Jenna's Journeys

instacopycat

jennapeyton — Sat, 04 May 2013 13:12:31 +0000

BFF Allison does this fun reoccurring post on her blog called “instalife” and it’s always my favorite to see glimpses into her world so I decided to copy her. Also it’s sort of a rule of thumb for me that if Allison does it, I want to because she’s just like, the most cool, you guys. So here’s some (fairly) recent pics from the life and times.

so briefly, and I’m sure elaboration will follow in days to come, I’ve enjoyed:

Sunshine

Birthday parties for one of my most favorite boys

NOLA and catching up with my dear Andrea

Path Project

Fresh ink

Luminous (& co.)

April was a fun month. And May has begun with a bang!

reasons why being bad at tag Might equal being bad at dating

jennapeyton — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:32:46 +0000

As previously stated, on a playground is where I spend most of days (ok, ok it’s actually inside a school building, but I wanted to get the Fresh Prince stuck in your heads), and I’m finding more and more that there are lots of life applications to be made there. This week it dawned on me that the game “tag” (specifically freeze tag) and dating are an awful lot alike. This led to some introspective sarcasm, and thus this post was born.

When you embark on a game of tag, someone has to be declared “it”, and as a participant you have to find the perfect mixture of willing to be it, but somehow managing to not actually be it. I am not good at finding this balance. Every time, I’m either adamantly NOT it (which either means, you will be it [because people are rude] or they’ll decide your obstinacy prevents you from being a viable tagging target [because people are rude & you wouldn't chase them if they tagged you]) OR I’m all “ok, ok I’ll be it” (and then…you have to be it.). I’ll spell out the dating implications here briefly, it means either you’re

or you’re

except not all sweet like this…since he’s actually Prince charming.

But let’s say you master the first hurdle and aren’t it, but are instead running from the tagger. Eventually, they’ll tag you, and you’ll wait to be untagged, and then it gets interesting. In my observation, it’s an unspoken rule that once you’re unfrozen, you have to jog backwards in slow motion loudly exclaiming “oh, I am free again, I sure hope I don’t get caught agaaiiinnnn”. This is problematic for me because I have a hard time going backwards. Looking backwards, sure, but intentionally going backwards? Nope, I like to get all ~~Walt Disney~~ Meet the Robinsons on life and shout “KEEP MOVING FORWARD” at everyone [side note: this will not make you a crowd favorite at hockey games or in an airport. Trust me.] Either you tag me or you don’t. Call me or don’t. I’m not even trying to be about enticing someone…ain’t NObody got time fo dat.

(parenthetical aside)

And if I’m playing a game where the goal is to outsmart you and escape, I WILL OUTSMART YOU AND ESCAPE. And I won’t even begin to realize the error of my cunning intricacies until ~~several years post college~~ my leg starts cramping from the precarious position I’ve wedged myself into underneath the swirly slide’s steps.

I’ll be honest, in my playground days, I was the tag player who quit after being tagged more than once, because yeah right, like I’m going to stand here and wait for someone to untag me? Watch this you bunch of dopes, I’M NOT ACTUALLY FROZEN. (apply that to dating as you will)

Besides, whenever I play tag, I generally look like this

and metaphorically, it’s much the same for dating.

*this was the hardest post to write because I abhore the word “it”. Guess ‘it’s’ not such a pointless word after all.

This week, in brief.

jennapeyton — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 03:08:15 +0000

Here’s my week in short. at some point, someone disagreed with me, to which my prompt response was:

because, I’m right. always. and then our district decided to shorten the school year 2 days because the snow hated us this winter and all. Consequently, we classified (which is way cooler a term if you think of it in spy world where it’s mysterious instead of in elementary school world where its like being trapped in caste system) employees get to choose whether or not we wanted to work those 2 days they cut while the real teachers do professional development. To this I promptly said:

And then later in the week this happened -

and while my outside voice said “bhoujjheee”, my inside voice said

And then it was Friday and I was all

quite literally. which is probably why I’m widely accepted at an elementary school. and single. whatever world.

j out.

expressionism

jennapeyton — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 20:00:56 +0000

I am an expressive person. Sometimes people hate that, sometimes people love it. I mostly am surprised by it. But since this is a blog and some of you don’t get to see my face e’ry day, I’ve decided to attempt a new, ~~absolutely arbitrary~~ fairly consistent post conveying my reactions to certain things. Make requests if you want, or just deal with the insanity that is my brain. It affects me not. (also, #myfriendsaremarried hits a lot of nails on the head with this type ish. but sometimes it’s profane; be warned.)

how I feel about a friend telling me we’re going different directions now

because, like, seriously people, last I checked we were all spinning around the same sun with the exact same amount of minutes in our days.

how I feel when people say they don’t like coffee.

because, WHAT DRUGS ARE YOU DOING THEN, CRAZY?

& one last one for today:

how I feel when more than one bird flies near me in public

because you know how they do—rollin’ up on you absolutely unannounced, lookin’ all full of bird flu and what not.

until next time, peeps. ugh, I hate it when people say that. But not like I hate birds, so there’s that. x0x0, j

life lessons.

jennapeyton — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 02:03:00 +0000

You guys… i JUST found this draft…and since i wrote it 8 months ago, i decided to post it? oops.

Sometimes I forget that other people don’t actually live in my head; therefore, I forget that I have to sometimes give an audible voice to what all those other voices in my head have been saying. Buckle up.

If you’ve been with me, I regret that some of this will be repetitive, but this sweet little blog started as a means of pacifying madre with a means of communication as I traveled solo to Macedonia to do 10 days of missions my sophomore year of college. In college it was a means of clinging to all the wonder of the Victorians and newly found lifestyle blogs and friends living hundreds of miles away. Post-college it was just plain cathartic; I didn’t even care if not one other soul ever perused; it was mine.

This past year, it was hard. I rarely felt inspired. And in the few times I did, I struggled to communicate anything in a way that was satisfactory to my own expectations or really in a way that communicated anything at all. I wanted to blog. I wanted to love blogging. I wanted to love the freedom of pushing “publish”. But I didn’t. And I couldn’t. Sometimes life-change is hard.

I’m not really sorry for any of that. In fact, I don’t even think I’m sad about any of it. It’s not like I didn’t do things, meet people, or have fun, but I just felt so devoid of energy whenever the time came to write that I couldn’t. It’s unfortunate I suppose, but such is life. Moral of the story, don’t let life suck the creative energy from you- even if all you’re creating is mediocre updates for your mom and 4 friends who also blog.

And as a lovely little post-script tid-bit: I spent the last year interning at a church that I love claiming as my own with a supervisor/mentor who is brilliant and loves the Lord in all things. I read a lot. I met A LOT of people. And I experienced a little more of the fullness of God that comes from aligning your character with Jesus’.

Change.

jennapeyton — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 22:55:21 +0000

“In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn’t change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.”

Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

I don’t know anything about this quote except that I love it and am deeply intrigued by its implications.

And that finding it (with no recollection at all) in a random sticky hidden on my desktop might mean I’m a hoarder. A HOARDER OF GOOD THINGS.

How Pinteresting

jennapeyton — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:10:31 +0000

Pinterest changes lives. I’d first like to give you this link to an awesome article directed towards the heart of issues we women face. It’s a good one in my opinion, and in it she says stuff like, “Epic in scope, breathtaking in simplicity and utterly, hopelessly addictive, Pinterest actually represents a handy, online measuring stick where I can gauge my own effectiveness as a woman ” and then she talks about how her “own personal Pintervention involves heavy doses of grace and perspective along with a release from any expectation that I will ever actually attempt any of the projects that I so eagerly pin“. (And everything in between those quotes is really great too)

I’d second like to say that I love Pinterest. And I’m not intimidated by your homemade spinach quiche or hand-crafted book shelf, you domestic goddess, you. Pinterest is inspiring, and I like being inspired, so I’d say we’ve got a good thing going, ol’ Pinterest and I. I would however like some accountability. I’ve found these lovely things and decided I want to create some stuffs, but I need people to say, “ok, I hear you girl, and next week when I ask you how it turned out you had better respond with a picture”.

So in honor of Spring, (and the fact that I currently have a Christmas garland and a Valentine banner hanging in my living room) I need this to happen.

And then I’ve really been into printing lately, so I want to do this…ish, but without the weirdo letters ’cause I don’t love those, and maybe with a different object/placement/whatever.

What’s Your Story

jennapeyton — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:37:46 +0000

I recently got an email about Donald Miller’s new project, Storyline. It’s a pretty cool thing he’s exploring, and I really want to read it/get involved (more so than just the profile I created on mysubplot and haven’t viewed again since).

He gives three keys to having more impact, and although most of this post will be ka-wotes (quotes), they’re so good, I feel no need to paraphrase.

Move from Fuzzy to Clear Ambitions

The reason Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and Mother Theresa all lived great stories is because they, and the rest of the world, knew exactly what they wanted. King wanted racial equality, Churchill wanted to defeat Hitler and Mother Theresa wanted dignity for the poor. So, if we want to live impactful stories, our ambitions must be just as clear. Take out a piece of paper today and write down what your primary ambitions are. Meditate and pray about them. This one step will make you a much more compelling person. Try doing this the second you finish reading this article. It won’t be long before people around you begin to see you as a leader, simply because you have clear ambitions.

Move from Conflict Avoidant to Conflict Engaging

All great characters have to go through conflict. Without conflict, stories are boring and characters don’t change. Real-life people are the same. The more we avoid conflict, the less impact we will have. Are you avoiding conflict? Procrastinating? Not reconciling with somebody? Write down three things you are avoiding, tackle them today, and tomorrow you’ll be living with less stress. And you’ll have an enormous amount of self-respect. Great characters engage conflict peacefully and easily.

Choose Meaning over Pleasure

Pleasure isn’t always bad. In fact, pleasure is mostly good. But when pleasure drives us, we end up living sad stories. Our ambitions should be more meaningful. When we choose what we want our lives to be about, we would do better to choose relational endeavors. Sure, it’s okay to make a lot of money. But if our lives are all about making money, we won’t contribute much to the well being of our loved ones. Make your ambitions heartfelt. Choose to want a great marriage, to have a well-loved family, to be a supportive listener, to be a protective leader. Make each of your ambitions count by connecting them to the well-being of others.

End Quote. I just don’t even know what else to say. Our stories are so important, and telling them well is such a hard thing sometimes. I bolded some of my favorite tid-bits and gems, and I really want to be better at doing these things. I’ll keep ya updated. And you hold me accountable, ok? ok.

A Soliloquy on Paper with a little substance dispersed throughout.

jennapeyton — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 19:54:00 +0000

Video killed the radio star. And now the internet is coming after the newspapers.

Technology is changing everything. And that’s wonderful, but for someone who loves words, pens, paper, ink, typography, punctuation and the like, it’s scary that people are beginning to prefer things tht they can look at with their eyes alone instead of things they can also touch with their hands.

Call me crazy, call me prudish, call me whatever, but I like books. I hate internet classes, sometimes I lose my phone on purpose, and I will always prefer getting a letter to getting a text.

Now here’s where it gets sticky: I think the things people are doing and creating with technology and new standards are amazing! Like this guy here: . He’s written a book full of stories that are 240 characters or fewer; and they’re good stories! Then there’s books like “6 word memoirs” which contains people saying some things that are far more impressive with a mere 6 words than other memoirs I’ve read containing 200+ pages. One of my favorite tweople I follow is “veryshortstory” and again, a meager amount of words used for maximum effect. Good things are happening.

And that’s what scares me. Deep down I want them all to fail. For people to say, I’d rather buy the book because I like the way it smells and flippping the pages makes me happy. I want authors to understand that Dickens and Twain really were genius for publishing their stories serially. I want to be Victorian I guess.

Poets and Progress, y’all.

jennapeyton — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 20:07:55 +0000

“To feel today what one felt yesterday isn’t to feel– it’s to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today’s living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost.” -Fernando Pessoa (Portuguese Poet)

Maybe I’ve blogged this before. But whatever. It’s such a good quote. And it’s cool to me that his last name means “person” in Portuguese. So, his name is Fernando Person. Dude.

Also, I’ve just recently scheduled several posts I found in my email. Good news, this blog will finally be consistent for about 2 weeks. Bad news, they’re way random and slightly unfinished (being that some of them were drafted in 2010…oops). Or maybe that’s not bad news. Just dig deep and try to enjoy regardless, friends.

xoxo

-j