Day 7: Nostalgia and Monopoly

    I can't remember the last time I cried this much. Tonight was the last Honors production for the 2014-2015 season and it was kind of perfect. The last night went so perfectly and everyone cried and hugged and there was just a lot of positive energy in the room.

 After the show we all went out to dinner. One of my favorite yes's from this week happened at Red Robin with Mrs. Collins. WE were all reminiscing about our year in drama and, in a passing comment, I said " I wish I could track down my third grade teacher, Mr. Mills, and thank him for introducing me to theater. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here." All of a sudden Mrs. Collins got really excited and exclaimed "I'm friends with him on Facebook! Can I post on his wall for you?" This was one request I was happy to agree to. She made me take a picture to go with my quote and about five minutes later he commented back. Mr. Timothy Mills is one of my favorite people in the whole world. He introduced me to preforming with his little piano and his dramatized readings of "Hank the Cowdog." I had no experience with the arts before him, and he is the reason I want to spend the rest of my life teaching theater.

The rest of the evening was kind of like last night except we had monopoly and oven pizza to go with our angsty teenager music. It might sound like a very simple night, but it was a really great one.

Reflection

"Week of Yes" has been truly fascinating. It would have been very emotional and busy anyway, but having to say yes to everything definitely made sure it was packed. It has reminded me how wonderful the people around me are and to soak in the time I have left with them because it is about to get a whole lot harder. This week has also made want to be more open to adventure. I'm one to stick to a routine and be comfortable, so doing things I wouldn't normally do (going to a hookah bar, the beach, etc.), made me want to do more new and exciting things. Agreeing to everything is incredibly exhausting but my new found openness lead to some really good experiences and I want to keep that openness moving forward. Overall, I think Jim Carrey would be proud of my week. If nothing else, it definitely made it memorable.

Day 8: Moving

I was used as free labor today, but Kathryn made us an incredibly good dinner so I can't say I'm very bitter about it. My best friend Kathryn is moving to Midland the week after graduation and it's really terrible timing. She just got back from college and I've been really looking forward to spending the summer with her. Unfortunately, that is not really an option anymore. All of today I was at her house and every time I see her it reminds me of how much I miss her when she isn't here. Even when you love someone, maintaining relationships over distance is hard and today's Yes has reminded me that a lot of my relationships are about to get a lot harder. I really hope that I keep in touch with most of these people, because this week has reminded me how amazing they are. I have really good taste in humans.

Day 6: Cliche Teenager Things

There are very few things I love in this world more than a good bonfire, and that is just what saying yes lead me to today! After the show Sean and I were walking to the car when my friend Savannah pulls up next to us and declares we need to do something. Not being able to say no, I agree and start listing options. We ultimately decided to go hang out at Ethan's and burn things. Normal teenager stuff. So we take about a half hour trying to build a fire (because of course none of us know how to do that) using various dangerous and stupid methods until we finally manage to figure it out. The angsty teenager music (aka Nirvana and Disney) begins as we pass around a bottle Pringles and talk about how society would be better if we ran it. The night was reminiscent of those coming of age 90's movies where everyone sits around a fire and has very serious discussions. My favorite conversations are usually the ones that are had outside really late at night and this was no exception. Considering my emotional crisis about leaving home earlier this week this was kind of wonderful. This blog post is going to be very short because it is incredibly late and I am ready to pass out.

Day 5: You Wanna Go Where?

Tonight was my last opening night with my Honors cast. It was also the first opening time I've ever had the lead in a show. Needless to say, I have never been so nervous in my life. The show went on and when the lights came up everyone was crying (it was a sad play though, so that's good). I got lots of hugs and flowers and was so relieved that I wasn't completely terrible. Also, it happened to be the last time Celia and I would open a show together, so this happened...

      Sean came with his brother, Travis, who decided that I should chase my high, so he bought us doughnuts and said we should go on an adventure. We drove around downtown and on the beach, innocent fun. Then Travis suggested we visit a Hookah bar. Totally legal because I'm 18, so it didn't break any rules. I had never been to a hookah bar and can honestly say I have never had any desire to got to one. So he drives us over to one all the while Sean is asking a billion and one questions and looking incredibly uncomfortable. We arrive and fetch our ID's. The place is nearly empty and looks like would I would venture the inside of a genie bottle looks like. Then this little hippie man dressed like Aladdin comes over to us with a menu and ushers us over to a corner. This is about the time Sean decides to tell Travis he wants to leave. I wasn't really sure how I felt about it either and he looked really uncomfortable, so I said we should find something that we all think is fun. The little Aladdin man looked slightly annoyed when we handed him back the menu without ordering anything, but wished us a good night nonetheless. Today's "Week of Yes" adventure made for an interesting, if uncomfortable evening.

Day 4: The Beach and My Emotional Crisis

Today Sean roped me into going to the beach. It's not that I dislike the beach, he just wants to ALL THE TIME, so I have gotten very used to declining. This week, however, declining was not an option. So we loaded up the car and went off on our beach adventure. It's not too hot out, the waves are gentle, and it's not crowed: perfect conditions. I start to slowly wade out while he runs and dives in head first flailing all his limbs as he goes. We swim and float around and eventually start to talk about college. It seems that nowadays college is the favorite topic of conversation with pretty much anybody. In a passing thought I consider how much I'm going to miss going to the beach and then all of a sudden I start thinking about all the things I'm going to miss. I've been putting off thinking about all of the non-happy parts of leaving for quite some time so this kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. It made me realize how much I take for granted. I have incredible friends and a wonderful hometown and a million and one little luxuries that I won't have come the fall. I've heard everyone has a "leaving home" crisis before they go to college and I think mine just started.

Moral of today's story: Take advantage of being home while you can.

Day 3: Anniversaries are Special

I absolutely love going downtown and, as tonight was our one year, Sean took me to dinner downtown at The Basics. I was more than happy to oblige. Unfortunately it was raining so we didn't get to walk around to all of the shops, but he suggested we go to one of my other favorite places: MovieStop. I hadn't been in a while, so when I got there I was pleasantly surprised to find that nerd culture had thrown up all over. I'm very lucky Sean is as sweet as he is because the only way he has manipulated my "week of yes" was to buy me a movie and a stuffed Game of Thrones wolf cub. I was a lot more worried about people manipulating this week than I needed to be. Poor Celia prefixes most of what she says with "I don't want you to agree to this because you have to, but..." I think this says something about the people I hang out with. They are kind of wonderful and I should really tell them more often.

Day 2: Courtesy???

Today's "week of yes" adventures have made me realize just how often I say no to things because I don't want to be rude. It's little things like someone offering a cookie or offering to do you a favor. I am constantly turning down things that I actually want out of courtesy, but is it really courtesy? Is it rude for me to want things or to take people up on offers to help? I suppose sometimes it is, but I've been thing about this today and I don't think it is. I can't help but wonder why I have such a strong instinct to refuse these positive things. It reminds me of this one episode of Star Trek where Wesley Crusher is trying to get into Starfleet academy. He runs into a fellow (alien) applicant and apologizes for bumping into him. The alien freaks out and is terribly offended, so Wesley yells at him that he should be watching where he is going, the the alien is placated. The alien was part of a diplomatic relations test. Wesley explains to his friend that those aliens are offended by courtesy because they think it is dishonest. All of my reflections on "manners" today leads me to believe they are onto something. Of course not ALL courtesy is deception, but I'm willing to bet a large majority is.

P.S. This scene was in the episode titled "Coming of Age"

Day 1: To Be Expected

Today I ended up doing yard work and, if there is one thing in this world I can't stand, it's yard work. I was at Sean's house and they decided today was the day to start working on cleaning the pool. His mother innocently asked if I wouldn't mind sweeping the leaves from the concrete around the pool. That doesn't sound to bad, until you realize that it was a truly ungodly amount of leaves and it was a billion degrees outside. Other than that, it's been a rather uneventful day. Most of my requests came from Sean, but that's because he hurt his back and could bend over to pick things up. I certainly hope that today is not a good representation for what this week will be like because otherwise, I have chosen an incredibly boring topic. I suppose it's only the first day though. A.J. had his struggles too.

Establishing Some Groundrules :Pre-post

So I'm getting in the car to go to my boyfriend's last high school band concert, and I'm completely freaking out about my "Week of Change" project. My basic train of though was "I suck, I'm so unoriginal, my teacher is going to think I am stupid,"etc. All of a sudden I have a flashback to last year when my best friend Kathryn was having the exact same problem and I remember a suggestion a gave to her: saying yes to everything for an entire week. It would sound like a total and complete nightmare to a sane person, but for me it sounded like I was going to get to channel my inner Jim Carrey for a week (i.e. his movie "Yes Man circa 2008). I knew if I was going to undertake my "week of yes," I was going to have to set up some ground rules because the second I told my boyfriend, Sean, he was already thinking of ways to abuse it (nothing inappropriate,of course, I only date gentlemen).

My Ground Rules:
1. Nothing illegal (I'm not trying to get arrested)
2. Nothing that would be a risk to me health (because no)
3. Nothing that would make me compromise my self-respect/morals (People suck and something breaching this rule would totally come up)
4. Nothing that negates something I have already agreed to (because otherwise my life could get very complicated very fast)

The goal of this endeavor is to see how much I miss out on a week because I say no to opportunities and to see how far the people that know about my "week of yes" take their requests. I've taken AP Psych and know a little bit about how power affects people, so I want to see if that holds true for people that I am relatively close to. No matter what the out come it should be an interesting week.