Single Teenage Girl Writer and That One Guy

Hello all! Sorry for missing a post last week. Here's what's been going down.
We had a good Christmas with the WHOLE family here and did some Christmassy wintery stuff. It was fantastic. I've honestly seen more movies in the past week than I've probably seen in my entire life. (That's a major hyperbole, but for those of you that don't know I don't particularly like movies; I can never focus on them, and going to see movies in theaters makes me extremely anxious most of the time.) But they were all fantastic; The Man Who Invented Christmas (I mean, I can't just NOT enjoy a movie about Charles Dickens), The Last Jedi (I'm in love with Star Wars I'm in love with Star Wars I'm in love with Star Wars), and The Greatest Showman. (That one was more good than fantastic, but it was still a really good time, would watch again, the soundtrack is jammin', and it helped me heal my damaged relationship with Zac Efron. Also, who knew Hugh Jackman could dance that well?) And hey, before that I saw Wonder with Morgan and her mom and I was shocked at how much I liked that movie even though I was super anxious that night.
We've spent a lot of time chilling out. Like, a lot. I, a person who also doesn't watch a lot of TV, have also been reminded of the beauty of quality television. (The Friends truly are always there for me and Psych is the ultimate television program. Disney Channel throwbacks were enjoyed, but the Camp Rock films while comforting are noticeably less high-quality than the High School Musical films. It's beyond noticeable that they are not Kenny Ortega films.)
Oh yeah, and I got a biopsy. It was mildly stressful but now there's one more random thing in my life that I've done that I can overdramatize.
Anyway, here I am again relatively ill. However, I NEED to get better for tomorrow because I may go sit in on Basic's rehearsal for Little Shop of Horrors. Which I cannot do if I am ill. So PLEASE PRAY A LOT because I could jam out to Alan Menken by myself or I could jam out to Alan Menken with the most talented kids in the world.
It's a new year, new face, new makeup, new focus on writing and my life and happiness. I have been letting a lot of things get to me too much. When I get back to school, I'm reading more, writing more, working more, going on walks to my favorite places or just around, I'm making myself busy because when I'm not constantly going I'm losing my mind, and my current schedule is not making me as busy as I typically like to be, so I have to do it myself. Think of all the progress that can be made!
Anyway, today I am going to speak my TRUTH. My vulnerable single teenage girl truth. I, being a mature eighteen years old, am very wise. And I genuinely believe there are not enough people looking out for teenagers. Do adults just forget what it's like or something? Why do people treat children like they're not people? They're still people, just young underdeveloped people. They still have problems. Don't tell a teenager--scratch that, don't tell a person--that they don't have real problems. There's no such thing as a fake problem. If something is bothering you, that's a problem. No matter what it is. No one is looking out for the teenagers. No one is listening to the teenagers. No one is speaking to them. Teenagers need LOVE like any other human. They need to feel HEARD. If only there was someone writing for the teenagers. Like, speaking their truth for them or something. I wonder who could do that.
To get more specific about the teenage wisdom I want to share today, I was born a writer and a storyteller. I used to narrate life when I was super young, I would make up stories verbally or on paper, and I have been journaling since the beginning of time. Journaling is very therapeutic in that it is a way to think out loud privately; physically feeling and writing out your thoughts does it in a way nothing else can. It's also an excellent writing exercise, because if you write about your life, you don't have to worry about developing plot. The plot is already there. You can't get it wrong. All you have to do is find the most accurate and beautiful way to tell it, and I really like the opportunity to write a personal narrative and try to tell it to the best of my ability without an audience.
As a teenage girl who is very honest about herself and her feelings, I also know that just about every tragic story begins with, "So there was this guy."
Don't take that the wrong way, but most of my sad stories have to do with some guy I was tripping over, or someone else was tripping over, or a disaster of that sort. This is to the writer and journal-writer in your teenage girl heart. As a young girl first feeling an attraction for a boy, in middle school, people called me boy crazy, and I didn't really get it at the time because I am a WILDLY loyal person and I will stick with someone until they destroy me, and even a little bit after that sometimes. I've always defined "boy crazy" as just chasing after boys in general, and I was never really the type of person to jump from guy to guy. But now looking back on it, I know what they were talking about.
I would write about him a lot and think about him obsessively and I wish I could go back to preteen Lizzo and tell myself that he isn't everything.
I still have the journals from back then and his name and stories are in there way too much. I want to let you young teenage girls know some things.
Please do write about him, because he is a part of your life and there is no reason you should pretend your feelings don't exist.
But I even remember writing about having some problems with who he was, and write about them as if it was my job to fix those things about him.
If you have a problem with who a guy is, that you used to really care about, you are not obligated to like him still just because you liked him then.
I think that's a good reason why you should try to control how much you let him consume your thoughts anyway, because if it does get to that point it's almost like he's a part of you and you may be afraid of letting that go, because it would feel like letting go a part of yourself, and a part of yourself that you previously really liked.
But he is a PART of your narrative. He is not the narrative itself.
I'm not entirely certain what did it, but when I was thirteen I kind of came to my senses and thought, "What the heck am I doing?"
I dropped the guy. My friends became a really important part of my life, and I had really good friends that I started appreciating more, and it makes me so happy to think about those eighth grade friends because I have always had an unconscious appreciation for female relationships and I love having my closest friends be my fellow girls. I read more. I wrote more and developed a lot of stories, most of which didn't stick but it exercised that part of my mind. I LOVED being in choir. I started thinking about my future at Basic, and that year the mission age changed, so for the first time in my life that became a possibility for me.
I became a more diverse person once he was gone. I'm not saying he has to be gone for everyone. He had to be gone for me. But the well-balanced life is the ideal life. So many bad periods of my life were because I was too focused on one thing, and that one thing was almost always one guy. This is youth! Youth is the time to figure out your own personal self, to try things so you can find out who you really are. Why focus on one thing when this is your time to really live and figure out where you want the rest of your life to be.
When you write, write about him. But write about so much more.
I got better at taking up writing about school, family, friends, choir, color guard, EVERYTHING that was happening instead of ONE THING that was happening. I wrote about a guy if there was a guy, but I wrote about everything else. I told my full story instead of just one part of it. I frequently even just write my random opinions and thoughts on things. Life is so much better when it is well-balanced. That has never not been true. Tell your story the way it is really happening.
Write about the way things feel. Write about the way it feels to run laps with the color guard, how it felt in your lungs and your legs and your heart and your smile. Write about the exact way you started  and continued crying when your friends broke your heart. Write about the way the air feels on the choir's yearly trip to California. Write about the way your heart hurts when the sun hits the grass in a specific way in the morning and it feels exactly like the morning of a band competition, a moment you will never be able to go back to. Write about what made you cry in the shower. Write about what made you smile when you were just sitting at home with your family. Write about the moment you decided to take the risk. The moment you knew exactly what you needed to do about a given situation. And heck, write about how it felt when your eyes locked with his and you were just sitting at a piano smiling like an idiot because you were all caught up in your feelings for a second.
Life is so interesting. Bask in all of it.
The moral of my story today is that he isn't everything and I wish my poor younger self knew that. When I let myself live outside of a box, I really live.
Thanks and much love.
--Lizzo

Disney Princess Series: Pocahontas

Helloooooooooo.
I mean, I wanted to write a post once a week, and I guess I have time to do that, but even still I wasn't planning on really doing this today, but I'm in a super writer mood right now and I need to write SOMETHING. Which has been hard lately because, as many of you already know, I finished Story 2's second draft, so it is on hold until after the mission, and finished Story 1's FINAL draft, so it is on hold until I get started actually working toward publication. Yay for middle grade literature!
I haven't been doing much the past week because I have been pretty sick the past few days. I have gotten to see the choir sing quite a few times and do stuff with my mom and see Jacob's dance show and go out with Morgan and stuff like that. Plus Emily and Josh just came into town for Christmas so we're super hyped! I went in to see the chamber singers (but in all actuality I came because my Alto Illuminati sister Alex was going to be there) yesterday and then Morgan said she was going to try on Little Shop of Horrors costumes (Just in case I haven't bragged about this to you guys yet, she's playing Audrey) so I was like "CAN I COME" and so I got to do that with her and talk to her and Mr. Calkins about the show and Morgan's costumes for 5ever, and I got to help Morgan sing a little bit (Bless her and her patient soul) and talk to her and after that I was on a character high so I tried writing some verse or whatever but nothing was coming out so here I am, writing a blog post I probably don't even feel good enough for but I need to express some sort of creativity somewhere. AH.
(To be so honest sorry if my writing isn't even coherent right now. We're gonna blame it on the illness, whether or not that's actually what it is.)
Okay, so today we're adding another installment to the Disney Princess Series. And this is honestly immensely fitting, because in history this semester we were learning about Pocahontas, and a lot of it was kind of based on a comparison to the Disney film, and how inaccurate that movie is. Which made me irrationally angry.
And I guess what they were saying was legitimate, because a lot of them didn't know the true story of Pocahontas. But even still, I was getting a little tired of the Disney hate.
When I watch Pocahontas, I'm not doing it to get a history lesson. I'm doing it because I love Disney and Alan Menken and Disney Princess. If you've graduated high school and you don't know the true story of Pocahontas, I'm not blaming you, but I do think your history teachers were pretty bad. They don't have to explain the entire story to you, but they should probably say, "Yeah, so if you've seen the Disney movie, none of that was real. They weren't in love and she didn't save him, she actually ends up living with the colonists and moving to London and it's a lot more complicated than all of that." I know that people probably have more of a problem with this because it's a thing that really happened, as opposed to all the other fairy tales they've modified, but I'm still okay with watching a Disney film just to enjoy a Disney film, whether it's based on true events or not.
That's what you need to keep in mind when you read the following. We're aware that we're not talking about real events; we are talking about the fictional character Pocahontas and not the real person.
I first saw Pocahontas either senior year or junior year, I can't remember which. It was honestly a shame that I hadn't seen it, because I'm really big Disney fan and almost a bigger Alan Menken fan and I absolutely love the Disney Princesses, but I hadn't seen that film, and I knew that was a necessity. My mom had told me that she was super disappointed when it came out because it was like they didn't even try, and I know what she's talking about. The animation is pretty low-quality, and not because it's older. Beauty and the Beast came out in 1991 and is an animation masterpiece. Pocahontas came out four years later and is way worse. Definitely not up to Disney's standard at the time. But I still liked it. I think (even for being low-quality) it was a pretty movie and I think Pocahontas is an even prettier character.
That was the initial main reason I liked the film. I think Pocahontas is beautiful.
Maybe because according to the blessed personality blog post by Oh My Disney, Pocahontas is identified as INFJ, which is the personality of your favorite stereotypical teen blogger. She is quiet yet bold and totally wise. In my own opinion, this is the best kind of person to be. I've found it's important not to talk unless you have something to say, because if you just talk to talk, people stop listening really fast, so when something actually is important no one is listening. Pocahontas is smart.
I was honestly in love with Pocahontas within the first few minutes of seeing her because she is so fun. Her ability to be so carefree due to her connection with the world and nature is the most admirable thing to me. Maybe it's because I've never been able to be that relaxed a day in my life, but Pocahontas is genuinely here for a good time. She's not here for uptight guys like Kocoum. (They actually spell movie Kocoum's name different from real Kocoom, which is pretty weird.)  But because she has love for her family and the people she still feels pressured into marrying him.
The answer to all your problems is following your heart, sis!
After that conflict is established, we meet the mediocre John Smith. However, Pocahontas is down to listen to him even though the other Natives are not. This is a plus to Pocahontas's quiet nature; she is willing to listen to others. She's so thoughtful and kind! However, she quickly realizes that John is not as quick to listen as she is. And she tells. Him. Off.
In a pretty kind way, but also super straightforward. Hold on, we gotta quote this directly. How utterly powerful are these lyrics?
"You think I'm an ignorant savage
And you've been so many places I guess it must be so
But still I cannot see if the savage one is me.
How can there be so much that you don't know?
You don't know."
Thank you for the wise words, Stephen Schwartz.
As Lisa Cimorelli would put it, Pocahontas hits him over the head with the frying pan of truth. She says that she understands what he's saying, but he won't take any time to realize that she's not the only one that needs to be educated. She willingly learns about his version of the world but he will not learn about hers. Truth and honesty is such a powerful thing, people! I can't say it enough.
And once she tells him this, John is suddenly willing to listen, and thanks to the honesty of Pocahontas he is able to see the beauty in her world.
Between this point and the end, there is a lot of falling in love and a lot of angst between the English and the Natives. What we're going to care about now is Pocahontas's boldness and her ability to stay true to herself, shown in three different examples.
The first example is when Kocoum catches Pocahontas and John totally making out and he gets super mad, right? That one random English guy, Thomas, sees Kocoum and John fighting and so he shoots Kocoum. And KILLS HIM.
Which, even after everything, makes Pocahontas totally mad. It's not that she wants to marry Kocoum, it's that she still cared about his well-being and hates violence and is, I don't know, a good person.
Fun fact: Morgan hates Romeo and Juliet. (Which is something I simply can't get behind, but that's okay.) One of the many reasons she hates it is how quickly she thinks Juliet gets over the fact that Romeo killed her cousin, Tybalt. Pocahontas doesn't do that. Kocoum is one of her people, and his death isn't just fine. She's pretty upset for a minute. She's not throwing that away for anyone.
The second example occurs as things start to go downhill from there super fast. The English and the Natives are both super mad at each other and about to viciously attack one another, including the Natives preparing to kill John. But our dear friend Pocahontas runs to the rescue and throws herself over John and doesn't let him die. She saves the day! She's the example of peace.
Imagine that. Imagine standing up for your enemy in front of all of your people. Imagine doing so against your father. Imagine potentially risking your life for someone you care about. How brave and awesome is Pocahontas?
The third example is after everything neatly wraps itself up. In short, John Smith and the other English people are going back to England. Pocahontas has a choice.
But honestly, was it ever really a choice?
Because yeah, Pocahontas loved John Smith enough to teach him what she knew and be his friend and save him from a violent death.
But she loved where she lived and who she lived with way more.
Her life pretty drastically changed in a short period of time, but something good that happened to her wasn't enough for her to let go of everything beautiful she already had. She doesn't go with him. She loves where she is. I don't know, I just find it so powerful that she doesn't go. And it was probably a little tragic, but leaving her home would've been disastrously painful. She stays where she wants to be.
Pocahontas always does what she wants. She follows her heart.
As should you.
Thanks and much love.
--Lizzo

"It's Quiet Uptown": A Hamilfanfic

Okay guys let's talk for a lil bit before we get started.
I've been wanting to do some sort of blog content, whether it be an actual post or a video, every week, so this post would have originally been scheduled for Thanksgiving week. However, you guys would be getting enough general content that week because I was at home and doing stuff with family and friends that week, so I decided against that. Then after that I only had two weeks of school left, and I figured it was better to just let myself sprint to the finish and get all of that done. Finishing school has been CRAZY. But hey, I got it all done, plus I got to work a lot, so that's good too.
While we're still kind of talking about school, a miracle happened.
This semester my English class is intro to academic writing, and it's been killing me. I won't lie, it scares me pretty freaking badly sometimes when I think about how one of my least favorite classes is my major. But I also think that makes a lot of sense, because I still love English and I can't see myself studying anything else, but it's also really discouraging to get to your new school and realize you know nothing about the thing that you were finally able to make yourself known for. (For all the family and high school friends still supporting the dream--YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST.)
Anyway, I've had to write three papers for that class and it's been rough going. The first was a sort of persuasive essay, the second a personal narrative, the third a group project rhetorical analysis. How my future looked and how I felt about it was pretty much weighing on that second paper, considering my desire to sell narratives to the public. On the first paper I got an 85. My professor then graded the third one next and me and my group got a 70. See? It definitely hasn't been easy. On Friday I got the grade for the second paper, the one that mattered the most for me. I couldn't even make myself look at it until Monday.
Guys. I got an A-.
Can you believe this?! I really might have a chance. Seeing that grade was yet another moment in my life where nothing felt impossible.
Guys. I am capable of writing narratives.
An A-. Oh my gosh.
I'm still stuck on it. I don't even know how to quite express to you guys how exciting that is for me. I am so happy, and it's looking like not all hope is lost for me.
My favorite thing is writing the missionaries and hearing from them. I've also officially come to the point where I can start my papers in a month. Lance (choir fam) and Mr. Calkins have already placed predictions of where I will labor. Prayers would be appreciated.
Why is it now that the time has come that people are telling me how hard a mission is, that there's no way to truly know what will happen? Guys. I know. I know because I try imagining what it will be like and I feel my body try to go there and it feels that it is so close to being there but still can't yet grasp it as a reality because I don't know what that reality is like. I know because I imagine life after the mission but I know that those scenarios are in no way accurate because I don't even know who I'll be after the mission. I know that nothing that I'm studying right now can prepare me entirely for what I will face out wherever, but I also know that Heavenly Father will bless me in the field because I'm trying.
People always tell me stuff will be hard, stuff I already know is hard, and stuff I want, and it's never harder than I imagine it will be. They told me being in chamber singers would be hard. They told me being in Fame would be hard. Both of those things were exactly as hard as I thought they would be, not always in the ways I thought they would be, but they were still as hard as I thought they would be, and I was ready for that because I knew that and I still wanted that and so I was willing to learn how to do those things. Now people are telling me a mission is hard and I'm so aware of that and I'm willing to go through that because I really want to do this and I'm willing to learn how as I go. What are people going to tell me next? That writing is hard? That building a career is hard? Marriage is hard? Having children is hard? Being famous is hard? I already know it's hard. Everything I want is hard. But I still want it and difficulty is not going to stop me.
You people reading this right now. When all of those things happen in the future, and people start telling me that it's hard, you will have witnessed this, and you will know that I am aware that getting what I want is difficult, but just because I am wildly hopeful and ambitious doesn't mean that I think it will be easy. I know life is hard, but I still want everything, and I don't see why I shouldn't get it. You heard it here first.
Anyway, I'm back in Henderson for a month, and I'm living for all these Christmas things. I went to the choir concert at Basic on Tuesday and got to listen to no lie the most BEAUTIFUL Christmas music I've heard in a minute, plus I got to sing the "Hallelujah" chorus with them all on the stage and that's really where home feels like. I was greeted on the stage after by almost everyone in my Henderson/Basic fam. It was honestly really great and I'm happy to be spending the month with you all.
Anyway, the purpose of today's post is to share a narrative with you all. (Friendly reminder about my stellar personal narrative grade, so that must make me good at this. I still can't get over it.) If you keep up with the blog's YouTube then you probably saw me and Jacob's cover of Hamilton's "It's Quiet Uptown". This narrative is a story I wrote based on that song. The date I have on the original copy is October 26, 2016. I wrote it in my imaginative writing class. We were told that day to just take out a piece of paper and write whatever we wanted. There were no requirements for that day's assignment. Well, it was difficult for me to come up with an idea in some ways, but at the same time it wasn't. Because that day I couldn't stop thinking about this song, and I kept painting a little story in my head of the song. But I didn't want to write something based off of that song. I wanted to write something else, maybe something that was mine. But I couldn't get the story out of my head. So eventually I let myself go for it. I tried being subtle at first, but then I just let myself write it as if it was about what it actually was about: Alexander Hamilton losing everything he had in a short period of time, as told by Lin-Manuel Miranda.
I only wrote two pages. I didn't even get to the part where he asks Eliza for forgiveness, and when he gets that forgiveness. And I haven't been able to bring myself to finish it. If you guys really want me to finish after you read this, let me know. If you're satisfied (*cringes at accidental Hamilton joke*) with how it is now, that's cool too. But I think that's why it feels a little incomplete, because it kind of is. This was never edited, but it wasn't effortless either. I guess you could say it's "got a lot of brains but no polish."
Enjoy. Thanks and much love.
--Lizzo
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He never would've imagined in all his life that he'd be living in the rich part of town. A year ago he would've been happy about that. A year ago everything was fine. He had some respect. His wife loved him. His son was alive.
The rain poured down onto the flowers. He watched the water roll off the leaves. He was drenched at this point. He'd been out here for nearly three hours. He didn't care. He liked the silence.
No, that wasn't true. He hated the silence. He missed arguing with his enemies. He missed the chaotic meetings. He missed his wife saying his name. He especially missed his son.
Yes, he hated the silence. But the silence in solitude was preferred to the muttering he heard in the street: "Poor man, lost everything he had at once. Doesn't have an ounce of respect. His wife won't even look at him. His son died only a week or so ago."
He was tired of listening to his own thoughts. He stood up, started heading toward the gate.
There she was. He looked in the window and saw his wife sitting in front of the fire. Her face was stained with tears, but she wasn't crying anymore. She stared at the ground blankly. He wanted to go comfort her; he wanted to do something that would take all her sorrows away. But he knew that no matter what he said, she wouldn't listen. Nothing he could do would be enough.
If things were different, he would have asked her to accompany him. Instead, he desperately gazed through the window a few seconds more, sighed, then walked out the gate.
He had a few moments of quiet before he hit town, the closest to peace he could get. Then he started seeing people filling the streets. He looked down. Maybe they wouldn't notice he was there.
But soon enough the people started talking. "Yep, that's him. Cheated on his wife and wrote about it for the entire world to see. Ruined his own life in just a few weeks. Did you hear about his son?"
He passed stranger after stranger, people who didn't even know him but knew his story. Tirelessly, unfeeling, his feet walked on, down the streets, unconscious of any destination. People glance at him as he passes. There is a quiet hum over the streets. Unlike his old home, the city is not very loud. His son would think it peaceful.
He glances at every tree. His son would love the way the green leaves shine against the gray sky. He looks in every shop window. His son would love the bright lights and colors. His son would love him, too. His son would be the only person that still loved him, if only he were alive.

Disney Princess Series: Jasmine

Hello all!
To be honest, there's not much to say in the form of an update. I've just been living the college dream. Part of me loves Jumpstart, part of me is just tryna graduate. (But I'm DEFINITELY GLAD I am doing this instead of literally anything else for general education.) I've been overwhelmingly aware of my upcoming mission, and I think about it just about every day. It's a beautiful thing. I have sadly been neglecting writing the missionaries for some time at this point, but I'm starting to get my life together. I've been thinking of lots of cool new ideas for blog content! Most of them probably won't be up for quite awhile for however many reasons, but I am really happy about all the developments. There is also hardly a moment where some writer thought isn't on my mind. There is so much that needs to be done, but what I forget is that I do have the time to do it, and I need to trust that Heavenly Father will help me out every step of the way. No need to stress.
Other than that, I spend my time in the Dead-End Jobs Club; featuring your favorite writer, Elizabeth Day; your favorite artist, Joshua Dimond; and your favorite musician, Emily Dimond. I really promise I wasn't planning on going to college with my siblings but heck I am LOVING IT.
Alright, today we are here to talk about another of our beloved princesses. Forgive me for any and all bias on this one, but she's my favorite, like, ever. In my favorite movie ever, with my favorite "Disney prince" ever, by my favorite composer ever. So yeah. Jasmine is my favorite.
Aladdin has been my favorite movie for a minute. Something about homeless boys in vests accompanied by Alan Menken that originally came out in 1992 really gets me. I think Jasmine became my favorite when I realized that we were pretty much exactly the same. We both are lowkey romantics. We're pretty fierce when you mess with what's important to us. We believe in love! And we have the biggest most beautiful eyes you've ever seen. (Not to brag or anything, but, I mean.)
(We both love Aladdin a lot.)
I don't even know if I can accurately state it, but she's the princess that I relate to the most.
When we meet Jasmine, she's just had her tiger attack one of her suitors. (Another thing we lowkey have in common: we're a lil crazy.) She tells her upset father one of the things I love about her the most: when she marries, she wants it to be because she loves someone.
It's not that she didn't want to be obedient. It's that she wanted to obey the law when it was good. She wanted to stand up for what was right. She wanted to genuinely mean what she was doing, not just do it. As I said before, she believed in love! And she knew that some things are so important that they can't have a deadline; when something isn't right, it isn't right.
It's actually quite interesting that this post comes at this time because I am pretty upset about some recent articles I have been seeing regarding the 2019 Aladdin film. The big deal that they're making is that they are making some much-needed improvements to Jasmine's character. Um, what? She wasn't enough for you the first time? The problem I see very often with the feminist movement is that people expect too much of women... and these expectations and judgments are usually coming from other women. They judge a woman for not being ENOUGH of a feminist, for not being empowered enough, for not challenging the system enough. Even to other women, women aren't enough. That's the real problem. If we can't support each other, what do we really expect? Are we really so bothered that Jasmine relied on a man as well as herself? Are we bothered that she didn't try to use her royalty for good enough? I'm going to counter those questions real fast.
Jasmine runs away to have a chance at being her own person. She is literally empowering herself right now by doing this, because she's never really gotten a chance to make decisions like that; she's giving that chance to herself. She is in absolute awe at what the world outside of the palace is like, and runs into Aladdin trying to help a child get an apple. (A naïve act, but that's part of what makes it so beautiful, plus it is a display of pure kindness, which is quite honestly never wasted.) She's quick-witted, as we find out while Aladdin tries to get her out of her bad situation that follows, her going along with the story he's weaving almost flawlessly. Don't be concerned about helplessness. It is okay to need help when you don't know what to do. That is not helplessness.
In a small yet truly iconic moment that once again displays Jasmine's fast mind, Aladdin takes Jasmine back to his, if I may, "penthouse in the sky", doing his cool little pole vault stunt to jump from one building to the next. Not expecting Jasmine to observe him (How can you not love observant and intelligent minds?) and figure it out quickly, he starts preparing another way across, only to find Jasmine has already crossed in the same way he did, saying, "I'm a fast learner." She's a risk-taker. Aladdin finds this totally attractive, as do all of us.
After spending a totally cute evening with Aladdin, our favorite street rat is taken away to the palace. Jasmine tries to stop them by revealing that she is the princess, but it was under Jafar's orders, so away Aladdin goes. (I'm trying to figure out whether or not the sultan's advisor really would have more say than the princess. I am genuinely stumped.)
Aladdin's capture wasn't for lack of trying on Jasmine's part, and not just because of that scene. When she goes back to the palace, she immediately questions Jafar on what happened to Aladdin, and doesn't try to hide her disapproval. Our girl is all about standing for what is right. However, she is told Aladdin is dead, and this devastates her. At that point, what can she do? She thinks it's over. She couldn't have known that Jafar is a LYING SNEAKY SNAKE.
After our hero (Aladdin) finds Genie in the Cave of Wonders and wishes to be a prince so Princess Jasmine will love him (This is what we call dramatic irony; we know that Jasmine already loves him even though he is not a prince), Jasmine meets Ali and is not impressed by how impressive he is trying to be. Jasmine is ultimately just very smart. She doesn't buy into flattery, and she continuously shows. She values genuineness.
Ali returns at her balcony and is not winning any points with Jasmine, once again because he's trying to win points. It's once he tries being quite simply himself that Jasmine starts becoming willing to listen. She adorably shows her amazement in the world when she agrees to go out with him once upon seeing his magic carpet. And it's a great night with him, and she knows that she genuinely loves him. However, he lies yet again and says that Ali was pretending to be Aladdin, not the other way around, once Jasmine calls him out. People that love honestly always know.
After saying that she won't marry Jafar, and then shortly after seducing him to help Aladdin win the fight against evil (In both cases always using her powers for good instead of evil), she finally gets an apology from Aladdin, which she accepts. However, she is very sad, because she does really love him but the law is still the law. Luckily, that is not the end: Jasmine gets the conclusion she REALLY wanted, to CHOOSE the right thing at the right time for the right reason.
To me, Jasmine has everything that I want to be. She's wildly intelligent and beautiful, breaking that age-old stereotype real fast. She wants love, but she wants it to be her love. She wants to be obedient, but she wants to obey what is good. She is aware of her capabilities and unafraid to test them. She started feeling trapped, but learned over time that it wasn't that she could be anything she wanted to be, but that she could be everything she wanted to be.
So can you, family, friends, followers, and fans. Thank you for the endless support. Thinking of you reading my words makes me feel not like I can do anything, but like I can do everything.
I love you.
--Lizzo

A Love Letter Regarding Vulnerability

Hello family, friends, followers, and fans! Let's have a quick update before we get to the point.
For starters, it is SO COLD here. It feels like winter in Vegas. Lately it's been quite literally freezing at night. It'll warm up for about a week, and then I think it's going to get colder again. This is absolutely wild; it's impossible to get warm. However, it's lowkey super beautiful and it has me very nostalgic for things like marching band, caroling, Christmas with the fam, and pretty much everything else that ever happened when it was cold.
I'm both taking a small number of classes and a large number of classes, thanks to Jumpstart.
Before I get too much into Jumpstart because I could literally say SO MUCH about Jumpstart, I'll talk about my classes that AREN'T Jumpstart.
My institute class this semester is Teachings of the Book of Mormon and it's literally the best. We just study the truths of the Book of Mormon using various scriptures and words from the living prophets. There's a different topic for each day and the talks are always super helpful to things I've been wondering about personally. This is definitely the class for me this semester.
I'm taking voice lessons! Sadly my lessons are only half an hour long because I don't have enough credits to take an hour-long class, but at least I still get to learn how to sing! My professor is amazing. It's lowkey super discouraging, because I could get away with thinking I was a good singer in high school... and now I can't. But I'm getting more and more okay with that every day and I'm honestly seeing myself improve. I really want to be a good singer because singing is something that's mattered to me a lot for a long time, and this is definitely a new adventure in that manner. I decided to compete in NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing), which I wasn't originally going to do. Haha, I should know better by now. I always end up doing the things I don't think I'm going to do. I can't say it loud enough, people. If you want to do it, please just go ahead and do it.
Alright, now I'll go ahead and talk about Jumpstart. For those of you that don't know what it is yet, it's a class that meets for three hours every day, and over the course of the year I will complete all of my general classes. (With the exception of math.) My particular class has an emphasis in stage and screen; the other one has an emphasis in national parks. The classes I'm taking are basically biology, physics, theatre, philosophy, history, communication, academic writing (I will have another English class next semester), and... integrated workflow solutions? (I'm getting credit for that, but I'm pretty sure no one thinks that's a real class.)This stage and screen track is super awesome because we talk A LOT about movies and plays in pretty much every class. For example, my English teacher used film trailers to explain thesis statements. We went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark accompanied by the Utah Symphony Orchestra and had assignments for various classes all based around that event-- for example, my theatre assignment was to write a reaction of viewing a recorded performance versus viewing a live performance, while my physics assignment was to observe and take notes on the way the instruments made sounds and how the hall affected the sound while the orchestra was warming up. Two professors give their lectures every day. Some days I know what class I will have, and some days I don't. On Friday I had theatre and English. Today I had physics and philosophy. I know I'll have philosophy again tomorrow, but I don't know the other class I'll have. The thing is, though, any of the professors can come to class any day even if they're not teaching. They all sit in the back of the room, and any of them can speak at any time, whether it's to ask a question or contribute to the thought or show how it relates to what they teach, or anything. For example, this is a real thing that happened today during our philosophy lecture, when we were talking about John Locke's perception of self and his idea of the soul and why it is not the same as self:

Philosophy professor: Is God just swapping out souls while you sleep?
Biology professor: Is that all sleep IS???
English professor: They're NEVER going to sleep; stop doing this!!!

(Stuff like that happens a lot in philosophy.)
Yeah, so it's a pretty good class, as good as any other. Some days we discuss Romeo and Juliet. (Which we were required to see at the Utah Shakespeare Festival for class. The best.) Some days we learn the structure of the human ear. (You can't have all perfect days.) Some days we're learning about the human reproductive system (something about cloning was in there somewhere too) with Phineas and Ferb references. Some days you're doing experiments about light. (Another painful day.) Some days we're learning about the different forms of comedy and watching clips from various TV shows, movies, and plays for examples. Some days we're editing sound into a clip from The Birds. Some days we're looking at a labeled picture of a human eye and I'm wondering why one of those words is irrationally jumping out at me.
(It was the freaking iris.)
So yes. School is going fantastic.
I've also just started making today an SUU Bucket List. It's a list of things to do while I'm at college whether they be unique to Cedar City or SUU. So be following me to see all of the stuff I do, because I'm super excited. Most of the stuff is stuff recommended from the ACES, some I got from Emily, Josh, and Paige (who has never been formally introduced on the blog but is as old a family friend as any), and some I just made up by myself. If you ever lived in Cedar City or went to SUU, feel free to suggest!
It's interesting that today's topic is what it is just because of what happened last night. I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep, and just thinking. And one of the thoughts I fell upon was when we found out that our guard coach, Trina, would be leaving Basic. I was absolutely devastated even though I wouldn't be there next year. And how comforted I was when the new coach, Tracy, came in and worked with us on technique. I could finally be at rest with the idea because she was really good and I knew my friends were going to be okay. I went back to think about the day I learned that Trina would be leaving and how upset I was, and how I was even more upset than I realized, until in choir we started learning our senior song ("On Top of the World" by Imagine Dragons) that day, the one we would sing at my graduation, and it was one of the songs I had always associated with color guard, and the news from earlier that morning was still heavy in my heart and I had cried and cried and cried and cried that day during class, and I couldn't stop crying and Becca hugged me after class and asked what was wrong I couldn't stop saying, "Trina's gone. Trina's gone." And that was such a heartbreaking day for me.
I was thinking about that memory last night. And before I was even aware of what was happening I was sobbing again, uncontrollably, shaking. From a memory of a sad day, I was crying as if it was happening right then.
It's not particularly new to me. I've been told many times that I am an emotional person. And it's true. One word that was used in particular once was that the emotion I am led by is vulnerability; to translate, I am led by emotion in general, completely unguarded. That was pretty hurtful the first time I heard it (which pretty much just proves the point), but the more I thought about it it was true. And it doesn't have to be hurtful. For a long time I didn't know that. But I've really come to terms with it, and it doesn't only not need to be hurtful, but it can be good.
I am addressing myself in this post, but it is something everyone needs to hear. In fact, while I will get relatively specific, if you ever need to fill your name in where mine is, go ahead. This is something you should be comfortable with.
I love you all.
Dear Elizabeth,
You have to very opposing talents. One of them is a talent of objectivity, and the other is a talent of subjectivity.
Your objective talent is your ability to attach and detach yourself from an emotion. You can clearly remember what anger from HOWEVER many years ago felt like. You can remember what you thought and how it made you feel about a specific situation. You can remember exactly why you cried or exactly why you smiled. And you can make yourself feel that again. But then when you're done feeling it, you can take it away again as if the emotion had never been there. You've viewed this talent as a writing gift, because it come in very handy that way. If you want to write about a specific kind of anger but you don't feel it anymore, you just call upon the memory of that specific kind of anger and you feel as if you still possess it. Then when you're done writing whatever you need to get done, you dismiss the anger, and it's not yours anymore.
Your other talent is a lot more general and honestly a lot more who you are. Your subjectivity talent. You are SO GUIDED by what you FEEL than by anything else. That's why you're terrible at forming arguments. You don't usually have a strong amount of reasons for anything; you just go with the way you feel, and that's what's correct to you. It applies to literally everything. Like, you have this weird way of knowing when you're reading a book and there's a typical love triangle WHO the protagonist is going to choose because you can feel it. You don't always need reasons; you can literally just feel it.
The latter talent has bothered you a lot because you seem to be the only one feeling sometimes. And you, funny as this is, don't particularly like standing out in ordinary situations. You're expressing your love for something and everyone disregards it. You're talking about a story you wrote and it's so real to you and no one else is even CAPABLE of caring as much as you do, and you know that, but you're still so discouraged because it is your heart and soul. You're saying that it hurts you to remember the production that turned your life around and you are told that "it's just a show". You're crying on the floor of a hotel hallway because there's been a crisis while you guys are on your choir trip and you're referred to as "a sensitive one". You're talking about how you are emotion-led and someone says they wouldn't say that about you, the way people tell you you're not fat when you call yourself fat as if you had just called yourself ugly.
Since you have both of those gifts, there are times in life when one takes over more than the other. And so in times where the objectivity takes over, you are simply LIVING. You're finally not the emotional one. And once you're aware of that, you get a little out of control. And you try SO HARD to not care about ANYTHING, even though caring and being honest about that is who you are. And once you do it for long enough, the whole "not caring" act starts to destroy you a little bit. Because that's just not who you are, Liz. It's just not.
Sometimes those periods of trying to be objective are good for you for that reason. Because when you're vulnerable, you can start to get down on yourself about that and equate that with being lesser. And once you try being objective about absolutely everything you realize that you can't do that, and you don't feel good about yourself, and you realize that you were fine just feeling, and you go back to just letting yourself do you, but this time you're more okay with it.
You once felt physically sick just thinking about the fact that people assumed that because you were going to continue performing you would be giving up writing. Your mom pointed out to you that that was because you are so emotion-driven. The idea that something you're feeling could just be thrown away as if it never mattered is absolutely foreign to you. You feel something, and it lasts for a long time. Maybe that's where the objectivity comes in. Even once you're done feeling the thing, you don't throw it out; you save it to be written about some other time.
Your vulnerability is good because it's honest. You are incapable of lying to people even in joking because what is simply is for you. Everything is as true as you can make it. Your vulnerability is good because it allows you to talk about emotional issues with people. You're not afraid of emotions, so you're willing to try someone else's on. This vulnerability even goes hand in hand with the objectivity, because you take their emotion and feel it as your own, and while you are never able to understand another person, you give it your best shot, and then you give that emotion back to them, and it helps them feel understood, because at least now you know. Your vulnerability is good because it allows forgiveness. You've only been capable of hating people you loved first, because you only hate when you feel betrayed. And once you do hate you know that that is hell for you, and you feel anger and you cry irrationally and then your emotional heart somehow finds a way to heal again and you ask for forgiveness and you give forgiveness and you form love again, and that is something that can only happen through vulnerability; if you weren't vulnerable, those hard feelings would stay forever and there would be no recovering. There are things you used to get wildly angry about, which is also due to your vulnerability, but now instead of getting angry, you just get sad. You just cry. And I honestly think that's better, because your sorrow will not hurt somebody else.
Of course you still have your weak moments, where you're insecure about the way you feel and you wonder why you of all people had to be this way. That's part of your vulnerability. You were born to feel the pain that comes with it, just like you were born to feel the joy. You make your own life exciting because you just let yourself go where your heart takes you. This is something beautiful about you. You don't need to be ashamed of it. It's not incorrect. It's actually good.
I love you a lot.
--Lizzo

Disney Princess Series: Belle

It has been just over a month since I last wrote. Luckily, absolutely nothing has been going on!!! I've just been continuously working and waiting for school to start. For those that care, we are on season nine of Friends.
So yeah, for the past month almost nothing has been going on, but the few things that DID happen are HUGE.
I got a job on campus! I'm a custodian in the Centrum Arena during the morning, every weekday. I've only been there for four days and it's proving to be amazing. I have one more week at Firehouse and then I am done there.
I moved in to my apartment! And I finally finished unpacking and my room is SO PRETTY. It sucks living without the fam, but I am super happy about my new place.
In the literary world, we've got some bad news: I would be done with Oliver Twist right now if it weren't for something that got in the way. But we also have some good news: the thing that got in the way was a request to review a book! I was sent a free digital copy of Countryside: The Book of the Wise by author J.T. Cope in exchange of an honest review. It was honestly really exciting to get to be a part of the literary world in some way, because I know in the near future I will be asking people for reviews as well. If you want to read my review of The Book of the Wise, you can do so here.
(Also feel free to give me a follow on Goodreads for more book reviews and things.)
Honestly, that's the most exciting thing. Ever since I moved I've been thinking a lot more about the literary world and envisioning my role in it. It's getting real, guys.
In fact, I always say to write with deadlines, right? Well, for my long-term works I don't, because I don't have any publication plans. But now that I've graduated high school and I'm getting closer to what I really want, I've started thinking about when I want to publish Story 1. So I set a goal. I have a long-term deadline. In five years, I hope you guys are all reading it.
By the end of the year, I have a goal to be done with Story 1's third (and final) draft (although there are bound to be changes once we can get accepted) and with Story 3's first draft. (Not super concerned for Story 2 right now. They can just chill, although I'd like to be done with their second draft. That would be nice.)
Alright, I'm sleep-deprived, dehydrated and without water, needing to do laundry, and there are a bunch of college students continuously screaming outside my apartment building. Let's do this.
Today's featured princess (you can reference the previous Disney Princess Series post here) was one of my favorites for a long time. She's brave and fiery and feminine and beautiful. We love Princess Belle.
An interesting thing about Belle's character is that when the makers of the film were creating her, they added her love of books because they wanted to give her characters more substance than just wanting to fall in love. Which is funny, because if you take a look at the original "Beauty and the Beast" fairy tale our heroine didn't have any intention of falling in love either. However, Belle's love of literature was very intentional, to give her some depth and desire and human quality. That's the thing about fairy tales, is the characters in those are very cookie cutter, because unlike most written works, the point of the story isn't the characters, so the characters don't need to be anything special. When these stories are adapted to films or other pieces, the characters can be enhanced, leading us to the Belle we know and love today.
Belle is amazing because she shows us the diversity in beauty! Some of our other princesses were beautiful because they wanted love. Their life was at a standstill and they felt love had a lot to offer them. Belle is beautiful because she wasn't seeking love. Belle loved herself in a really vulnerable way, in that she still had insecurities about her-- wondering why the people of her town talked about her the way they did. But that didn't stop her from being herself, because while it is perfectly okay and normal to be bothered by what people think of you, you still can't let that stand in the way of you doing you.  She's herself the entire time, no matter what people think. She loves her dad and she loves her books, and that's what she lets affect her.
Belle is where you take notes on how to resist creepy and gross boys, ladies. You're worth more than a Gaston, sweetie.
Alright, but back to her loving her dad. So when Maurice gets held hostage by this giant scary beast, Belle takes his place in an act of absolute selflessness and bravery and takes his place. I think the thing that is especially noteworthy here is first her determination, because it radiates such an intense amount of strength. The second noteworthy thing is that she has a breakdown once her father is gone. Because you're allowed to feel and have heartbreak even when you're being strong and brave, my dears.
Here's what we need to understand: Belle was not in love with the Beast for a very long time. (She doesn't get to see how much of a TOTAL SWEETHEART he is like we do as viewers.) She doesn't even like him at first. Then she runs away, and when he saves her from the wolves, she knows that anyone who is willing to do what he did can't be all bad. They come to a beautiful understanding. And then they're best friends. (Aww.) Through that, they fall in love, so much that the Beast is willing to let her go. We can remember how Belle wasn't looking for love, but then she found it, and it turned out to be the right thing for her and what she wanted, and so she was willing to accept it. She accepted the good she found in her life, lifted herself from misery, and lived happily ever after.
She followed her heart!
And that is always the moral of the story on the blog. Belle is one of our princess heroines because she was willing to follow her heart throughout.
There's your daily reminder to do that, my faves. Your heart is good and it will take you good places.
Continual thanks for supporting my writing so much. It means everything to me, so all the love that any of my writing gets means the world.
With that said, thanks and much love.
--Lizzo

Something About Positivity

OKAY.
This post is actually overdue, because I made my due date yesterday (Don't write without a due date.) and didn't write it. This one's going to be a cute little hybrid of an update on my life and what the post is actually supposed to be about. SO. Let's start with the insanely long update.
Since writing my last post, I have spent one more week at home and then moved to Cedar City. School starts in a little over a month. Cedar City is BEAUTIFUL. Everyone here loves Shakespeare and it's the theatre capital of the world. A highlight is the Shakespeare Character Garden. (At least for me; it's probably just cool for everyone else.) I recently got a job at Firehouse Subs. I've been reading more than I have in a long time. I'm taking the Parables of Jesus class at the institute and I'm in a YSA (Young Single Adult) ward. The ward's great, but I do sometimes get concerned about the fact that it often takes me a number of months to a year to make friends... and I'm only living for a year. At a bunch of church activities there are treats after and everyone socializes, so I guess that's how everyone else makes friends.
Eating... and socializing? *groans in frustration*
I'm figuring out ways to try a little harder.
That's not to say I haven't met nice people, though. I really have, I like them a lot. I just have a hard time getting comfortable.
Alright, but here's the thing I gotta tell you about Utah culture. Utah culture is immensely different from Vegas culture, and that's relatively fine. There's only one problem, one weird thing about the culture here. The weird thing is RAIN.
I'm from a hot (like, really hot) desert where when it got unbearable at band camp I would say it's not hot until it's 120 to keep things light. Because, like, that was realistic. And when it rained, we would all run and scream and throw a party and play in it and it was so much fun. But here, it's not like that.
For starters and on an unrelated note, it gets cold at night in the summer.
But as far as rain goes, people from Utah sometimes brag about their minor drought and how when it rains they could definitely use it. Oh yeah, Utah? Then why the heck are the gutters in your streets deeper than the Pacific Ocean, and almost always flowing like a river even when it's sunny outside? Who even thought to make gutters that deep? Maybe they're always so full because instead of watering your grass (THERE IS SO MUCH GRASS AND SO MANY TREES, LIKE, WHERE IS THE DIRT) there are constantly sprinklers directed at the sidewalk. (Like literally I see sprinklers watering sidewalks more here than I have anywhere else.) Maybe you wouldn't be having this drought problem if you stopped watering the concrete and started watering the plants. Anyway, I digress. But one time I was at FHE (Family Home Evening) with my ward and it rained. We were outside playing and making ice cream and drawing with chalk under this shaded area, when it started to rain.
Do you know how everyone reacted?
THEY ALL RAN FOR COVER UNDER THE SHADED AREA.
It was so exciting that it rained! And I didn't panic and run because that's not what you do when it rains, unless it's due to excitement. I chilled there because I LOVE the rain. But everyone else RAN to stay dry. And I didn't move for a while, but I didn't want to be the only weird one, so eventually I moved too. Last night at like midnight it started raining and I was so happy (because I constantly check the weather now because rain is so much more common here) that I put on a jacket and ran out there and enjoyed it for a minute. No one else was out. I went back in after a minute because someone was walking down the street and I once again didn't want to look weird. But in Nevada, standing outside at midnight just for the sake of the beautiful rain would not have been weird.
Okay, so yeah, that's how everyone acts when it rains. But an even worse tragedy is the rain quality.
Don't get me wrong, it rains a lot better here; it rains really hard and the drops are huge. But I walked home from FHE that one day because I wanted to walk in the rain. On that walk I realized it's a lot different when it rains here. It, firstly, felt a lot hotter, and I realized it was because all the plants and how non-deserty Cedar City is made it way more humid. In the desert it's really cool when it rains because there's nothing but rocks and dirt. And... I didn't like the way the rain smelled, either. It smelled too much like plants. In Vegas, it smells really good and dusty and earthy. It didn't smell the way it smells when it rains and you get all happy. Utah rain is different. The funny thing is Josh's coworkers said that on the east coast it smells like plants when it rains but here in Utah it just smells dusty. They have no idea. Culture and environment are amazing.
So pretty much, what I'm saying, desert people, is savor your rain. Not because you live in a desert and you need rain, but because your rain smells way better and feels way nicer.
(Except for in the rain quantity. That's the only place that Utah rain has you beat.)
Besides all that, I really like singing because people comment on it when I sing at church and say I have a lovely voice or that I'm really good at picking out the alto note and so I love singing because it's one way I know for sure how to define myself. I mean, that's easy. You sing and people hear and they say, "Wow, you're really good," and then I feel like someone. I guess I'm not really good at introducing myself. People ask what my major is and I say creative writing and they say cool but they don't realize JUST HOW COOL. Like, they don't realize that that has been my entire life for eighteen years and that it's going to be my entire life for however much longer. The other day I met someone at FHE and talked to her and I had the opportunity to tell her I was going on a mission, and that was the most exciting thing in the world for me. I'd been living here for about two weeks at that point and was just begging to tell someone that, but no one had asked. I don't know how to show people who I am. When I take my binder containing Story 3 out to write it's not like anyone asks what it is, and I don't just offer it out. (Bishop, however, did ask if I had written novels. You're a real one, Bishop.) It took YEARS for me to be known as the writer in high school. I only have a year here; how am I supposed to show people that? Lowkey have been considering just making cards that have the blog on them so that I can pass them out and people can take the easy way out when it comes to getting to know me. I don't know how to introduce myself, and I have a way of getting comfortable with friends really slowly. How do I do this?
I also realized that I usually vibe with the younger crowd, and now... I am the younger crowd. Maybe that's another reason that I'm having a hard time with friends.
I know that all sounds really gloomy, but I really am having a great time here. I've been reading the Book of Mormon as well as Oliver Twist like crazy. Plus, me, Em, and Josh have been binge watching Friends, and I am quite in love.
Alright, so now that I've rambled on about the next part of my life, I want to get to the real point of this post.
This post is entitled "Something About Positivity" rather than "Regarding Positivity" or "A Positivity Post" or simply "Positivity" because I'm not quite sure how to define it. But this was so important to me that I had to write it, that I put off the post that I was going to write just for this one. I hope every single one of you family, friends, followers, and fans are reading this one, because I think it is so important.
I follow my people very closely on social media. I love keeping up on your lives. Let me start with that. It doesn't matter how many years it's been. I never, EVER forget you guys. I still keep up with people I knew in kindergarten. You meet me once, and we're friends forever.
And so with that said, I can see how much hard stuff you are all going through. It breaks my heart to hear about all of your personal tragedies, and the terrible thing is there's no way I'm even hearing all of it. Like, when you guys are sad, I get SO SAD, because I just wish I could tell you something AMAZING that would make you feel better, especially my young friends that I used to be in choir with because I was your choir president and I used to be able to try to do that and I used to feel like I could help you guys and I can't.
So maybe that's why the title of this post hints that it has something to do with positivity, because it's not to say that you guys are actively being negative, because I don't think that's true. I just thought I would write a few things about what helps me stay positive no matter what's going on, because that is the one thing I can do for you guys at this point, and I want to be able to give you life-saving advice like I used to make ridiculous attempts to do. Writing is the only thing I can ever do, so here's my gift to you. I hope it's any sort of good enough.
The first thing I do is write every day. I guess not everyone likes writing the way I do, but that's not what I mean. My little brother from choir Trevor once told me that he felt like I was so much more mentally stable than everyone else because I write all the time. I used to not think that was true, but now I know what he's saying. I keep a hardcore journal and write about my day and my thoughts. And when I sit down and write at the end of every day, it's the calmest thing in the world. During really bad periods of my life it's very relaxing, and during good times too. I for some reason find it easier to be positive when I write, so it's awesome to end the day in a good way. I encourage you to do that. And I encourage you to write honestly, to let out the good and let out the bad. I want you to say it how it is. However, beware of dwelling too much on negativity in writing. With that said, do write about the negative when you really need to. And once you've gotten that written down, write yourself a pep talk next. Write yourself something hopeful about how things will get better. Write yourself something about how you're strong enough to get through this. And then write a few things that you're grateful for. It can be something huge like family or something basic like cinnamon rolls. I've written pretty much everything down. If you need to, write something you love about yourself. Write about your life, and write about goodness. You'll see it.
You guys all know I'm an open book. I have a SMALL number of secrets. That's why my secrets are so valuable to me, is if I give them up I won't have any more. I write on this blog for all of you to see and confess everything through my writing. But my journal is personal. A lot of us write publicly on various social media, and you have no idea how awesome I think that is. Keep doing that. But I also encourage you to pick up a notebook and start a journal for yourself, because I think that you will undoubtedly tell the full truth to yourself. When you're only telling other people how you feel behind your writing, you'll be telling the truth, but you may not be telling the full truth and you may even be watering down what you feel by a lot. That's not good. When we write for just ourselves about our own lives and thoughts and feelings, we are being completely honest, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32) I guess the tragic thing is that the most beautiful things I write are the things that no one will ever see, because those are the things that are just for me. The second I die you can all have as much access to that writing as you want, because at that point I won't need it for myself anymore. That space is for me to think and to figure out what I feel, and for honesty, and honesty is my favorite. So write about your life for yourself, and do it with honesty.
My second piece of advice is to pray.
Imagine having a friend that loves you. But this love, it's like nothing you've ever heard of. This friend loves you and is so pleased with you when you're doing things right. But when you're doing things wrong, that friend still loves you without question and loves you the whole time. That friend is honest with you; that friend won't tell you you're right when you're wrong, and won't support your bad actions; but that friend will support you the whole time and hope that you choose better. That friend will always be there for you. But if you ever choose to not be with that friend, that friend will still love you. And if you ever choose to come back to that friend, that friend will take you back without even questioning it for half a second. That friend loves to give you gifts, and forgives you when you forget to thank that friend for the gifts, but is very happy when you do thank that friend. That friend loves when you ask for advice or help or for anything, because that friend wants to give you all that. And that friend would listen to you rant ALL DAY.  You could tell that friend anything. That friend misses you when you're gone and cherishes you when you're there. That friend really loves you without condition. That friend is perfect. That friend is the ideal image of a friend.
That friend is real. That friend is God. God is our Heavenly Father, and He loves us so much. All those things I just described about Him are true, but to be honest, I don't even know the half of how much Heavenly Father loves you. My mortal mind isn't even capable of imagining it. And yes, I said you, like, *insert your name* you. You as a member of a collective, but also you as an individual person. God loves everyone as imperfect as we all are. He is willing to be there for us. I think the trouble a lot of people have in believing in God is that if He really is all powerful, He would just make everything better. Let me tell you. He doesn't do that. Let me try to explain why.
I was talking to Emily the other day about all the things I want and kind of how in desperate moments I would jump right to them if I had the chance. One example is being a published writer. Emily then asked, wouldn't I want the experience rather than just having gotten there? She was absolutely right. I do love experiences. I love the between part in the middle of beginning and end. So in my sane moments I know that I would never jump right to success. I think the same thing goes with Heavenly Father. He loves us so much that He doesn't make everything better for us; He lets us have the beautiful experience of happiness and pain and learning, and then at the end of it we have eternal joy. I swear, if you talk to God, He will talk back. I don't mean in person, but you will feel His Spirit, and through His Spirit you'll be able to know He is listening to you and there for you. I've felt His love for me after talking to Him. I've recognized His help in my life after many, many, many prayers. You probably won't recognize it right away. But whether you've prayed every day of your life or whether you've never prayed at all or anywhere in between, I invite you to give it a try. When you pray, you can thank God for what you have, and sometimes it will be hard, so it can even be helpful before you pray to meditate about things you really want to offer to your Heavenly Father. You'll think of a lot of great things in your life and your heart will be filled with gratitude, so thank Him for all the things in your life. Then you can ask for help. If you need something, please don't be afraid to ask for it. You might not get what you think you need or when you think you need it, and you also might, but anyone that is willing to ask for help will get it when they ask of God. I pray for things I want to know or remember or obtain. It's also a personal favorite of mine to pray for your family and friends when they are having a hard time. If you know there is something they need or an answer they are looking for, give them a thought in your prayer. I often don't know what to do when I see a friend that is having trouble, so when that's the case a prayer is an easy way to give them love when you aren't sure how to approach them; sometimes I even pray to know how to help a friend.
Want to know one other great thing about prayer?
I really mean it when I say you can tell our Heavenly Father anything.
Sometimes, when things are really bad, I literally just cry and tell God in my prayer all the things that are wrong and all the ways that I'm hurting. I just say what I'm feeling and thinking. You can do that in good times, bad times, any times in between. He really is listening.
I invite you to find some quiet alone time, kneel down before Heavenly Father, and just say what you want to say. Give thanks, ask any questions you may need answered or for blessings you may need, ask for advice and knowledge, and just say what you want to say. I promise if you do this with faith in your heart and hope that He is listening, you will know. You will know that He is listening.
I love you all. I really mean it. If you ever need me, the blog is always open. Always. It's never unavailable for you guys. If you need me for anything, this is me asking you what I can do for you.
A few things in closing.
Firstly, please don't shame yourself. You shouldn't feel sorry for being who you are. You should feel sorry for mistakes, but you shouldn't let that guilt weigh you down, you should let it drive you to try again. You shouldn't feel sorry for trying to fix your mistakes. You shouldn't feel sorry for being alive. You're allowed to be alive. You're supposed to be alive. You shouldn't feel sorry for not being good enough. Whenever you're trying to be your best, you are good enough. You're allowed to make mistakes, because then you can have the pleasure of learning and fixing your mistakes. Don't be ashamed of being alive.
Second, it will get better. Whatever is wrong, it will get better, because you will get better. One of my new favorite things to pray for is strength. Heavenly Father doesn't automatically fix things, but He supplies strength to anyone who asks for it and has faith that He will give it. He won't keep that strength from you if you trust Him and ask Him for it. You will be strong enough to get through anything.
Lastly, please, don't feel guilty for being happy. You're allowed to be happy, and you're supposed to be happy.
My dad once gave me a priesthood blessing in a really hard time in my life. One thing that was said in the blessing was that just because not everything is right doesn't mean everything is wrong. It was like God was letting me know that I had permission to be happy. I was not obligated to be sad just because my life wasn't perfect. Those words are still setting me free. I try to live by them now. Whenever I remember how many problems I have, I remember that not everything is wrong, and I'm allowed to be joyful about that.
I love you. I really do.
--Lizzo