today = spring.

today totally feels like spring to me. it's beautiful and sunny outside and the air is crisp. i went out and took a few pictures after school. here are a couple of my favorites:


it has been a really good day so far. first of all, it's wednesday and i love wednesdays. they are fun and not too busy with school/work. we have a workshop in my english class today and since i finished my paper last night, i have a few hours of free time before class, thus the picture taking and blog :) i usually get out of class about an hour early on workshop days too. yay! i've been keeping up with my homework really well lately. i've never been the kind of student who turns assignments in late or unfinished but i've been cutting it pretty close the past few weeks and it feels good to get back into a steady routine of getting my work done before it needs to be. as part of this new wave of responsibility, i've been doing all of my math homework and really focusing on it. i didn't do too well in math last semester so i'm hoping to try a little harder this time. i had a quiz two days ago that i felt prepared for and studied for and i got my grade back today. i got a 94%!! seriously, that NEVER happens. i was sooo happy :)

on another note...
we had an interesting discussion in my rock and roll class yesterday. the question was "why are americans more tolerant of violence than sex in the media/pop culture?"
it was sparked by david bowie not being able to make it in america (at first) because of his "unacceptable" make-up and dressing styles etc. he was doing an interview and said that eh didn't think americans were able to accept him as an idol or star because he was the first person to really identify himself as bisexual or homosexual. this wasn't a problem in europe, so why was it a problem here?
there was a girl in my class who was convinced that christianity (not just religion in general, but christianity) was the root of the problem. her argument was ridiculous and taken completely out of context and it got on my nerves, but what could i do? i mean if someone disagrees with my religious beliefs and doesn't understand the bible from a christian point of view, of course they're going to take things out of context. some of it was so far off that it was funny and almost sad. i'm glad nathan was there for this discussion so i could share a few laughs with a fellow christian :)
since we ran out of class time, we never came up with a good/satisfactory answer for this question (if there is one) and we're planning to continue it tomorrow. hopefully we'll be able to because several people had some thoughts and insights that i'd be interested in hearing again.

i always knew music was hiding somewhere inside me

all you really have to do is look at my family to know that music is practically the blood that pumps through us every day and keeps us going. everyone in my family can play an instrument and or/sing (actually, we can all sing but jon and i prefer keeping that to ourselves :). for those of you who don't know, i took piano lessons for 7 years when i was younger.
"what? 7 years? she must be really good!"
you wish! ha. i really don't consider myself a musician of any kind since i quit piano in 6th grade and haven't gone back. i never had a huge interest in any other instruments either so i didn't pick up anything else up when i quit. i was just done. i don't know why, but i didn't care about music nearly as much as everyone else in my family. i loved listening to it, talking about it, singing along, but i did NOT want to play it. maybe i didn't want to be "one of the williams" who could all play an instrument and created the big family band (a funny thought...). i don't remember feeling that way, but i think there's a possibility that as the youngest, i wanted to be different and have something that was my own, not my family's. i played basketball and really enjoyed it and that was enough for me.
well now i have also quit basketball and i kind of wish i was playing music. i know, everyone says that they wish they would have just stuck with it when they were young, but i don't. i'm glad i quit when i did and i'm glad i tried other things in it's place. but now, so much in my life seems to be revolving around music. my classes, my job, my spare time, everything. there are times that i wish i could do more than just sing (to myself...ha). the singing/not singing is another story for another time.
all of that to lead up to this- i wrote a song last night. i was in bed reading psalms and ran across a section that i had underlined a lot and many of the phrases jumped out at me again, so i started writing them down in my notebook. as i looked over all of them, i began to put them in different orders and as i did this, i started to create a rhythm in my mind for them. my intention wasn't to write a song, but as the rhythm came, i started also create a tune. i got the words put together in the way that i wanted them and just worked with the tune until it fit. i sang it several times before i fell asleep so that i would hopefully remember it this morning. it worked and i remembered how it went so after school i came home and no one was here so i sat down at the piano and started finding the tune again. first i was just playing the melody with one hand, but as i got more familiar and started remembering some of my old piano training, i was able to play some extra stuff with my left hand and make it sound pretty good. i'm very surprised that i was able to put it together in my brain and actually get it written out on paper.

is anyone else making the connection that i made when i sat down to write this blog?? just wondering...
i wrote a song last night. that means i wrote the music. that means i wrote the lyrics.
anyone catching on?
i didn't have a specific audience in mind when i wrote this song. it wasn't written to please a certain group of people. but, on the other hand, it doesn't have extremely special meaning to me. i didn't write it because i'm having some sort of issue in my life and i needed to get it out. i wrote it because some words and phrases stuck out to me. so i suppose, the song and more specifically the lyrics, have more meaning to me, the writer, than they do to any audience who would hear them.
you better have caught on by now :)

i don't know if this music writing experience will help me or hurt me in my essay writing, but hopefully it will help. i don't find the lyrics i wrote to be profound or wonderful, but i do know why i wrote them and who they were intended for.
maybe now i will be able to look at my topic from a new angle and be able to determine how i feel about it more concretely.

senior project

this is my idea for my senior project:
coordinate kids alive this summer (of course with the help and direction of rima). i think this would be a great thing to do as my project because it can be pretty directly related to what i want to do after high school (become a teacher, for anyone who didn't know...). i think it would be fun to work on kids alive and help put it together this year instead of just being a leader for one of the groups.
rima and i have spent some time talking about the curriculum for this year and i've chosen my favorite ones so far and given my input...it looks like it could be pretty cool. we've also talked about some possibilities for a group of youth to take on kids alive instead of adults. that conversation came about before my senior project idea did, but i think it would still be cool to have a group of high schoolers who are the core leaders of the whole week instead of just adults.
here are my thoughts on having hs leaders, not adults:

• the younger kids already look up to us, as high schoolers at church etc., even if we don't realize it
• kids learn by example...especially the example of those they look up to. US.
• this could be a great experience for us- building leadership skills, trusting God for ideas and direction, loving one another
• building big/little sister/brother relationships within the church- discipleship starting at a young age

overall, i think it would beneficial for everyone involved if kids alive was led by a group of students, not adults. i'm still praying about this whole idea, but at this point, i think i'm ready to take it on.

organizing my thoughts

i have a 12-15 page paper to write for my english 102 class and i'm getting started on my brainstorming and stuff. i'm hoping that if i put some of my ideas on here i will be able to get feedback on what is good/bad, expandable, etc. please comment or talk to me if you have some thoughts. here's my topic (justin, you're gonna love this)- should music lyrics be written for an audience (i.e.- easy to listen to, understand, sing along with, "grab a hold of"...) or should they be written with meaning to the author?
first of all, since my paper needs to be argumentative in nature, i need to figure out which "side" i will take. i can easily come up with a "gray area" sort of answer, but it needs to be black and white...
here are my thoughts/ideas, as well as some toss-ups about which side to take:

• if lyrics are not made clear to the audience, the could easily be misinterpreted
• if someone is going to take the time and effort to write a song with meaning in their life, it is lame that people will inevitably take it in the wrong way and the author will be misinterpreted and misunderstood. in a way, he/she is having other people's words put in their mouth when lyrics aren't taken the right way
• lyrics are very contextual
• if a song isn't written to please an audience, who's going to listen to it?
• lyrics still need to be deep and have meaning, but they should be somewhat easy to understand
• if lyrics are too simple, they could cause people (especially younger generations) to think less and essentially do less on a worldwide level (to use this bullet, i would need to be able to quickly, but persuasively prove that music/lyrics have that level of an effect on young people...hmm)

also, i would like to somehow fit blues music and lyrics into my paper. if i can do this, i will have some of my final done for another class :)
i'm really excited about this paper, i just hope i can pull it off with some good arguments. i will most likely be posting more ideas and stuff as i come up with them. and if you're at all interested, i'll post some kind of outline when i have one...

on another note:
i hope to put some pictures up in a couple days. i've been using my camera a lot lately and i'm starting to get some shots that i like. hopefully i'll get some really good ones soon that i can post.