Through the Pearly Gates

Question of the Week: Who do I want to welcome through the pearly gates and into my world?

Answer: People I like, who make me feel good about myself and what I want to do with my life and might, in some way or another, help me get there without dragging me down.

Who are these people? Well, due to my strong dislike of the human race, finding these kinds of people is much harder than you might think. But, after thinking long and hard about this, here is a list of five people that I was able to scrounge up:

1) My mom: This is kind of a given, honestly. She's never read a thing I wrote, she knows even less than I do about liberal arts, and yet she still has complete faith that I will succeed in whatever I want and supports me no matter what. So even if she weren't my mom, I wouldn't mind having her around.

2) My sister: A lot of people don't really have a good relationship with their siblings, and when we were younger me and my sister definitely fit under that category, but now that we're older we've reached a level of what we like to call "toleration." She's always on my side when my mom has no idea what I'm saying and she has the same fears and anxieties about the future that I do. Having a nice Panic Partner is always helpful.

3) Mrs. Bonagura: This is where thinking of this list gets a little hard. Mrs. Bonagura is my iQuest teacher and just the fact that she accepted me into the class means that she has some sort of faith in me and, even though I don't know her that well, someone who's practically a stranger who has faith in me is a definite confident boost.

4) Mahek, Mari, and Karly: And this is where I hope that none of my other friends find this blog. Nothing against them, really, but sometimes I just don't like being around them. These three I sort of think of as a unit, because together they make me feel better about almost everything.

5) Kristen Cashore: I don't actually know her, but she wrote one of my favorite book series ever (have a chance, check out Graceling and the other books in that series, AMAZING). I wouldn't exactly call her a role model. More of a goal in life. If I write a book that someone loves half as much as I love her books, then I'd call myself successful.

And while this post is already much longer than I'd like, there's a Part 2! What should I be doing right now that I'm not doing? I'm sure there's more than five, and if someone reminded me that I had to do them it'd be very obvious, but thinking of five things I have to do is a little hard.  So here they are:

1) Finish college apps! Sure, they're not due till November, but I'll be procrastinating on them for that long anyway. Might as well add them to the list now.

2) Talk to my counselor about college apps. Can't actually finish them without talking to my counselor.

3) Write college essays. This is the part about college apps that I really hate. I have to think of reasons for you to accept me into your school that set me apart from the rest? I hardly know why people talk to me in real life.

4) Put my clothes away. Because I always have clean, folded clothes on a chair that I might actually use if there weren't clothes on it all the time.

5) Write. Because I've reached that point in my writing-in-progress (from this point on called WIP) where I deleted half of what I wrote because I didn't like it and after that point I never feel like writing for three months. Gotta work on that.