52 weeks. 260 lists. 1 year of gratitude.

I want to introduce a project that I started with my sisters yesterday. A Year of Gratitude is a blog that I created yesterday, on which four of my sisters and I will be writing at least once a week until June 24, 2011. I was talking to my mom yesterday about how my sisters and I are growing apart. It makes sense. We are all a very different stages of our life right now. Abby and Linzie are in junior high, working with the challenges that Carley and I faced four years ago. Emily, while only a year younger than Carley and I, is facing very different challenges than the ones we are facing as we are heading into our senior year of high school. It's not like when we were little and we all walked to school together, not like when we all hung out with the same group of neighborhood kids and found the most entertainment in making up games with each other (which we still do, just not as often.) It makes sense that we don't spend as much time talking and hanging out with each other (though, since it is summer, we are spending most of our time together at the moment) as we did when our age differences seemed so much smaller.

So my mom suggested that we start this project. It is a blog that serves as a place for us to list or show what we find ourselves thinking we are grateful for. The challenging part of it is that we have to write one of these lists once a week. Each of us has to post something on that blog every week for a year. It'll probably feel very similar to how having to write here at least once a week in 9th grade felt. I would spend all week brainstorming topics and then when I finally sat down to write I could never remember any of them and would usually end up ranting about whatever I had on my mind at that very moment. I usually wrote those posts at the last minute or while I was in the computer lab for a class (usually Mr. T's) and not doing the work I was supposed to be doing.

This blog is going to force all of us to pay more attention to what is going on around us in our lives. It is going to make us look for the things that make us feel happy or lucky every day. It is also going to inspire the creativity that I know each of my sisters has so much of. I'm more excited about reading and seeing what they are going to have to say every week than I am about what I am going to be putting together. It's going to be a fun thing that all of us are going to be doing together. I can just hear the comments that are going to be going around every week. "Have you posted your list yet?" "No, I have no idea what to do." or "Yeah, I posted it last night. You should go look at it." 

I posted the first list yesterday and it is probably the easiest list that I will post all year. I am already thinking about what I am going to write next week, though. Most of my week is already planned out and so I know the things that I am excited about and that I will be grateful for. However, I know there will probably be a lot of things that are going to take me by surprise. So we'll see what happens.

The other day I posted this on Facebook: I just thought I would inform you all that Wendy Randquist, Carley Randquist, Emily Nicole Randquist, Ashley Turek, Linzie Randquist and Abby Randquist (in order of age) are the most amazing girls, the best sisters and THE best friends that any girl could ask for. I ♥ you guys. I guess that in itself could be a post of what I am grateful for. My sisters are sometimes the only thing that keeps me sane and are at other times the very things pushing me toward insanity. I am so grateful for them, though.

There are 52 weeks in a year. Each week there will be at least 5 lists added to our blog. That means that by the end of the year we should have at least 260 lists of things that we are grateful for. Pretty cool, huh? I think it will be. Our plan, once we finish, is to use a website like this to publish a hardback copy of the blog for each of us. They do that, now. Isn't that awesome? I think it will probably be the coolest book I own once we finish it. I'm excited. There are so many big things that are going to happen in the next 52 weeks and that blog is going to be a record of sorts of all of that.

My Purpose

As of tonight I have written 145 entries in my personal journal that I began this past Christmas. In the past six months I have written more in the journal than I have in 3 years of writing this blog. I like that. While this blog will be here for people to read for years to come, my journal will be mine alone to keep and share as I please for the rest of my life. It is my thoughts and hopes and dreams as I go through (almost) each day. They are my perspective on life at any given time. It is a version of me, a picture of myself, frozen in time.

I love the privacy that my journal holds. I feel no reason to hold myself back in my comments there. The purpose of it is not to inform anyone of anything. It is 1) to let myself express my uncensored thoughts on anything, anytime and 2) to give me something concrete to show how I have changed as time goes by. Just tonight I looked back on a few of the entries I wrote six months ago and I can tell how much I have changed by then. Just think how much that change will be years from now, and I will have a way to measure it. I will be able to look back on my thoughts at a specific moment in time and think 'Wow. I have grown up since then. I am so glad that I am where I am today.' When I have those moments, I will write them down. I will write them down for myself. Uncensored. A method of remembering myself as I once was.

Kara might say that I should try to live more in the present. She says that I spend too much time in my past and my future. I agree. I do spend more time than I should worrying about where I will be years from now or brooding over decisions that I made long ago. Sometimes I need to pull myself out of my thoughts and just live. There are other times, though, when looking back at how I once was helps me to keep moving forward. I look back on things I said or did and I realize then that I can not make the same mistakes again. Or I see that there is a purpose to the path that I am on. These moments help me keep moving forward when other things are telling me to stop. These things tell me that it would be so much easier to remain stagnant in my life. There would be no problem to stay as I am, to stand and watch as others pass me by. See, now? These moments of reflection are my motivation. They are my reason in times of doubt.

That is why I write in my journal every night and why I only write here every so often. I am a naturally born writer. Just ask anyone in my family, it's in my genes. What I have realized though, is that my purpose in writing doesn't always have to be to impress or entertain an audience. My writing has just as much meaning, often more, when I am writing purely for myself. I can be selfish in my writing without hurting those around me. I can transcribe my own thoughts without any intention of sharing them with anyone else and still have them mean something. My words are just as valuable in my journal, read by only me, as they are on this blog where anyone can access them.

The End is Here

It is the first day of the last week of my second to last year of high school. I am in my second period class, Newspaper Editors, and I am simply sitting here waiting for the bell to ring so that I can go to psychology. It is interesting to think that this time next year I will be mere days from graduating high school. We have all come so far since I started writing this blog two and half years ago. None of us are in the same places anymore (whether that be physically, mentally, or both.) This thought came to me while I was looking at the 'feedjit' I have in the sidebar of my blog. There was an entry there that said San Antonio, Texas and I couldn't help but smile.

I knew instantly that there is really only one person that would read my blog in San Antonio. mL, who was my best friend when she lived in Utah, moved there about a year ago. We talk sometimes and are possibly planning a trip for me to visit her in August, but for the most part we now live completely separate lives. There was a time, two years ago, when I would go to her house for an afternoon and end up leaving two days later. We had inside jokes coming out our ears and we were making plans for summer and for high school.

The other day I was listening to a song that I love in the car. As I was listening (and singing along) I realized that it had originally came out when I was in junior high. It was tied to that time for me. I was suddenly thinking of my friends from that time and what I was doing. It made me think of the day, almost four years ago, that I spent with Manda and Tanoya. We walked around as we looked through our yearbooks and eventually ended up at Barnes Park for a barbecue their family was having. I have not seen Tanoya in over two years. I have not spent a day with Manda in at least one year, probably longer than that.

Two years from now I will be finished with my first year of college. So much will change between now and then. Kara and I have talked about what we are going to do then, but neither of us really have any idea. It is impossible to plan two years ahead. I could be going to Utah State and I could be studying psychology but I could also be going to any other university or no university. I have no idea what is going to happen and at this point I shouldn't be worried about it. There is no way that I can know or even plan for what will happen to me in two years. I just have to live my life in the present.

It is the first day of the last week of my second to last year of high school. I am in my second period class, Newspaper Editors, and I am simply sitting here waiting for the bell to ring so that I can go to psychology. In ten minutes I will head upstairs to my next class and at noon I will come downstairs and get back on this computer. Tonight I will go to the yearbook stomp and tomorrow I will go to school. That is really as far ahead as I need to plan, for now.