As many of you may know, I spent a few weeks in Australia not too long ago. After my amazing adventure, the country definitely found a very special place in my heart. Sadly, I just got an email from my Australian BF, Sarah, about the terrible bush fires that have ravaged the area where I visited, and I thought I could do my very little part and pass along the info to all of you to see if any of you could help in any way. Here goes:

Hi Guys,
As we all know, Australia and the surrounding suburbs of Melbourne in particular… are experiencing the worst bush fires in our countries history…

At LEAST 10 entire cities have been wiped out, and thousands of families have lost their homes and their loved ones. Many surrounding towns have had their electricity cut off and their water supply has become dirty and contaminated.

Although the initial upset has calmed down, it’s now that the people of Victoria need us the most. Even though they are no longer accepting clothing, they are in desperate need of volunteers to help clear houses, organise water and food drop offs and also offer a place for families to stay.

If donating money is all you can do from your corner of the globe or going to visit these communities isn’t an option then please, give what you can.

Below is the link to have a read about what YOU can do to help!
http://www.redcross.org.au/default.asp

People can voice themselves when they need help, but it’s the wildlife that can’t. Below you’ll see some photos that are without a doubt very cute, but also very sad. If the photos below aren’t enough of an indication that more help is needed, then I don’t know what is.

To donate, please click the following link.

http://www.rspcavic.org/campaigns_news/news_bushfires.htm 

Cheers,
Sarah 

(There are a lot more photos, but my computer hates me at the moment. Believe me, they are just as sad as these. If you can help in any way, please do!)

Being at home does present some perks – one of which is access to my parent’s much newer, much faster, must more iSight-camera-equipped iMac, which allowed me to participate in the second 20SB Vlog Day! Enjoy! (Oh, and pay no attention to my hair…it looks much curlier and nicer and less “I just rolled out of bed and tousled my hair” in real life than it does on small built in computer cameras….)

 
20SB Vlog Day #2 – My Love for HSM3 from In Development on Vimeo.

(You can check out all the 20SB Vlogs here.)

I’m not old. I know that. By any regular view of the world, I’m right on track with the normal pace of life. I’m 22. I just graduated college. I’m starting a career…soon. Sometimes, though, when my google reader gets to zero, and there’s nothing but bad romantic comedy marathons on television, and I get to facebook stalking some of my old high school friends, I start to feel like I missed out on some giant life shift in the last four years when everyone else became a kind of adult, and I stayed the same. 

Well, that’s not entirely true. I am world’s different than I was in high school, but my changes have been mental. I’ve gained confidence. I’ve learned about myself. I’ve kind of figured out what I want in life. A lot of my high school friends, however, in just four years, have gotten engaged, bought houses, gotten married, and had babies. I feel like I just saw them. I feel like I was just singing next to them in the spring musical,  going with them on midnight runs to Steak and Shake, gossiping with them about our English teacher, and sometimes, I feel like (no, I know that) I’m STILL doing these kinds of things. I feel like they are living lives that I can no longer relate to in any way, like they’re adults, and I’m still this weird teenager-young adult hybrid.  

Not that I want their lives. A lot of them are still living in their hometowns or some remote suburb just like it. Most of them have jobs like cosmetologist, army wife, or fast food restaurant assistant manager – not that these aren’t respectable choices, but they are just not where I see or want my life going, so it’s not jealously I’m feeling. I just…I don’t know… find it so weird that in four short years, all of our lives have taken this ridiculously drastic turn away from each other. We were all the same. We all related to one another. We all hung out, and now I’m living at home after finishing college, planning on moving to West LA to live with my gay best friend, while my former classmate is in a hospital praying with her Navy officer husband for their 16-week-premature baby. (I found their blog about him via facebook – if you want to keep him in your thoughts.)

All my friends aren’t in this situation. I certainly have a lot of high school friends still in college. I have friends who have moved or are about move to New York and LA, and friends who are single and loving it. It’s just easier for me to process their situations, because we are all still on the same level, in the same place. To me, they are normal. It’s hard for me to process marriage when I haven’t had a boyfriend for more than 3 months…ever. It’s hard for me to process having babies when I minorly freaked out at the thought of babysitting a 13-month old. It’s hard for me to feel like I have all the time in the world to get married and have babies when it seems more and more people already have. When did this happen? When did all these people I know as teenagers become adults? One day, we were all the same, and the next, I feel like I don’t even know who these people are anymore. 

I think what’s especially weird for me is my parents were those people – those people I in no way relate to. They were married and moving to Oklahoma for my dad to start his time in the Marine Corps at 22. I’M 22! Does that mean I’m an adult now, too? Maybe that’s the whole problem…

Rather than go on some paragraphs long rant about how much I disklike this day, about how I’ve only ever had one decent Valentine’s day, about how my big plans for the night include making PW’s French Onion Soup for my parents and watching the Jo Bros take on SNL, and about how what I usually look forward to is getting a new pair of Victoria’s Secret pink sweat pants from my mom that I know aren’t coming this year…yeah, instead of talking about ALL that, I’ll just leave you with this. 

Yesterday I got a package in the mail. My mom asked if I ordered something online. Sadly, I answered, no. It wasn’t a fun jewlery or a new MacBook. It was books. Many books. 8 large, bound, small-print books from Teach for America. Books with titles like Instructional Planning and Delivery; Diversity, Community and Achievement; Literacy Theory, and Classroom Management and Culture. Basically, it’s four years worth of college educational instruction packed into 8 books of information for me to read in the next four months. 

Thankfully, they break it down into 8 easily stomached lessons to get through in the next few weeks. It’s not that overwhelming time wise, but it is definitely overwhelming emotion wise. 

The first reading is about a successful TFA corps members and her struggles and triumphs over four years of teaching in Houston, TX. It is already SO hard to imagine myself doing half the things or having half the successes that she has. In fact, I had a dream slash nightmare about it last night, where I was kicking ass on my first day of school only to have half of my 50 (yes 50! My classroom was for some reason more akin to a college lecture hall, except it was filled with judging 14 year-olds) students walk out of the room in anger over something I’d said, all while I was being observed by the school’s principal and my program director from TFA. I woke up feeling like a failure, reminding myself that it was a dream and I hadn’t failed at anything yet. 

I keep replaying the words one of the TFA staffers told me on the phone the night I was accepted: “We don’t make mistakes. If we choose you to be a corps member, we have no doubt that you can do this. Just imagine that there are students out here waiting for you.” I just have to internalize that myself.

Monday, the honeymoon period with this time of unemployment officially ended. I’ve started feeling useless, bored, and unmotivated. I’m not quite sure what brought it on. I’m thinking it’s a mixture of realizing I no longer have enough time before moving to LA June to get a part-time job without feeling guilty when I leave (after I will have asked off for a trip or two AND for senior week/graduation) and finding out I failed one of the teacher credentialing tests in California. 

I keep telling myself to stop complaining about these next few months of nothingness. I’m SO lucky to have a job at all in June, so that I don’t need a job right now, so that I can sit around bored without feeling guilty about it. But I can’t stop feeling guilty about my lack of working. I feel like a drain on my family, even though I’ve done everything right up to this point. I graduated early to save money. I’m living at home to save money. I worked hard and guaranteed myself a job (with good pay AND health benefits) for the next two years! I should just enjoy this time, but that’s not the kind of person I am. If I’m not contributing right now, I feel bad spending money right now, no matter what I’ve done in the past or will do in the future. 

Also not me is this lack of…anything. I need goals and schedules. I need places to go. I need projects, and I have none. I could force myself to read some teaching books, but that isn’t enough to motivate me to get out of bed in the morning. When I agreed to graduate early, I never expected to be in a situation like this. In my mind,  I thought I’d get a part time job to save money and enable me to take some guilt free trips to Boston to see my friends (and thus not feel like I’m missing out on my last semester of college) and maybe finally get myself a DSLR that would keep me busy enough at home, thus making graduating early alright. Instead, I have no job, since no one around here is hiring (Thanks, Economy!), and thus, have guilt at the thought of traveling or doing ANYTHING that would waste money, even though, I shouldn’t feel guilty (see above). So I’m double bored, as having a job would enable me to have other things to do, and not having a job results in having nothing to do. This is all now exacerbated by the fact that I have to spend some time (and thus, money) in LA to retake the teaching test in March, taking away money AND time I could have used to get a job. 

Bah! Ok…no more rambling. I need to think of some things to be excited about: going to LA when my best friend happens to be visiting for Spring Break. The NJ/PA/DE meet-up (hopefully) next week. Getting a new computer soon (ish…this keeps getting pushed back…but I’m being POSITIVE. Postive. Postive. Positive.)

Sorry this post is all woe-is-me when things could be SO much worse, but it feels nice to get this out and not just rant about it to my mom, who just tells me not to feel bad, which I wish I could do. 

Tomorrow, I’m going to try to write up my You Inspire Me post. That’s a good goal for the day, right? Right.

For the last three weeks, I’ve been dieting in my attempt to lose 15 pounds by graduation (and in my attempt to accomplish SOMETHING in my “off” time besides watching Food Network for 7 hours straight and reading every post ever at Digital Photography School…not that that’s what I’ve been doing…anyway…)

It’s been tough to say the least. Let’s take this in two parts - 

Eating: My biggest challenge at first was giving up snacking. As someone who routinely eats two bags of Whole Wheat Goldfish Crackers (hence forth known as “Cheddar Cheese Heroine”) in a week, this has been quite the battle, especially because I for some reason bought four bags right before signing up for Weight Watchers. Well done, Amanda. Well done. Having to keep track of my daily points has really guilted me into kicking the heroine habit (3 of my precious 21 points for 55 goldfish!? Really, Weight Watchers?), as has the fact that counting out 55 goldfish (said to be a “serving size” but in actuality, a big freakin’ snack tease) is crazy annoying. Thus, major snacking problem kind of solved. 

For the last week, in fact, I haven’t really thought about snacking, but I’ve still been hungry most of the time, which makes me just an AWESOME person to be around. Just ask my mom. I’m a joy when my blood sugar is low. Yesterday I actually snapped at my dad for driving to Barnes and Noble without explaining why we were going. Barnes and Noble is my own personal paradise! Clearly, hunger is my not best state. The other hard thing about the constant hunger is when I eat out, all I want is the biggest, most fried thing on the menu.  It’s hard to make sensible choices, like ordering a salad and girlled chicken, when you’re prepared to eat your own face. 

Despite these challenges, I’ve been doing well. In Boston last week, my biggest calorie intake was definitely in booze, but it was my best friend’s 22nd birthday AND the Superbowl (which my absolute favorite sports team ever WON), so I didn’t really have a choice, and as for food, I rocked. Instead of ordering granola pancakes at my favorite brunch spot, I got a spinach, egg-white omelet, and instead of getting fish and chips at Beacon Hill Tavern, I got roasted chicken. Go me! Each ended up being satisfying and filling, so really, once I make a decision, I don’t feel like I’m missing out. It’s getting myself to spit out the order that’s tough. 

On the working out front, my personal goal is to work out at least four times a week. Obviously, going to Boston didn’t help AT ALL, as I’m now barred from the school gym as they treat outsiders at my school with the same suspicion the government treats terrorist suspects. At home, my confidence in my work-out routine isn’t helped by the fact that my parents are like the fitness twins, running four times a week and going to, what I call, the devil fitness class two nights a week. (Seriously, after I went to this class once, I could barely get out of bed for a week. I refuse to go back, especially since they told the instructor how much I hated it. That wouldn’t be awkward at all.) Before my trip back to Boston, I was doing the elliptical thing a few times a week and trying out some classes (and “by trying” out I mean almost fainting in a kickboxing class and never going back). I’m definitely going to try to work on this now that my eating is getting better. It would be stupid not to take advantage of a free gym membership while I can, even if I can never work out as much as my parents. 

Despite all the struggles, I’ve lost four pounds already, which is almost a third of the way towards my goal. I’m pretty proud of myself for sticking with it this long. I rarely have this level of commitment to a diet. Hopefully, I’ll update you with some stellar progress next week. 

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For more weight-loss inspiration, check out the 20-Something Bloggers Biggest Loser Challenge! 

This week has been …a little weird. Last Friday, I drove up to Boston for my best friend, Jillian’s, birthday weekend. This was my first trip back since finishing school in December, and I didn’t think it would feel that different to be back. I’ve only been away for a month and a half. I thought wrong. 

Friday night, I decided to go to make an appearnace at a sorority event, even though, technically I’m not in the sorority anymore. The event is the first one after bid day when we get a new class of girls, and it’s basically just an apartment crawl so the new girls can meet all the current sisters. It was really nice to see the other seniors again, but as the night went on and the freshman girls got drunker and drunker, I just felt older and older. I don’t think I was the only one – other seniors said they felt a little past apartment parties and questional punch mix drinks – but I just kept thinking “I shouldn’t be here anymore.” 

The rest of the weekend wasn’t as jarring as that first night, but there were some weird moments: sleeping on the couch in “my” apartment, while a new, unknown roommate slept in my old room. (I kept walking out of the bathroom and going for the bedroom door only to catch myself before intense awkwardness ensued.) Listening to everyone talk about activities I was involved in and finding myself not caring nearly as much as I used to. Hearing about classes and thinking how soon, I’ll have to teach one of those myself. It’s like, all the sudden, I had become an outsider without realizing it. 

I did have a lot of fun with Jillian, Josh, Megan and some of Jillian’s friends. We ate delicious Mexican food, danced at at euro-trash bar in downtown Boston (along with a 50 year-old lesbian couple and some Mickey Rourke look-a-likes – if only my camera battery hadn’t died! Those pictures would have been EPIC.), went bowling at Lucky Strike (where I got a whopping score of 36), and sang karaoke. I attempted to avoid the drama of last semester (as I have successfully avoided talking about it here to my constant amazement), and I even got to spend some time with my uncle and cousins (one of whom wrote on the chalk board at my uncle’s house “Amanda you are so nice!” and then told me that I would make an excellent teacher because I have excellent chalk board handwriting. I need to hang out with 2nd graders more often. Big confidence booster.) 

I think the weirdest part was when people kept saying to me, “You’re at home? God, you must be so bored!” I kind of nodded and laughed, but I couldn’t really agree with them. After 18 years of constant work and schedules and goals, it feels nice to take a break, to read a book, to cook a big dinner, and to wander around a mall. I thought I would be so home sick for Boston or ready to pack up and move to LA already, but I’m really enjoying this time off. I’m losing some weight (more on that soon!). I may have found a perfect part-time job. I’m saving up for a computer and (hopefully) a Nikon D90, and I get to spend time with my family. I know that come June, my life is going to be one giant ball of stress and craziness, so right now, I’m just trying to enjoy the break, accomplish some things I haven’t been able to, and relax. 

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And now a quick announcement for any Delaware, New Jersey, and Philadelphia area bloggers! The lovely Rachel of Confessions of a Jersey Girl and I are trying to organize a little blogger meet-up for the greater Philadelphia area! If you are at all interested, shoot me an email, and I’ll fill you in on all the details!!