The One Where Everyday is Valentine's Day.

I have so much love in my heart sometimes that it occasionally scares me and often hurts me. I literally ache with love. When I love, I love so deep. I'm even sometimes embarrassed by it. (I cried about Whitney, folks. For well over an hour and, after that, sporadically throughout the day. Did I know the woman? No. But I certainly loved her... see what I mean?)
I'm 25 years old, and I'm alone... with no romantic prospects in the near future. I wonder a lot why I am alone, and I can't point to the exact reason why. Am I too sassy? Too independent? Too dependent? Too loud, too reserved, too careful, too confident? I have no answers. I wallowed in that for a few moments before I sat down to write this post.

I don't like Valentine's Day. Don't worry, this won't be one of those diatribes from a bitter single female. Truthfully, I am not bitter about being single. While of course I wish I had someone to share Valentine's Day with, I'm certainly not mad or bitter about it.

Even when I had a Valentine, I thought it was silly. It never seemed to measure up to its hype. Sure, I'd gotten flowers and chocolates and love letters... but at the end of the day, I just shrugged my shoulders and realized that aside from a couple of roses, it was no different from February 13th or February 15th.

Which... just as I wrote that, I realized something else: shouldn't everyday be Valentine's Day? Just like everyday should be Thanksgiving or Christmas. Shouldn't we express thanks everyday? Shouldn't we always celebrate the gift of Christ's life every single day? Or Veteran's Day... shouldn't we always show our appreciation to those who fought for our country? Every 14th of February, we are urged to demonstrate our love for those around us in our day-to-day lives. (It isn't just about romance, though that seems to be the more popular expression.) Shouldn't everyday be a day that we express to our loved ones how much we care for them?

It is important to know what love is in order to express it constantly. Love is not an abstract feeling of longing and infatuation that intensifies on certain holidays. Real love should exist everyday. I'm going to do my best not to get too "preachy" here (because, really, I'm the last person who should be "preaching" to anyone), but there is a verse from the Bible that I often think about on Valentine's Day. It's in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Always. Always. Always. Everyday.

There are people in my life who literally give me a reason to wake up and roll out of bed in the morning: family, friends, teachers, co-workers, and even complete strangers. With 22 hours left in this day, I want to set a goal: to simply spread good cheer today and forever. Treat everyday like it's Valentine's Day and treat everyone like he or she is a special Valentine, I say.

This goes hand-in-hand with the "kindness" entry a couple of posts back. Call an old acquaintance just to say hello. Send a card out to someone you know to brighten their day. Slip a love note in your spouse's purse or lunch bag. Also, smiling is contagious, they say. So, smile at a complete stranger.

Love is the very essence of life. Happy Valentine's Day, yesterday, today, tomorrow, and always.

The One with the Blicky.

For whatever reason, I'm feeling extremely down on myself today. I really can't put my finger on why. I've even been sitting here for several minutes just trying to figure out what is making me feel this way, and nothing is coming to mind. I just feel... blicky.

These things happen to the best of us, right? That's where the phrase "waking up on the wrong side of the bed" comes from. And honestly, not knowing why I'm feeling this way is worse than actually knowing. Not knowing makes me just question everything: what I dreamed about, yesterday, tomorrow, work, money, friends, the weather, my physical appearance, my mental state, Aunt Flo, relationships, etc. It makes me doubt myself, my abilities, my friendships, every little thing. And it could be nothing more than me getting five minutes less sleep than my body wanted. It's frustrating... and unjustified.

I don't ever want to have a bad day. They just happen. Things just happen. I try to avoid them altogether, and usually do, but this bad day seemed to slip right on in and make himself at home.

The truth is, without bad days, how would I be able to know what a good day is like? How would any of us be able to know what a good day is really like? And good days are unbelievably plentiful in my life; they are all around every single one of us. Today is just a bump in the road. A teeny, tiny little bump in the road. Yesterday was wonderful, and tomorrow can be, too.

I have a very strong belief that when things go awry, I have the power to fix or change them. So, I'm going to go take a shower, put on some make-up and then slap a pretty little smile on my face. Because the world always looks brighter from behind a smile.

The One with the Kindness.

I hate filing taxes. Truly. And working at a place that doesn't take out taxes throughout the year is just downright inconvenient. I've been working on entering my mileage records for the past three hours, and it's time for a break.

I thought about eating some cookies. I thought about watching something on TV.

But instead, I'll just vent what's on my mind today. Besides filing taxes, that is.

I recently caught up on my friend Molly's blog. A couple of posts back, she wrote about the power of kindness. You can read it here. As I read it, I kept waiting for the one event that made her choose to sit down and blog about the power of kindness. And then I read her last short paragraph, where she shared that the acts of kindness that were expressed on her that day were miraculous and influential.

And she's right. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, actually, not just today. I am surrounded by miracles and kindness everyday - in a smile from a stranger, in someone opening or holding a door, in someone letting me in front of them in line at the store.

Then I think, why don't I do that more often? How easy would it be to just let that guy over into my lane in traffic? How simple would it be to help that talkative old lady downstairs with her groceries? To pay for the guy's food behind me in the drive-thru? To smile at a stranger? To respond to that email that's been sitting in my inbox?

It TRULY does take so little to prove that you care so much.

The One Where I Live Without.

I'll be honest; now that I'm no longer working a desk job, blogging doesn't come as easily.

The good news is, I'm working. I landed a job as a Guest Service Agent at a hotel downtown. I feel very fortunate that I was able to find the job so quickly - about three weeks ago. It's exhausting, but it's full-time, it pays rather decently, it's a short drive there, and I really do like it. I've learned so much in these first few weeks about hotels and businesses in general. A lot of it is very surprising and intriguing. I don't think anyone who visits a hotel understands all the work that gets put into each and every guest... and all the things the person simply standing at the front desk must know in order for it to be a smooth and comfortable stay.

Moral of the story: be nice to the people helping you at hotels... don't treat them like peons. They're people, and they want you to be happy; no one is out to get you on your vacation, especially the people running the scene. BE NICE.

When I'm at home during my leisure time, I find that I spend far less of it at the computer (hence the lack of bloggage) and more of it watching television series episodes: Grey's Anatomy, The Biggest Loser, Alcatraz, Desperate Housewives, Modern Family, New Girl, Touch, Friends, and Slings & Arrows... to name a few. (And, yes, I'm a bit embarrassed by that list.)
I've come to the conclusion that my brain, after so much schooling, is taking a bit of a break. School wore me out, and that's the truth. I felt like I was in it for far too long, and I was far too deeply buried in the stress that is class and homework and deadlines.

That doesn't mean that I haven't stopped thinking, no. It just means that I'm letting life happen as turtle-speed as I see fit. Truly, this month has crept by so slowly, and I'm more than okay with that while my brain takes its vacation. But only for a little while. Angela Jeffries can only stand stagnant for so long.

While the brain-break is nice, there is one thing that's making life feel a little askance: I miss performing. I don't mean for that to sound so cliché because it is the truth. It's been almost a month and a half since A Christmas Carol closed, and I miss the stage horribly. I miss the rehearsals. Heck, I even miss the auditioning. And my next planned audition isn't for another two-ish months.

I'm entertaining myself with the new songs that I'm learning (3 down so far), but it's not enough. I'm reading more scripts and collecting more sheet music and watching more bootlegs, but it's nothing compared to actually feeling (forgive the cliché again) the lights on my skin. After all, I have been performing and rehearsing non-stop for almost four years, with almost no breaks in between productions.

I got a bit emotional about it the other day, actually, as I was reading the 110 In the Shade script. I wasn't a mess or anything - tears just sort of brimmed my eyes a bit.

I am connected so deeply to the theatre art form that it breaks my heart to be away from it. In that moment, I thought about something someone said to me once, "If theatre disappeared from your life or it never existed, you need to know that you would be okay, that you would survive."

Sometimes I say that I feel like my life would be over if I ever lost my ability to sing, but I know that's not the case. The truth is, I would be okay. I absolutely would survive without it. I would have other hobbies, and I would be pursuing a different career. I would have different friends, the same wonderful family. I wouldn't really know what I was missing, and therefore I would be okay.

But then I thought of something else someone said to me. "You are what you think about all day long." Art. I think about so many different art forms all day long: writing, music, performance, crafting, discovering, dreaming, reading. And it all improves my life, mixed right in with my incredible family, my beliefs, my heart, my friends, and every other little perfect addition.

So... survival would be possible without it. But I prefer my life in a way that is so much more than "surviving." I prefer feeling; I prefer aching for it when it's not around. Best of all, I prefer living with it and loving it, too.