"Today I'm feeling thankful for nature and these opportunities." Lately my focus has felt off, maybe at times even bit foggy, but with the transition of ending spring semester into summer break, things have felt off balance. Summer classes and work are now in full swing and I'm preparing to move into a new place very soon. All very exciting things, but still stressful nonetheless. For the long weekend, I've been visiting my partner's family. We celebrated the wedding of a close friend and spent a lot of time outdoors. This weather's been wild for Michigan. I can't believe how warm the past few days have been. After a long day of adventuring on the dunes near Lake Michigan, we decided to wind down by the hot tub. The sky happened to be clear for the first time in a while. So we were watching the stars appear as the sun went down and enjoyed the constellations as patterns began to paint themselves across the sky. We'd only gone out to relax for a little while until my partner gasped and said "no way". Instead of getting ready to get out as I had been before, I paused and joined him as he pointed to where he saw the meteor fall. What was planned to be a short trip outside transformed into something longer. We were determined to see more of these shooting stars. They were so beautiful. Our efforts proved to be worthwhile as the stars shone above the warm summer breeze. The beauty of it all really helped me to clear my mind and remember that all the stressors in my life right now are part of the bigger picture. Just as each of those stars played a role in creating the beautiful sky for us that night. Today I'm feeling thankful for nature and these opportunities. It always seems to be the best relief for a stressed-out mind.

"I found "Rainforest" by Walter Wanderley." I recently visited my friend in Arizona. She took me all around the towns where she's lived. She showed me a lot of different things, and I ate a lot of good food. She took me to her favorite fast-food restaurants. My favorite out of all of them was Cane’s; their chicken was so good, and I did find out that they're making some near me soon, so I'm going to be hitting those up constantly because it was so good, would highly recommend Cane’s to anyone. But also while we were there, we went to a musical instrument museum and that was really cool ‘cause I love music, I love musical instruments. They had -- it was literally musical instruments from all over the world. I was really happy to see the khaen from Laos, that was the coolest one that I was hoping was there. They also had a huge upright bass called an octobasse. That was crazy too. And I loved seeing all the different violins ‘cause I play violin. And we also went horseback riding. That was really, really fun because I used to ride horses and it's been like -- I think I did the math and it was like eight years since I've been on a horse, and this was Western style, but I used to do English, but it's like, fundamentally -- like I knew what was going on, and it was just so much fun to be doing that. And honestly, the highlight of my whole trip besides getting to spend time with my friend, which was obviously incomparable, was I found this record that I had been looking for, like a vinyl. My -- one of my favorite musical artists is Brazil's number one organist, Walter Wanderley, and my favorite album by him is called “Rainforest.” And every time I go into a record store, I search high and low for this record, and I've never been able to find it. Well while I was there with her, we went to a record store, and I found it -- I found “Rainforest” by Walter Wanderley. When I say my heart was pounding, I mean it. It was awesome, a great trip, so many highs throughout it. It was just phenomenal -- loved being with my friend, loved being on a horse, seeing musical instruments, and…

"I jumped off the rock, and immediately, everything went black." So I had been kind of sitting in my kayak at the water for an hour or two, and I just decided to go investigate the cliff. Um, I kind of walked up, like with my friends, they were cheering me on. I kept telling them, "I’m still not gonna jump off of it, I just want to see,” so I walked to the edge of the cliff. It was more of a rock — we’ll call it a rock. I walked to the edge of the big rock, twenty feet, um, and I kept telling myself, “I'm not gonna jump off of this, I just wanna see what the view looks like.” I walked to the edge of the rock, and — Do you ever have those moments where, like, your body decides to do something that your mind has yet to agree to? In my case, that is exactly what happened. Without my mental consent, to my complete lack of knowledge, I jumped off the rock, and immediately, everything went black. I had jumped off the rock and passed out in midair. Fully blacked out. I hit the water, not knowing what had happened — I had blinked, and I had gone from the top of the rock to the water — I was spluttering, coughing, I think I was so disoriented from passing out that I, um, had forgotten how to swim. My friend had to paddle into the water and pull me out, and everyone was like, “You jumped off the rock!” and I was like, “I guess I did jump off the rock, but I don’t remember doing it, I don’t remember deciding to do it,” and in that case, I think my body had wanted to do something that my mind hadn’t agreed to. I was told that there was a photo taken of me jumping off the rock, I have yet to have seen this photo. It’s been five or six years. I still wonder what I must have looked like jumping off of it while being passed out in midair, um maybe one day I can reunite with that photo, but definitely after that experience I told myself I was never going to jump off another rock into water again, and I’ve enjoyed telling the story ever since.

“In the past four years, that's what everyone has been introduced to me with which I think is really cool.” I like the idea of like creating who you are over time and like cultivating that so that people can see the most accurate version of you. Like, for example, I was given a super… A name that did not belong to the ethnic group I was born into which is a little strange, but it's never something I really identified with because of this. Also for other reasons like gender expression and not wanting to be like uber feminine all the time. But what happened with this in part of my like creating an identity thing was my friend and I read a book like maybe in seventh grade. I'm not sure. And it was all about these people who were subverting gender norms and like the main character had this whole like lizard-related trope and like they kept getting called different kinda like lizard names and that was like something they found empowering because it was inhuman and strange and fun. And so my friend and I who really liked this book and identified with it because it's like really relatable to us, we were like trying to struggle and figure out who we were outside of expectations and stuff. So we each gave each other like a little lizard nickname thing from the book and that's how we would like write letters to each other with these fun names, to better represent what we felt like, and now that's like the name that appears on my records and stuff. Not the one I was born with. Like, I don't have a lizard name as my legal name, but it is like… In the past like four years, that's what everyone has been introduced to me with which I think is really cool.