Tinder: A Prediction

I am having fun with Tinder, an app for meeting people you are compatible with based on a very loose definition of the word compatible.  It's pretty shallow, but also pretty fun so I'm playing with it.

I'm talking to a guy right now who I plan on meeting for the first time at a bar he is playing at on Wednesday.  Do you see where this is going? Maybe not yet.  His name is Noah, he is 25, he is a really good musician (based on a song he wrote in a night and sent me), he appears to own his own Web-design company,

Wow typing all of that out really reinforced my feeling of "what the fuck does he see in me?"  I don't even mean that in a self-deprecating way, but if I were to write a description of myself similar to the one I just wrote about him it would go like this: Her name is Hayley, she is 19, she appears to have no talents except maybe language? Maybe singing too?, she owns nothing and has no idea what she wants to create in her life.

I would say I am wise for my years, kind of, but there are things about me that are inherently nineteenish.  Like for example, I pay for nothing of my own.  My income is based solely on being my parents daughter, which for the record is fucking great, but I have no job or plans of getting one until I'm out of college.  A few other nineteenish things about me are that I love to binge drink and with frequency but I also am not legally allowed to drink.  An age gap isn't a big deal unless you let it be though, I suppose.  It's the one thing about myself that I cannot fake, I cannot change.

He on the other hand appears to have tons of energy, and friends, and motivation to do things.  I just kind of feel like that positive of a person firstly, should not need Tinder to get the fire burning with someone if you get my drift, and secondly, should be dating someone of similar energy levels.  Like there is no fucking way this guy ever takes naps.

Maybe I'm freaking out prematurely about something I obviously cannot predict but I am obviously encouraged by the fact that we're still texting but it just doesn't seem like something that could actually happen.  I don't know.  I suppose I'll see.

something i did

I drank way too much coffee and now I am ravaged with hunger and the need to pee even though I ate a huge wrap for lunch 2 hours ago and I peed 20 minutes ago.  It's like drinking beer, but worse.  This is why I prefer tea lately.

I haven't blogged in a really long time, which is kind of a shame but also a reflection of my internal feelings lately.  I fell into a rut of just being really stressed out, and really scared to do anything, and really bored of my whole life.  And so I'm going to try to stop feeling those things by changing the way I'm acting.

This all kind of started a few days ago when I decided I would get a tattoo just because I had a little bit of extra cash and because I wanted to.  People keep asking the meaning, and there is one, but the real meaning is found in the act of going by myself appointment-less to a tattoo shop and asking if anyone was available to give me a small tattoo.  I did it because I could and because I wanted to and that makes me feel amazing!

My parents will definitely be incensed about it but I feel so happy and proud of myself for doing it that I don't really care.  Every time I look at it I am reminded of my own autonomy and courage and independence.  I'm sure they'll have their words about it and that they probably won't understand, but I'm not going to worry about that until I actually tell them.

So this is me trying to be better! Life was hard and unpleasant but I'm going to make it fun.  And I'm quitting my job and working out more.  Hopefully I'll find more things to smile about!

This was saved in my drafts from December-- I don't know why it was never published but I like it

Perhaps the most awkward mix of feelings I have experienced is those I associate with being home, and visiting old friends but missing my new home and new friends.  Last night when I was saying goodbye to my old choir buds, I felt so sad even though there's a good chance I'll see them again before I go back to Columbus.  I just felt sad because I did, because in some weird ways everything we had was over.  We're only connected now because we were connected once before; we no longer have together what originally bound us.  So I'm sad about that.  But I'm so very thankful and happy for my new friends, and I can't wait to see them when this break is over.

So I'm sad to be leaving my old friends and happy to see my new friends, and I almost feel guilty for not being more upset that I'll be going back soon.  Or feeling more like I need to suck in all the Westlake I am while I'm here.  Why don't I feel that way? I love this place.

I also feel this weird duty to Westlake.  Like somehow I owe it more of my time, especially because of what a perfect place it was to grow up, but I also know that being in college is the best possible thing for me right now.  I guess I was raised the way I was so that when it became time, and it has become time, for me to go out and snatch life up for myself I would be able. And I am.  It just makes me feel selfish sometimes.

Also, when did I become so incredibly self-centered?  I feel sometimes like I only have thoughts for myself and only want to talk about myself and this basically makes me a horrible conversationalist.  I think that this is caused by the certain amount of isolation that is felt at college.  Even at Ohio State where most of my friends go to school, I'm mostly surrounded by people who don't know what I was like in 5th grade (which suits me well, anyways) and so it's almost like every single person is an island who makes friends with other islands, but rarely fuse into a country.  I also think that this selfishness (I don't like using the word selfish because it has a negative connotation, and I'm fairly sure that a weird selfishness is pretty normal at this stage in life) comes from the fact that everyone is constantly wondering how we, freshman college students, are doing.   How are classes going?  How are the roommates?  Are you eating okay?  Are you working out? Getting good grades?  Joining any clubs?  How are you doing?  And when I ask whoever it is asking me these questions How they are doing? I get the standard "Oh you know, it's boring/all the same around here." Like, whatever man.

I understand why people hate interacting with college students.

sad rant

This post is going to be very sad.  It doesn't start sad, but it brings itself to some very sad conclusions.

Here's the thing: there is a really beautiful and intelligent boy whom I have been well enamored with* for 5 years.  Can you even fucking imagine an unrequited 5 long years?  Sorry to reference the most cliche romantic story to reference, but keep in mind that the entire plot of Romeo and Juliet takes place in about a week and that includes murder.  It has been a grueling and mainly boring 5 years in love.

But there were two occasions on which my relationship with this boy deviated from the otherwise flat and depressing line; once in May of 2012 and another time in March of 2013.  May seemed promising for the slightly distant future; March seemed very promising for the near future.  I guess what happened in May may have been what lead to what happened in March but not after nearly a year of almost no contact at all.

So let me just get this clear right now: when I am not physically in a room with him, he might as well be dead because even if we are communicating, we aren't able to do so on anywhere near the same level as we can in person; which is a testament to his lively  personality, as well as his fuckwittedness about texting girls back who would just like the tiniest inkling that he may think on them once in awhile.

But I'll tell you what happened in March in my most delicate terms.  We were at a party together and then he drove me home but instead we only made out and talked in his car.  That's the quick version, the long one reveals that he was really really excited that we were together, and he wasn't feigning for any sexual favors** or to make me feel good because immediately after he tweeted about how happy he was.  This is the new millenium; tweeting is an emotional and honest expression.  He suggested more than once that we should see each other like that again, only not in a car at 5am but maybe at a restaurant for lunch.  

And then never responded to any hopeful suggestions from me to follow through on such plans.

And I am heartbroken.

And I just can't believe that I would be wasting my time being heartbroken about a guy who will mean nothing to me in a year or two.  Which perpetuates my idea that we should be together.  Which reminds me that there is just nothing I can change about the way he is treating me.  Which is my trouble.

My problem is that I can't just decide that I am going to get over him because I cannot picturing having the self assurance to say no to him in a year or five or ten on the off chance that he ever wonders what happened to me and wishes he could see me again.  I'm never going to be at a point in my life where I wouldn't drop everything to go on a date with him, because he is amazing and he is going places.

I realize that may seem melodramatic, to say I would drop anything just for one date, and it probably is, but hear me out.  I've seen a lot of world for my years, and I've started college and met tons of people and I have never met anyone with the same light that he has.  And that makes me really really sad, because that might mean that he is one of a kind.  And if he is one of a kind and he doesn't want me.  That would be the worst conclusion to reach.

What I need is for him to tell me, directly, with words rather than actions, that I need to move on.  That he is not interested in me, at all, forever.  Because I'll never be able to tell that to myself.

That was the dramatic (but true) sentence that I should be ending this post with, but I never explained why all of a sudden this whole thing is once again relevant.  I am back at the restaurant for the summer to work, and he and his family and friends came in for dinner.  When I saw him my immediate feeling was nausea and anger, which I held onto tight.  When he tried to talk to me I was real fuckin terse and made this weird close mouthed smile with my eyes screaming at him to get the fuck out of my face before I were to start throwing up and/or crying.  You probably can't picture this face, but it's not a face you want to continue a conversation with.

I can't be friends and I can't be friendly because I gave him my whole heart.  I really did.  The whole stupid thing.  He knows how I feel about him because I told him.  I used my words, which are honest, because I have no idea how to make them any other way.  Sometimes I wish I did.

*not really with, more at

**and if he was then joke's on him

Baz Luhrman's Gatsby

I would like to discuss Baz Luhrman's adaptation of The Great Gatsby while it's still fresh.

My disclaimer for this whole thing is that I'm not quite sure I get The Great Gatsby.  I need to read it again though, so I'm not going to say anything about the writing itself.

I'm going to start with my favorite thing, and that was the music.  The music was incredible in that it represented quite well the time period the movie was made in as well as the time period the movie was made about.  I was stunned by how chaos was portrayed so accurately through mixing the traditional music of the time and some of the rougher things about our music now.

I feel like I have no platform from which to judge Leonardo Dicaprio's performance because Gatsby himself, at least as far as I believe, is a different person inside of each head he is imagined in, so it was hard to see Dicaprio as even playing a character at all.  It's confusing and hard to explain, but I believe that Gatsby himself, until he starts displaying his madness and losing his temper in the latter part of the movie, is so perfect and untouchable that he's boring.  What makes Gatsby's character exciting is what other  characters believe about him, so I was rather unimpressed for the first half of the movie.  However, Dicaprio did display his incredible ability to act when he loses his temper with Tom Buchanan.  So there's that.

The one thing that really bothered me about the movie though was the premise that Nick Caraway was writing The Great Gatsby as he told us the story.  I can't remember whether or not that's a plot point in the end of the book, and it would have been fine in the movie, except that there was so much narration that I was disappointed that the audience was so often being told F. Scott Fitzgerald's beautiful language instead of being shown it.  I see no point in having movies if a good portion of that is just a book on tape.  Some scenes were absolutely stunning, but there were some things that were narrated that I would have preferred to have seen, not heard.

Overall I don't think I was as impressed as everyone I was with, but that really might just be my lack of understanding the story's importance as a whole.  I see the irony in Daisy being a murderer and Tom being a violent alcoholic racist and them being the two who walk away from the story unscathed.  I see the tragedy in Gatsby being in love with his memory of Daisy, and Daisy being in love with Gatsby's extravagance.  I see the chaos in people living these shallow lives and not contributing positively to much, or anything at all.  I know that there is beauty in F. Scott Fitzgerald's diction and metaphors and description, but I find it so hard to see the beauty of the tragedy of the story.

College is hard

I suspect John Legend is too upbeat for my mood right now.  I'm not outright sad, but definitely a little bit on the deep thoughts side of things, and it's hard to be happy knowing about things.

I think that I'm just getting sick of fucking around so much.  Like, I used to do things that were good for my body and soul and brain and frivolous things, but now I feel like mostly what I do is watch Netflix and hope that I wake up tomorrow with the motivation to actually fulfill myself.  I've turned into this really really low energy person and it's actually kind of embarrassing.

Part of my new demeanor is OSU, honestly.  I was thinking about this the other day, and I could very well be wrong and just trying to place the blame for how I'm acting on something other than myself, but it's possible that the atmosphere at OSU is too busy to be conducive to learning for me.  I think I'm doing a good job socially, but academically OSU kind of really is Westlake South.  Again, I'm blaming outside things instead of myself, but my classes aren't so hard that I'm motivated to give my everything to them.  I'm willing to study for them two nights before the test and be relieved when it all works out anyways.  I feel like I should be doing more than that, but I also feel like I'm in an environment where that's kind of how most people operate.  For being a university, it doesn't seem like it places enough emphasis on academics, which is a big deal.  I wish that had been something I had thought about before enrolling here.

I don't know where I would transfer to, and I wouldn't want to make that decision until I was sure about what I wanted to study.

I guess I should suck it up and start studying instead of writing this though.  Or go for a run and get my life together.

Pictures from the Virgin Islands

Maho Bay.  After such a rainy week in Columbus, I can't help but wish I was back there.

Maho Bay with my mom and sister.  Silly dad, he took the photo with the sun  behind us.

The new iPhone update with panorama is so cool.  I believe that right there is Trunk Bay,  but I really don't remember.

This was the marvelous view from the house we rented in Coral Bay.  I never stopped being amazed by how lovely our view was, and it made the very terrifying drive up the hill worth it.