Feelings

Yesterday was weird. This whole week has been, really. And it's all because of those blasted feelings and emotions. Why do they suck so much? (Obviously I'm kidding. Sort of.)

I usually don't have a very hard time discerning my own feelings, so when complicated situations come up and suddenly in one day everything I thought is not what it was, I get a little frustrated. (For as well as I can discern my own feelings, I do not, however, always do a very good job of sharing them.) Of course, it wouldn't be life without change, but that doesn't make it any less difficult. I consider myself a pretty positive person and I've gone through times of sadness, times which have made me all the more certain that faking being happy is a lot better than being straight up sad. Because I've done the "sad thing" before, I'm now quite reluctant to act sad about things I should be upset over. There's a lot to be said for experiencing sadness and disappointment, especially when it's warranted. So how do you balance that? How do you balance the importance that is being happy with the importance of acknowledging that it's okay to be sad?

Caring, feeling, and connecting: all of these things just get in the way of life, yet they make up so much of life at the same time. People feel this desire to connect, on any number of levels and for any number of reasons, but it is when these connections are broken that we are most unhappy.

I guess we just have to take comfort in the fact that everything passes, everything ends. Just as the good times end, so do the bad. And then we can go off once again to make some more connections, to share more of our feelings, to care even more.

Last YouTube video I watched: Put the important things first and the rest will fit

The glory of a t-shirt

Those who know me well, or those who see me often, can attest to the fact that I wear t-shirts usually 6.5 out of 7 days a week. (I take away a half day to account for going to church or for some other occasion where I have to dress up all nice-like.)

A little while back, a friend of mine was kind of getting after t-shirts, saying there wasn't anything special about a t-shirt. Um, excuse me? False.

I consider the t-shirt to be one of the most underrated items of clothing. Yes, I will admit, there are t-shirts that look like crap: they aren't high quality, the color is weird, they literally look strange, whether it be the shape is off or the design is just sketch. Great tees are hard to come by, unless you know where to look. And as you can probably gather, I know where to look.

For as long as I can remember, I've preferred t-shirts over any other kind of shirt. I'm not even talking about girly looking t-shirts with weird frills or designs. I think this has to do somewhat with my desire to one day become a professional baseball player. Sadly, that didn't really pan out. I always associated t-shirts with sports. And by the time I was old enough to realize what "style" is, I had pretty much settled into a routine of t-shirts and jeans every day. That's not to say I don't enjoy a good sweater or cardigan, because I certainly do, but I often layer such things with various t-shirts. I've become a huge fan of plaid button-down shirts and the only logical thing to wear underneath such a thing is, once again, a t-shirt.

It is true that t-shirts definitely have different levels of niceness; there's a big difference between artsy-designed tees from Threadless and the (somewhat exorbitant number of) Wisconsin Badgers t-shirts that grace my closet, a place in which all of my t-shirts hang in rainbow ordered harmony. Each of these t-shirts has its own charm, something about each of them makes me keep them around at college. Solid-colored shirts are nice but I am definitely a fan of screen-printed tees. T-shirts with words on them, pictures, plays on words, logos and slogans. If done well, those shirts are great for anyone.

For me personally, t-shirts say a lot. On any given day, my t-shirt probably tells you more about how I am feeling than I would ever say in words. I definitely dress based on mood. Not only that, but I dress based on comfort. I've never had a really difficult time with the whole "body image" thing but I know that at least a small part of my t-shirt love comes from that fact. Girls' t-shirts can often be skin tight and somewhat shear. Those shirts have always disgusted me to a degree, which is why I became so attached to the idea of old school tees, something loose but not baggy, something longer but not stretched out. I rarely worry about how I look when I have a t-shirt on because to me there's nothing to worry about.

My mom hasn't always been too happy in my choice of t-shirts, namely the fact that they are pretty much all I wear, and to be completely honest there once was a point in time (probably at the beginning of high school) at which I thought I might eventually "get over" wearing t-shirts all the time . . . But that has never come close to happening, and at this point I sincerely doubt if I ever will. It really has become my style and I'm perfectly content in keeping it that way.

So the next time you see me wearing an interesting t-shirt, ask me about it, because pretty much all my shirts have stories. Whether the story be about when I got the shirt, somewhere I wore it, or just about how it makes me feel, there's something about each t-shirt that makes me love it.

Last YouTube video I watched: Get Inside Out (This is one of my favorite songs and musicians.)