is going frustratingly wrong. Christmas was high-tension family affair where no one wanted to be around. Except for me, sitting on the couch watching movies like a slob. Friendships are going to be left off in strange, unreconciled places and I just don't know what to do about it. My mother is driving me nuts. Between her overbearing hope that I will date her Mr. Perfect and scheming going away parties that I have clearly told her I DO NOT want, I'm playing the role of the teenager trying to sneak out of the house again. Finished up preparations for school isn't coming together well at all, and I've spent several hours contemplating if it's really what God want's me to do because of all these hurdles. (I've concluded that God doesn't send hurdles if there's something he doesn't want you to do, he STOPS you in your tracks. It's Satan that sends hurdles to discourage you.) There's no Gathering this weekend, a high school retreat that all of us college-aged people always go to because we simply can't stop coming. It was rescheduled to a one-night event during President's day weekend; I don't want to speak badly about it or the people who planned it, but it's not much of a retreat being only one night. Who knows if the retreats will ever be the same? I know our church will never be the same. I can't think about that too much because it just makes me sad. And, if you can't tell, I'm being an emo-kid these days.
I can't wait for things to be different.
I guess I only write to say things that I know I will never say in real life. | | |
| Today my boss asked me a question that took me off guard by the utter directness of it. I fear that I did not answer the question well. I was wary of a secret agenda that sort of caused my answer to be disappointingly indirect. I was so busy trying to read his actions that I forgot he would be reading mine.
The question he asked me was this: Are you an honest person?
I had to think about this. My first response was "Yes, I don't like a double life." Ugh. Once again, my intention is lost in the off-beat logic that stumbles out of my mouth. I suppose that he may not think of me as an honest person because of my incompetence at this job. I often am not "working hard." Partly because there is often NOT enough for me to do and partly because I find this job to be so un-stimulating (nice way of saying boring) and often very, very frustrating. The times when it is like that I will go into my own world. And then I act shady, trying to cover it up. I suppose that is that sense, I am not being honest.
However, I am an honest person.
I feel as though that answer should be simple. It should not require an explanation or evidence presented as bulleted points. It is a simple answer because there is only one answer. You vocally offer the answer of "yes" and then allow your life to fill in the blanks, to match up to that. Or to not match up.
Here is my defense:
I may have moments of dishonesty, and I will surely encounter future situations when I am tempted to be dishonest. But, there have been points in my life when I only seemed comfortable telling lies and convincing myself that my life was something that it was not. I am no longer that person. I know who I am, and I am (in a certain sense) okay with it. My strengths, and my flaws, I know them and I will share them. I do not live in denial of myself. I think that is a part of why we all lie, to convince ourselves that we did not, once again mess up. To convince ourselves that we are better people, live better lives than we actually do. It is one more method we use to escape reality. That is a huge factor in why I will lie. If others can believe it, then why shouldn't I? However, I no longer feel enslaved to that compulsion to alter the reality of my life. Whether that be maturity or change from Christ, I know that that difference is there.
That is how I know I am an honest person.
I know that I am simplifying the definition of an "honest" person here to simply a person who does not lie. I know that living an honest life implies more than that. However... that's still my answer. | | |
| Today I am really struggling with want vs. need in one of the most practical ways. Clothes. Lately I feel as though the clothes that I wear are unflattering, ugly, outdated, weird, and I'm sick of them. It shouldn't take me 20 minutes of mental agony to end up throwing on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. I don't even want to wear the jeans and t-shirt. I really want to buy more, but I have not the money. And really, what I need to solve this problem is NOT more clothes. But less materialism. And more creativity. I hate the fact that I cannot seem to make myself look the way I want to look. I'm thinking about making more clothing with organic and renewable fabrics like bamboo and organic cotton. I'm really excited about it, but I simply don't have the time to really pursue it. One of the first things I would like to do is make scarves out of the bamboo fabric and sell them. Bamboo is such a great material, so silky. And sewing scarves is not time consuming and ridiculously simple. Maybe people would buy them? But I would love to make dresses out of the bamboo and skirts out of the cotton. Those are my goals. To make them for myself, because I don’t have time to make all that would require to sell them. And I doubt my mad sewing skillz are even good enough to sell anything, haha. Well………. That’s all for now. | | |
| The other day I was eating lunch at Whole Foods (I'm a vegetarian at lunch time) by myself, as usual. I looked out the window and this lady walked past with her cart. She had 3 children under the age of 5 in that cart, and a baby. The baby was black. I WANT HER LIFE! Yes, that's how I always saw myself. A grocery shopping cart half full of groceries, half full of kids. Adopting children of different races, creating a family like a great big, cuddly quilt of different colored fabrics, foster parenting... I never thought I would pursue a career. About two years ago a friend of mine (who is a second grade teacher and now getting married in December) and I went through a book called "Fearlessly Feminine." Can you tell that this book was not my idea? Anyway, I think I read maybe half of it. But I did pick up a few things from it. The thing that most impacted me was the concept of motherhood that the author wrote about. There was a whole chapter about motherhood, and most of the chapter said the usual stuff. But then she talked about single women, and addressed the issue of those who want to have children but never do. What she emphasized is that motherhood is not limited to families, that all women are mothers in a general sense. This I find to be encouraging, and has, in a way, shaped how I view my future. I know that even if I do not give birth to babies, or adopt them, or even become a foster parent, that I will have children. If I choose to take care of, teach, and help children to grow and become adults, that I will be a mother. That's just... encouraging. But I am still only 20 years old, haha. I don't suppose that I'm an old maid yet. Just because things don't happen on my timeline doesn't mean that they won't happen. I guess I just feel like with my decision to go back to school that my time and money will be tied up and I won't be able to get married and have kids. Especially the money, because I'm going to have to take out so many loans that I don't know if I will EVER be able to stop working. Or die, because I will still be paying off loans. Ooooh, how I hate that. But, the Lord is taking care of me and shaping my life in a way that I cannot yet comprehend. | | |
| So, I'm sitting here at work and ignoring all that I should be doing. Which isn't much. Buuuuut, anyway, I'm looking at cameras online. Wondering if there's any way I could ever afford one that I really want. And then it hits me. Do I REALLY want to go back to school? Do I really want to spend years getting myself into thousands of dollars in debt only to have a job that won't pay that well (woohoo teachers!)? Do I really want to commit my money like that years down the road? Do I even really want to chase around a bunch of kindergardeners for the rest of my life? Honestly, I think that sounds like fun... haha, but anyway. Choosing to do that would mean that right now I cannot buy a camera. And I need to learn to be okay with not having everything I want. I get so off track sometimes. I don't really know what I want in more of a long-term sense. I just know that right now I really want a camera and I wouldn't have a problem buying it on my credit card and paying it off for the next few months if I wasn't going back to school. Poop. | | |
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