About a Year Left in this Fair Burg

So...Austin.

When I first moved to Austin I hated it. It was weird. It was colorful and dirty and was full of hippies and music and everyone seemed delirious and happy all the time except me.

But within the last year (to me at least) Austin has transformed from a freaky Hippie mecca to a quirky fun city- seemingly created just to entertain college students and joyful granola-eating newlyweds. And drag rats of course. With the occasional hippie. Stuff like SXSW, the bats, breakfast tacos, and food trailers has molded my perception of this little oasis from 'I can't wait to get out of here and back to the real world' to 'I can't wait to stay here instead of migrating to the real world.'

Tragically, with the bittersweet aid of AP testing and cheerfully burdening myself with heavy courseloads, I have dwindled my beautiful undergrad years from a plump 4 to a meager 3. While this means saving a small fortune in tuition, it also means that these the golden years are cruelly ripped from me a full 365 days early. Pretty soon I'll be fighting for my life in grad school instead of stumbling along Dean Keaton trying to figure out if I needed 3 semesters of a foreign language or 4. (It's 4.)

With my year and a quarter left in this beautiful city, I choose to make the best of it. No longer will I saunter over to Jack-in-the-Box or Wendy's to get a quick artery-hardening fix of processed food. Now I will have my arteries hardened by local cuisine only. No longer will I spend a weekend night lazily cleaning my dorm room while imagining the wonders I could do with that SNL program. I will go out into the city. I will watch free shows with live bands, and I will judge horrible indie films. I will walk among the masses on 6th street. And no longer will I keep Christianity in the back of my mind as I go about my day. It's been promoted. It is now at the front, it is now why I wake up early on a Saturday morning to volunteer, why I study the word with equally ferocity as I study my textbooks.

In order to facilitate this new approach I need to do what I do best. Mock it. Just kidding, make a list. So here we go.

50 Things + More for the next year and a bit
1. eat at 5+ food carts...rate them
2. learn to make a beautiful dessert that doesn't come from a box
3. go to AT LEAST 6 concerts
4. volunteer with communities I care about
5. get into grad school
6. read the bible daily
7. NEVER sleep past 11...I don't have days to waste!
8. no more reality TV that isn't Top Chef (this starts TODAY)
9. mondays are study nights. Seriously.
10. church on Sundays is fun right now...but keep going even when it is less fun
11. eat local
12. go to Esther's
13. bats bats bats bats
14. canoe on Ladybird Lake
15. go see that weird house with all the stuff
16. keep my room clean enough where people can come and go freely whenever they want
17. get comfortable following recipes
18. read good books- Chuck Klosterman is supposed to be good
19. don't stop writing just because you've run out of RHE electives
20. re-learn Spanish basics
21. go on a mission trip
22. get a spray tan (no laughing...I've always wanted to do this)
23. try a cigar
24. roadtrip that doesn't end at the H-E-B (grocery story or midcities trifecta)
25. ONE...ONE....ONE SODA A WEEK!!!
26. learn to love coffee
27. learn to love multicultural beers
28. be dedicated to the organizations that I'm in
29. new orleans...I want to go to there
30. get a slightly above average score on the GRE
31. learn to play an instrument that is either the guitar or the piano
32. be less careful with money...for the sake of happiness
33. be less wary of my personal appearance...for the sake of time in the mornings
34. create a community for my residents
35. get baptized
36. don't say no to things just because I'm mentally tired. you can get over that pretty quick with good company.
37. learn to knit
38. use my last two electives wisely
39. block facebook except for an hour a day.
40. devote time and thought to research, because I may never get to do it again
41. write songs without feeling stupid
42. don't waste time dreading things (tests, busy days)
43. learn how to pray for people better
44. pay taxes this year because I actually had a real income
45. get over unnatural hatred of outdoors/summer/grass/bugs/elements
46. get windshield wipers fixed (okay, that's kind of a freebee)
47. go to non-class lectures...psychology, religious studies...and especially sociology
48. apply to 3 grad schools that seem impossible to get into
49. transform Girl's Night from whine-y to funn-y
50. see live improv.
51. learn more about the Arabic and Asian languages
52. take that pig suturing workshop, because I will never get to do that again in my life and it is FREE
53. from now until next August, dedicate 2 hours a week to the GRE
54. use bed only for sleeping (no homework, no watching movies, no coloring...JUST SLEEPING)


(I'm going to add more to this later but I am too tired. sTAY TuNEd!)