Tired.

I have not mastered the art of sleep. I don't understand how I can sleep 8 hours a night and still be tired, and then sleep 4 hours and be completely fine. I have a terrible time having a good schedule - I'll go to bed at a reasonable time when I have work in the morning, but it gets thrown off when I work late.

I guess the problem I have is that I've just grown used to being tired. Which probably shouldn't be the case. Or I guess it should? I rarely encounter someone, at work or otherwise, that isn't tired. But are we tired because are actually doing something to exhaust ourselves? Or are we tired because we don't get enough sleep? Or are we tired because we feel like we should be tired? Does it come from doing a lot or doing something that we don't want to do. Sometimes I can get 8 important things done in a day and feel exhilarated and then do absolutely nothing and feel burnt out.

There probably isn't an actual answer. I certainly don't expect one. I'm just writing this with my eyes half closed, knowing that I'm not going to sleep for another few hours, despite the fact that I keep saying I'm tired and sinking into the couch every time I sigh from my incredibly non-trying day.

It's times like these I wish I could be a cat, though they sleep for 16 hours a day and still seem tired, so it may not solve any of my problems.

Reading.

When I was at school, people would always ask me how I could not absolutely hate Twilight.

I never thought it was that bad. Just to prove my stuck up classmates wrong, when I went home for the summer, I pulled down my special edition anniversary copy and started to read. And here's the thing.

They weren't wrong. It's a pretty poorly written book in many ways. It's a little immature, a little simplistic, and the story itself doesn't really lend itself to any really intelligent or interesting conversation. It's a love story, with a love triangle, written for teenage girls (and boys). And I think the reason why I don't hate it, is because it did exactly what it set out to do: entertain.

Now, you can have an entertaining book that's a fantastic piece of writing. Fahrenheit 451, for example, among a myriad of other books that I think are good stories and good novels. However, I have nothing against entertaining stories that aren't the most amazing piece of literature you've ever read. I love reading New Adult sports romances, where the nerdy girl inevitably falls for the unrealistically attractive quarterback, a jealous girl inevitably ruins their unlikely relationship, and there is inevitably a happy ending. I love the stories about neighbors, old friends, older sibling's best friends - you name it - falling in love. What can I say? I'm a hopeless romantic.

So I am experiencing this adrenaline rush because I just finished a really good book. The Crown's Game by Evelyn Skye is a story set in an alternate 19th century Russia, where magic exists and the power is given to the Imperial Enchanter, an easy position unless there are two potential enchanters, wherein a competition of sorts decides who lives and who dies. It has a great cast of developed and interesting characters, a wonderfully vivid world, and is well written. It also ended exactly how I predicted it would halfway through the story. Ex-act-ly. To the T.

And I didn't care one bit.

I'm writing this with a huge smile on my face, my fingers flying over the keys. I've tweeted Evelyn and am researching book 2 and having a good giggle in my room at 12:22 in the morning. Because, despite being a good book, it was just so damn entertaining. It exceeded my expectations. It has made me so, so happy.

So I guess what I'm saying is that there's a lot of ways you can read. There's also a lot of reasons why you read. I read to watch a movie in my head. I read to smile, and laugh, and read lines of dialogue to myself with a horrendous English accent (despite the fact they're Russian) in the darkness of my room at the break of dawn after staying up all night. I read to cry sometimes. I read to feel like I've been changed in some substantial way. When a book succeeds in giving me the feelings it and I desire, it makes me happy, even if I'm crying or swearing or left begging for book 2.

So to all my classmates in college that scoffed when I said my favorite book was The Fault in Our Stars, I just wonder, why are your favorite books your favorite, whether it be Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Stephanie Meyer, Stephen King - whoever?

We read because it makes us happy.

Friends.

I'm one of those quality over quantity types. I have 4-5 really close friends. Recently, being an adult and trying to be a functional human being has made being a friend kind of hard. 

"But Jasmine," Jasmine from a year ago scoffs, "Being a friend isn't hard! What are you talking about?"

Well, past Jasmine, you are naive and idealistic. And have an inordinate amount of free time. 

This past year, one of my best friends moved to Colorado to spend a year working with underprivileged kids in Denver through AmeriCorps. My other best friend got a job working in a coffee shop in the hopes of one day opening her own. And our other best friend got a second job with plans of moving out and getting a new (and greatly needed) car. And while we all dealt with distance during college and handled it fine, I've discovered that it apparently isn't physical distance that makes friendship - or at least mine - difficult. 

It's really easy to make your relationships a priority in your head. There's a movie coming out we all want to see. There's a night we are all free and we should get dinner. They'll be in town for a weekend and want to get brunch. But it is so much harder to actually do all those things. Hard to motivate yourself when you're tired. Hard to motivate yourself to travel the 45 minutes to an hour when you commute that long for work and you get a day off. Hard to change your plans to accommodate their visit.

And it seems so weird, right? Because I appreciate and treasure my friendships more than a lot of things in my life. And it seems like it would be intuitive to just make them a priority. But trying to navigate multiple people with incredibly busy schedules is hard. And lately, I've been taking the easy route and just settling for the easy way out.

I don't feel like a bad friend. I don't feel like a bad person. But I do feel frustrated. At myself. And my friends. I'm frustrated that it's not high school anymore, or even college, when it just seemed so easy. But I guess that's why people don't usually have a thousand close friends. Because it is hard. And like most things in my life, I need to work on it. Because, like most things in my life, not many things have been hard for me.

I've always been the friend that you can text after 6 months of no contact whatsoever and have nothing be different. But just because it can be that way doesn't mean that I shouldn't strive to change that. Doesn't mean that I shouldn't try being the one who does the texting instead of the responding.

Friendships are easy. Friendships are, apparently, hard. And they are important. The ones I have are so important I felt the need to just get my thoughts out and write this post. And they're worth it, because I can't imagine the person I'd be, or the person I'll become, without them. 

Because who wouldn't want to be friends with this picture of classiness and poise.

Sweat.

I. Hate. Exercise.

Despite doing sports throughout middle school, high school, and college, I've never gotten into it. I have the hardest time motivating myself to just do the damn thing. I'll amble around the house, doing everything else except go for a jog, do the stationary bike, even do some sit-ups.

I think one of the problems is that I get very little personal reward out of exercising. When I get done doing a "workout" (and by workout I mean 30 minutes on the bike at low resistance or 2 miles heaving around my neighborhood), I don't feel very accomplished. I don't feel exhilarated. I feel tired. And sweaty. And sure, maybe I feel a little proud that I got off my butt and did something. But I'm not sure I'll ever really relate to those people that enjoy (or at least, seem to enjoy) running, or working out, or whatever physical activity they prefer.

But

This past year I've worked out more than I probably ever have before, required practices for volleyball in high school excused. I'm at 27.84 miles of running/jogging/walking since the beginning of January. I've managed to get a good working heart rate for a 45 minute stationary bike ride. And yeah, maybe I've bribed myself by making a jar where I put in a dollar every time I exercise for 30 minutes or more that I plan to spend in fervor at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Hollywood and Disneyland this summer. But I think the biggest thing is that I've decided to exercise 2 - 4 times a week, even when I really, really, really don't want to. You are your own harshest critic, or so they say, and the same goes for "You are the best person to be able to talk yourself out of something because who knows your own weaknesses better?". Slowly, but surely, I'm figuring out when to ignore myself.

So

I've grudgingly accepted the fact that I should - and frankly, need to - exercise to be healthy and help with my weight loss journey, which is a whole other story. Now I just sigh when I get up knowing I need to go for a jog or a cycle instead of scowl and scrunch up my face in disdain. So I don't hate it as much as I used to. It's not the worst, though it's far from the best.

But I still hate exercise.

Familiarity.

As I was walking down the hallway to my room just now, I realized that I was navigating through my house in almost complete darkness. I live in the middle of the forest, not a street light to be seen. I could hear the ceiling creaking above me from where my parents were getting ready for bed, a groan that I've grown so accustomed to that I don't even notice anymore. Even the soft thumps from my overweight cat as she comes down the stairs is like music to my ears, a rhythm that is so natural and ingrained it's not only familiar - it brings me comfort. 

I like familiarity. I'm not a person who is naturally inclined to try new things, enjoy meeting new people, travel to new places. I'm a homebody. I suffer from social anxiety. I wouldn't say that I don't like change, though I'm sure that's partly true. Rather, I like the comfort of knowing - what I'm doing, who I'm with, where I am.

There's something...liberating about being so comfortable. It sounds strange but it's true. I feel a sort of freedom knowing I can walk around my house in the dark without stubbing a toe - that the scratching coming from outside my window is from the bat that roosts there in the fall, that the faint rattle I hear during the night is from Teddy, my best stuffed companion since I was 5, being rustled around my blankets; that the squeak emanating from across the house is from the bedroom door and that means it's 5:45 in the morning and my dad's getting ready for work. I can smell the eggs my mom is cooking and learn that today is going to be hot, hot, hot from the channel 3 news. I hear the air conditioning clang outside my window and know that soon I'll be able to tuck myself back into the blankets I kicked away during the night. I know that the cat will come into my room shortly after my dad comes in to say "goodbye, have a good day, drive safe" to meow at me, tease me into petting her once, before turning her back on me and wandering out my door, left slightly ajar, before my mom will run in, yell a quick goodbye, and run out of the house, always in a perpetual, unnecessary hurry.

I know all this without opening my eyes. I know all this without even thinking.

There's a freedom in familiarity.