this is too personal, and not eloquent. that means it's late at night.

i'm a little bit heart-weary tonight. there are some underlying reasons i'm sure, but there were just some random things that happened tonight that are making me uneasy as i am processing them.

for starters, i'm used to adults ribbing me about when i'm going to find somebody and get married, but now my friends at home have started. i am pretty much the only single in our group, and it comes up in conversation. great. i get all awkward and embarrassed with all that attention focused on me. and hey, when you are pretty much the only adventist young adult in town, dating is just, well, not an option. people could get onto me for not having an open mind when it comes to other guys but i will say this— i may not know much of what i want, but i do know that if i end up dating or marrying, i want him to be an adventist. i want him to share my faith and the principles behind it.

another thing that is bothering me, is that tonight i hung my head in shame when i told an acquaintance that i am studying english and art. my friend brian was quick to defend me, bless him, but i am so upset with myself. it's just that around my friends from home, i feel so dumb compared to them. one of them is a pharmacist, who is married to a nurse. another is a doctor who is married to a computer programmer. one is an engineer. one is doing her master's in comparative literature (emphasis on russian), and she is married to an astrophysicist. can you see where i am coming from? i'm friends with a freaking astrophysicist!

i'm ashamed of myself for being ashamed. God help me, i will never let that happen again, never be ashamed of what i love. God blessed me with a talent for english and a love for art. He blessed me with a sharp mind and creativity. it may not be in the ways that seem really smart to me, but i should never be ashamed of what i am good at. and i am good at it. i have to believe that.

the third thing that is making me upset is, in reality, ridiculous. it's because of a tv show. it's just that i can identify with the main character entirely too much. she over-analyzes, doesn't recognize her own amazingness, and unfortunately, makes some bad decisions when good is staring her straight in the face. oh it makes my heart hurt because i see myself doing the exact same thing. it's stupid, i know, to get so caught up in a character, but hey, i'm good at putting myself in other people's shoes, and these shoes walk just a little too close to home.

so right now i basically just want to cry. or watch a chick flick that will make me cry. or spend hours on pinterest or something. but it's after midnight. and that would be making a bad decision when a good one is staring me in the face.

i feel like the illustration on the game cranium

my mind was just blown by some serious short-cut-more-understandable-and-easier math equations. they told me that is what would happen when i learned algebra in seventh grade. then they said that's what would happen with all things geometry (maybe they forgot about proofs). and finally they said that derivatives are just life handed to you on a platter in calculus.

but no. my mind was not blown by any of those things. it was blown by some basic math concepts that i learned after college because my elementary, jr. high, and high school math teachers failed to teach them to me.

let me explain. remember those nasty word problems of "two trains are coming towards each other on the tracks. one is going 50 mph and the other is going 70 mph. how long until they will meet each other?" i hated those. i could seriously care less, other than wishing the trains would just crash into each other and be done with it. but i was forced to do them. i'm pretty sure i would just write the numbers down, do some half-hearted attempts at chicken scratch process and pull some number out of nowhere. i'm also pretty sure i got them wrong almost every single time. but now, because someone explained it to me so clearly, with a nifty little equation that was heinously withheld from me, i understand. light bulb on.

Time = AB
           A+B

the other light bulb (yes, more than one. maybe i have a chandelier over my head just waiting to burst into light. don't judge.) was with combinations. this was the equation my book explained it with:

10C3 =       10!      
            3!(10-3)!

um, come again? since when do we have exclamation points in math other than to express our extreme dislike of it? it just makes me read it very emphatically in my head. teensy 10C3 equals TEN!! over THREE!! Times 10-3!!

i took one look at that and just felt frazzled.

now i know you can just use   n*n-1*n-2 . . . x
                                            k*k-1*k-2 . . . 1

i know it doesn't look any better, kind of like the word 'kleenex' in code, but you just plug numbers in, simplify and you've got your answer. all without the needless emphatic inner voice screaming improper punctuation at you.

there you have it. my enlightenment for the day. . . and did i just actually blog about math? and how excited i was by it?

what is the world coming to?

nerd.