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Happy Thanksgiving from the Nielsen family (pre-view of the 2009 Nielsen Christmas card)



I am thankful.

Thankful for having more than i deserve at all. for having love in my life. for a mother who has loved me unconditionaly, through all of the bull shit i have put her through (and it's been pretty bad). Thankful for the times when God's love is real to me, and i can see a purpose in things. I am thankful that He has a love for me that far outweighs all the times i turn my cheek. Thankful for forgiveness, and for fresh starts. Thankful for my Pup, she makes me smile every time i walk in the door. Thankful for food to eat (in that i need to be respectful of it and be healthy). Thankful for being able to go to school and get an education, despite the frustration or monotonoay of it all. Thankful for getting to go to Uganda in 2 months. Thankful for friends who have loved me when i was pretty unlovable. Thankful for Jessie Gaul, Danielle Sheldon, Kyle Henley. Thankful for people who i've met and learned something from. Thankful for people who have confronted me or helped me grow up. Thankful for honey crisp apples, purple grapes, sugar free red bull. Thankful for having less and less care about consumerism, and having nice things. Thankful for other friends who are real and i can have fun with.

Today I wrote out 4 notes to my Mom, Elise, Josh, and Brian. I just wrote what I was thankful for about them. I just wanted to do it, and i think i'll start doing it every year maybe. Working on being less selfish, less demanding of instant gratification. Elminating selfish desire would be nice, that won't happen but i guess just working towards it maybe i'll get somewhere. maybe not.


Saw brand new twice this tour, drove up to CT last night with april, was the best brand new set i've ever seen. I'm glad we went.

Goodnight

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hi, i help others because i know that nobody can help me. because i want to do so many things and go so many places. every day i wake up and wish i hadn't. and it feels awful when you walk out the front door with that mindset and you see a homeless individual with a drug addiction and/or mental disorder, and you feel nothing but guilt for feeling so miserable. how can these things manifest, and stick around for so long, when i have a place to live, i have people who love me. dad i miss you, but i deserved to tell you what you put me through. i've been through some things, but i've met people who have seen far worse. i know what i have, i know what i should be able to do. if it were that simple, it would be that simple, and i would not wake up and go to bed feeling completely void of any importance or emotion, regardless of the events i have experienced that day, or have to look forward to. what a joke. i'm my own hell, seriously have always just been fighting a war against myself, i can't remember a day with a clear mind, but that would be nice. I can't save myself, how do you save yourself when you are the problem

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...yeah kinda like that

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i can not wait for christmas time, i am already downloading/listening to christmas music. i can't wait for colder weather, ginger bread houses, christmas plays, trans-siberian orchestra, driving around looking at christmas lights, christmas at the zoo, buying gifts for people i love, christmas morning, my birthday the day after. always think it would be nice to share this with someone, almost every year things are rocky around this time, and i haven't enjoyed it as much in the recent past. but i will this year, christmas is too good to be missing something that was never even there.

.009

i can't do for you what you can't do for yourself, and i can't be what you want me to be, by the time i become that, i'll be gone, we'll both be far from close. so this is me saying so long. i have never been good at standing idle by waiting for the small possibility you may need me in the time to come. you'll grow out of this, you've got a lot inside, but nothing i can offer you that you won't resist to no end. i refuse to compete for you, with you, for your attention, for your friendship. i don't know what you want or what you expect from a friend, but it shure as hell doesn't look like this. it is okay to see things close out, or come to an end, or even just to close in on it for a while. you don't feel like home anymore. so bye, later, i'll be seeing you, and when i do i'll know you far less than i do now.

.008

this weekend was perfect, spent time with a bunch of good friends, met some neat new people. saw my middle school self resurface at the electric factory when jude law/seventy times 7 were played. but i should have alowed more time for homework. ohh wellp, i think i did well on my exam today anyway. 2.5 months. 4 more weeks of school, then finals, then christmas. I CAN NOT WAIT!

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t-minus 12ish weeks and counting; can not wait, can not wait ahhhh

okay okay; just one little frustration, you know the feeling when you can't think or try to figure out anything you want to think about or try to figure out. when life, school, people, work, the internet, take up all of YOUR brain time, and make it THEIR brain time. yeah, that feeling. I HATE THAT FEELING. It is extremly limiting, but what else would you expect when your mind is being taken over, flooded by everything you want to just run away from. Because maybe things would make a little more sense, maybe if we stepped outside we wouldn't actually be doing a lot of this at all? I have no clue because I don't think i've really done this, I've tried, the thought is nice right? What would we really gain from it, the push and pull of our every day lives keeps us busy and maybe what we do through out the day is useful in not allowing us to think too deply, or when we do it is almost indefinitly interupted. We probably wouldn't like what we found, yeah we think we're bad now, right?


forever my favorite lyrist ever ever ever.

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Ahh so i didn't remember today was my Dad's birthday until my mom said, "you're dad would have turned 54 today". weird because i knew it was my older brother's birthday, but it slipped my mind that the two of them always shared the november 7th birthday... Dad you didn't even make it to your 50th birthday, i know you would be feeling really old today. i miss ya a lot, and i really love you. just wish forgetting you/things about you didn't come with time. i wish i could preserve everything good and relive it by memory or in my dreams. please keep watching over us, we need you still. i hope God tells you about the good things that are going on in our lives, i know he wouldn't bother you with the bad up there. i don't know if you would be proud of me right now, i hope you would be. i've come a long way, i'm definitely a shell of the 14 year old k girl youd left behind, but i'd still let you take me out on movie/dinner dates, i'd still run out to your autobody shop when i needed help or just needed to cry. i don't cry so much anymore. sometimes i don't think i miss you enough, but it's been 5 years, i think you've helped us with that. have fun up there, i bet it's neat. i hope God tells you these sort of things. Happy Birthday Dad, God throws better birthday parties than us anyways.

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Okay this soundtrack is perfect in every way. I have seen the movie twice, and plan on seeing it again. You should see it if you haven’t. A lot about self realization in a new and bright concept, bright in the innovation of it, not the tone of the movie, the movie is rather dark in that area. The self realization of a child, the journey we are all on in a more basic and beautiful form. Children have less baggage and don’t have an image to maintain. They hurt in raw form, out in the open for all to see.

I don’t want to whine or complain, because really who wants to hear that? I know I don’t. Our lives are far less great than we make them out to be, not in a glass half empty sort of way, but in that we all become a little egocentric in regard to our own existence. We have this idea that everyone around us cares so much about what we do or don’t do, that if we mess up or let someone down it is the ultimate end of the world. Hey, it really isn’t right? I mean chances are whatever you are doing is hardly a concern for the majority of the people you feel it is. They have much more important things to worry about than you cancelling plans or taking a semester off from school. We form this schema in which success must look like. That if we do not go to college, graduate in 4 years, and get a job, we are lazy and doing nothing with our lives. More and more I am hating this concept. I think maybe I would enjoy school a little more if it wasn’t forced upon me, if it was something I just wanted to do, rather than I requirement . I really am the last person to be speaking about this.

So here is November, and I am nowhere near the goals I had set. I won’t stop working towards them. I think it is taking a lot more than I expected, and harder to overcome the things I would like. This idea of piety and selflessness has seemed to come up in a lot of my courses this semester. An interesting concept that there can never really be a completely pious or altruistic individual, can an individual exist solely for the good of others? I think in every act of kindness and “selflessness” there is a bit of selfishness, in the good feeling we get from helping or in the reaction we get from those we help. I don’t know, that’s an argument that doesn’t really have a reachable conclusion.