In the middle of Tempe, Arizona is a place called Mill Avenue where the sun goes down and the lights come up.  While the rest of Maricopa sleeps, this modern downtown district comes alive with the bustle of college kids come out to relish the weekend.  Music oozes out of clubs and the crowd is thick outside of shops and restaurants.  Corporate buildings loom above in their money-screaming grandeur.  Walking a little farther, the lake sparkles with the lights of the bridge.  
  Dallin and I were both a little bored after our friends' FunkyTown fundraiser ended, so we met up in a random parking lot halfway between our two houses and then started driving west.  Neither of us knew what we wanted to do with our Saturday night, so we just drove till we ended up in the ASU zone.  Maybe it's just because I'm from the suburbs, but I find the city so exciting!  While we weren't exploring Mill, we were dangling our feet over the lake or just laying the grass behind the dazzling Center for the Arts, goofing off until my cheeks ached horrendously from smiling for a solid 3.5 hours.
  I was kind of shocked to have the night off, to be honest.  I've been booked every single weekend with rehearsals so usually I have to be a little more flexible on my weekdays if I want to socialize.  School isn't very entertaining anymore, but I do find ways to make my life enjoyable.  Volleyball games, conveyer belt sushi, opening night movies and way-too-late-nights all make the last few months of HS worthwhile.  
 

     Those who know me know that I am constantly yearning to fill my life with something worthwhile.  It doesn't matter if it's 10:30 at night, if I've just barely gotten back after a sixteen-hour drive from vacation in Texas or if I have school the next day-- if I have the opportunity to get out and make memories, I seize it up.  In Europe, I kind of got into some bickerings because all I wanted to do was go-go-go while the others were tired and said we should go back to the hotel.  What, no! I have two legs for a reason and I will expound every ounce of my energy to make the most use of every ounce of my time.
     And yet, when I'm at home, I feel like I've been sucked into some sort of time warp that renders me completely useless.  I get home after noon with no homework and yet if my mom asks me what I've been doing all day, I honestly have no idea.  She gets upset if I haven't done my chore but often the thought to do it never even crosses my mind.  It's not like I play video games or have a Twitter or Tumblr, and I watch less 1.5 hours of TV per 168 hour week.  I even deleted the Pinterest app from my phone. So what do I do?  {Yes, I do have a lot of rehearsals at night, and every Monday and Wednesday I spend four hours at the college/carpooling children from their private school in Mesa.  But still, I would not consider myself a busy person because on all these days I still have free time.} This is something I absolutely loathe about myself-- that I so often wither my life away by accomplishing nothing.  I feel lazy, incompetent, waste-of-space-ish.  Not to sound dramatic or emo or anything, but truly!  What is my purpose in life if there's nothing even worth remembering in my daily schedule?
     For me, everything is about that sense of accomplishment.  I get a sense of accomplishment from working out/eating healthy.  I get a sense of accomplishment from going to the temple or discovering something I've never noticed before in my personal religious studies.  How about finishing a piece of artwork or cleaning out that dreaded bedroom junk drawer or watching a documentary to learn about history?  I love playing piano and singing and writing my novel, but it is almost guaranteed that someone will yell at me to stop making music because they are on the phone/watching TV/doing their homework a few feet from the piano instead of in their room/don't like noise, and when writing someone/thing will pull me away from my concentration before I so much as develop an idea.    I can't complete my art project if I don't have the materials/software to do it the way I want.  I can't work out when I've had bronchitis for over a month soon to develop into pneumonia {it finally ended, I'm starting up again tomorrow} and I can't eat healthy when there's nothing healthy to eat.  I wrote down 50 family names, but when I typed the codes back into the same website so I could them take the temple, I couldn't find them.
      What's even harder is that I crave to help those not in a situation to help themselves.  The starving?  The enslaved?  The animals?  In a fit of passion last week I started designing a campaign for one of these causes, but with a look that said you're cute, someone pointed out the stupidity of it all.  I guess they were right-- how on earth am I supposed to save the world when an entire semester of working won't even pay for a semester of college?  One of my biggest fears is that I, a girl with everything-- a healthy body, good ACT scores, a supportive and well-off family, American freedom, dare I say potential-- will throw it all away and die knowing that so many people would have done anything to have what I take for granted, and then shrivel away till my memory is like the dust of my body.  
  Sorry for my whining, but this all just struck me yesterday like a blow to the gut.  What are you doing, Katie?!  Get ahold of yourself!     So from now on it is my goal to make EVERY day worthwhile.  I've always known that I needed that, just like I know that I find every excuse to get out and I dream to travel and I could never work a desk job because I go absolutely insane when my schedule doesn't get switched up regularly.  There are no more excuses for me.  To quote my best friend, "There are far too many people with plans that don't have the drive to complete them.  What gives people drive?  Like, what makes the difference between people who think something and then those who actually do it?"  It is so hard sometimes when you don't get that sense accomplishment from the things you're told to do, or when the things that do give you accomplishment are given barriers.  But I guess that's life.  We just need to find the drive to keep pushing on and eventually the little things you work for will lead into big things to work for, then in time those will lead into opportunities and the ability to get some real accomplishment in life.  And then what will never come?  Regret for truly living.

I don't care if it's the wrong era- LOOK HOW SICK THIS CAR IS.
My so-not-cute ADYSON STOP IT YOU'RE GONNA DROP ME PUT ME DOWN face when we hopped up onto this wall and suddenly she thought she could prove she was strong like Superwoman by picking me up.