Success: What is that?

It's easy to talk about success. Well...unless you feel like you're bragging. But anyways success is more fun to talk about than failure..

..which is why we're going to start with failure first,

Failure

I have felt like a miserable failure more times than I can count. Probably more than I've felt like a success and that definitely adds to a bit of Extreme Down Feelings(say that in a macho voice. Like MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY!). Anyways.

Now part of that feeling is the way I think. I could just fail and be okay with it and this concept will tie into my project and it's goals a little bit farther down...

Now I'm not sure I'm going to college and considering that the majority of my life has been pressure and prepping for that goal..it's a little terrifying. On top of that I don't know anyone who would dare not go to college and anymore it feels like Quinn. You're a dumb celery stick(censored for sensitive eyes). You have failed and will get no where in life and you should just stop now before you have a chance to really disappoint, to really be disappointing...
If I don't go to college. That feels in some way like failing. It was for the longest time the goal of my life and whenever the thought of not going would enter my head, even now when I'm more okay with it, despair starts flooding in and I would end up drowning in it for awhile.

That's a potential failure. Or rather a fear of failure. And the majority of my life is a fear of failure. Not to say that I've never failed. If I said that I'd be lying all over the place and you should slap me. But the fear of it is the more crippling thing in my life over the failure itself and it ties in better with the genius hour project than failure itself. And so.


But none of this answers what failure is to me. And I know this will sound cheesey and I know you may think o my god. EVERYONE SAYS THE EXACT SAME THING. But failure is giving up and letting my fear stop me.

If I had let my fear of failure stop me I would not have the wonderful relationship I have today and without that relationship things would be very different. For one thing I would not be pursuing a career I love because the opportunity would never have arrived and something else, something I don't love as much would be the goal of my life..and I wouldn't be happy. There are so many things that happened because I wasn't afraid to ask. If I had allowed failure to stop me from asking my parents if I could go to New York because I assumed they would say no...I wouldn't have had an amazing opportunity to go to NYC. Just things like that. Things that have ended up perfectly are the things I'm afraid of the most and that is failure. If I let that get in my way and miss the opportunity.

Success

Now to the happier stuff. Here's more of an experience than a haunting concept. Something I've succeed at is...Stage Managing.

This builds off failure. I was terrified to go into the theatre. When I'd walked in there the first time with two of my friends I had a place to hide. But they had dropped and the time had come when Diego had said to come back and see what he needed for us to do.
I almost didn't walk into that door. If they could just drop than I could to..Yeah..it would be okay. On top of that my then crush and current stage manager wouldn't see me and therefore if something( I couldn't think of what something because i wasn't thinking rationally) went wrong...they would never know.

But I'm one of those people that really hates falling through on commitments and so gathering courage followed an actor in and found Diego. He put me up as the spotlight operator and tada my life has changed forever.
Because my then crush and current stage manger was graduating in the spring and a new SM was needed. For whatever reason, Diego saw a potential SM in my little soul and asked if I'd be willing to it try out with the next show and train under MC. I didn't say yes immediately because I wanted to ask my parents first. You know. Always had to clear it with them but for whatever reason it was really hard not to just agree right away.

I did that first show and fell in love with something completely different from equine veterinarian. And honestly it worked because I love horses so much...I obviously don't want to put them down. I want them more as a family than as a job. But I do love science...

But Stage Managing makes me happier than anything and I want to do it for the rest of...until I can't anymore. Not being involved in theatre drives me mad. I'm not going to go into the happiness and excitement and frustration that comes with this and I want to do this as a career and am working toward that goal.

So that's a success in my life. Because after starting Stage Managing I've learned a lot about technical theatre from Diego. I obviously don't know everything, only a small tip of the ice burg. But another thing I'm proud of that, I consider a success is being able to  run Coarse Acting Strikes Back this winter. That hasn't happened before, that a student ran the entire show on their own and it just means a lot. I respect my Director more than anyone. He's been an amazing teacher and very kind and helpful and just..you can't not respect him and having him trust me with that meant a lot. So that's a success I'm proud of..

Genius Hour

So lets work on tying all of this together.

My goals for this project are to at least become aware of relaxation methods and to use a minimum of one of them consistently. The last post left with saying I was going to try and change the way I thought since that has a huge impact on how you view your life and happiness levels.

That didn't go so well. At least not for awhile. Remember the failure part? Yeah..well. The last few months have been chaos and sadness and being overwhelmed by trying to figure out things I don't understand all on my own..the rest of my life is terrifying but people aren't very helpful when it comes to making things better. Which is why you don't use other people to give you happiness. Grr. I made a thing about this the other day about not putting all of your happiness or whatever into one thing because it will mess you up and then the musical was cancelled and it was like LOOK A PRIME EXAMPLE! Anyways...
I hadn't been doing so well at changing my thoughts. It's so easy to just spiral downward and get stuck there. But the past few days I've been better. And it helps to begin feeling like there's some structure in my life and like there will be a way beyond college to become a stage manager. I can do this...

This weeks goal is to continue improving on the way I think. To take those ugly, sad thoughts and turn them into something that will help me. And to meditate more.

O fun website that some might find fun or helpful is calm.com!
This is a great website, at least for me. Maybe not for every one. I usually use the guided calm for about 10 minutes and just stay there for a few hours. It's reallly nice with headphones but mine broke so..but it's still good. Just shut your door, put a post-it note and just hope no one ignores it.
Sometimes I'll intentionally fall asleep after awhile and use it as a way to calm thoughts before bed but occasionally..meditating is difficult and sometimes I fall asleep without meaning to...whoops. But it's quite nice. I was panicking a little bit the other day and just typed it in, got myself situated in a comfortable spot and just let it go...breaks into Frozen's extremely popular song. ..

Failures and Figuring Stuff Out

Well, with this failure discussion....

I've failed quite a bit with this relaxation thing in the past week and let me tell you this week would have been a great time to have had the skill to chill(hey hey rhymes). It's also a thing that's been missing for...a really long time.

Now for the cause of the recent failure.

College. Ah yes. Like many seniors the lie that this is supposed to be your best year has hit hard. Especially now that this is the week that I'll find out did I make the cut? Am I worthy of being one of the 4-5 stage managers in this program? I have no idea what's happening to me in the next...5 months. Less than.
On top of that basically everything that could have gone wrong...did. A secret that I was keeping from people did end up getting out and though nothing bad happened because of it it opened a new door to let potential stress in. Also my hobby was removed from existence basically, at least until I maybe get into college.
I believe last weeks post involved something along the lines of don't invest yourself to heavily into things because it usually ends badly?
Well...It ended badly. I didn't even realize I'd absorbed myself so much until it was suddenly taken away and life had a big empty hole of what do I do now..?
Anxiety x...through the roof.

I tried. Sort of. But something that I've read in a couple of books and that I hear people say...
Misery is catching. Very catching and ALMOST soothing. Not like ah yes a blanket and cocoa/coffee mix happy but like hello there. Here is something familiar. Humans gravitate towards the familiar and misery is so easy to spiral into.

Also before I said "what's happening to me" as if life is something that just happens to you and you have no control over it. Yes there are some things that are out of your control however that kind of attitude is the kind that leads to negative thoughts and upsetting things.


BUT TODAY THINGS ARE GOING TO(hopefully) START CHANGING. A little at a time.

This needs to be taken one step at a time. If I'm going to de-stress my existence, it needs to be a step by step process.


So. Here it goes...

STEP 1:




Hold on a moment I actually have no idea where to start...


TO THE INTERNET.

*2 minutes later*

Right okay. So. Here's how it's going to work. There's this fun book called The Secret that I really enjoyed and it talked about The Law of Attraction which is pretty neat. It basically says what you think about you bring about. Now on that note that's a little nerve wracking because I've been thinking about some pretty spazzy stuff lately but hopefully we can change that.

So back to the law of attraction.

What you think about you bring about. But saying things like I don't want this or I hope this doesn't happen... That doesn't work. The example used is if you put in "I don't want Fall Out Boy" into the Google search you're going to get Fall Out Boy everywhere. The search is going to ignore the don't and just do keywords, like  a search engine. That being said that means you need to focus on what you do want and what you do hope for.

There is a catch however. I'm not sure if this came from The Secret or just things in general but anyways. Sometimes you can want something so much that you end up pushing it away. You focus on it's absence and that's not what you want either. You have to focus on what you want but without obsessing over it. A lot of this stuff revolves around being in the now being content and letting go. You have to let whatever's going to happen just happen. When you invest yourself to much into a specific outcome you're going to A) push it away and B) if it doesn't happen suddenly life is chaos because it's not working out the way you intended it to.

So. That's step one. This week I'm just going to focus on changing my thoughts to positive things. When you focus on the positive it also helps you stay more in the now. So. I'll let you know how this goes next week.


Fun Fact: I've discovered I'm lactose intolerant. Not terribly bad. I mean I can eat things..I don't know it's weird and gets progressively worse so. Anyways. After enough bad nights feeling just terrible after an intake of too much dairy(o what sadness I cannot consume Pumpkin Cheesecake Ice Cream two nights in a row?!)...well. I made the connection. I can switch out moo juice with something else. So I may make some posts about foods that I make with lactose free things as I can find and need them.
So good-bye craptasic days and nights after a regretful consumption of delicious food...You shall be replaced with good nights of excellent-ness . It's a good thing I don't eat ice cream hardly ever because this could have been a terrible tragedy.

Thankfully. It's only if I eat more than a little bit. So ice cream can happen one night with only minor draw backs just not two nights...
*Thanks whatever higher power is out there for the fact that I love fruits and veggies more than colby jack cheese...*

Also another fun fact, the stats thing says I have had views from Germany, Finland and Poland! That's so cool! HI!!

Relaxation Methods I've found so far..

So far I found some methods that I've heard of in many places and that I am interested in trying.


1. Visualization. I think there are guided sessions of this. I've done it before with someone and it was VERY effective and nice. It created a happy place I could go to for a few months after that.

2. TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE
 As much as I like this idea, I end up getting stressed without my cell phone on just because I fear I'm going to miss something like a call or an email. However I feel that this is something that I need to work on, taking at least 10 minutes to just turn it off and relax, maybe meditate or read quietly.

3. Enjoy Music.

4. Enjoy silence....

There's a lot to be said for enjoying some simple silenfce, opening the windows closing your eyes and just kind of being for a minute. Or doing things and listening to the world around you. To often I'm listening to music, listening to some video or something else, the text and other notification signals....But then the power went out last weekend and I found I was truly enjoying silence for a minute and it was good.



5. Become Aware.

Just become aware of yourself, of your body. Live in the present.


6. EFT(Emotional Freedom Technique)
There's this fun technique. I've tried it before. It takes some discipline and I'm not very good at that so I'm very good at this but it's actually really cool and was a helpful during some times when things were waaaaaay to much for me to handle. Warning: You may hurt and cry. A lot but you will feel a lot better when it's all done. I'll try and find some stuff and post it sometime.

7.  Go for a walk

"But wait!" I say as I stare at this picture of someone walking down a beach. "I do walk. A lot. I'm just not outside."
Well Quinn, it's time you learned that pacing anxiously around the house is not helping you relax. It's just frustrating.
"But winter! It's cold! Where else will I walk?"
You can run in the basement and do other such working out activities. Working out is important as is getting rid of excess aggression. Also start running once it gets warm, or go and ride your bike(or both). It's nice out and cars are nice but wouldn't you like to get something out of your day too?

8. Get a job and volunteer

It's fun to help people and I'm happiest when I'm working like a mad man and getting a day or two of rest afterwards. Volunteering at the MIS one weekend over the summer, I worked concessions and it was GREAT! We went from 6 am to 6 pm and it was non-stop craziness! Being useful and doing things is awesome. It was exhausting eventually, yes, but it was nice.

That's just some of the things that were thought of/found today. Again apologies for the inner dialogue that's everywhere but isn't that kind of what a blog is? It will become less I promise.

QUESTING!

I'm stuck..

There's a pickle that I've run into and it's that I have no idea what to write about. I feel like any creativity that exists in my brain has been blocked up by all the stress...IDEA
I HAVE JUST SOLVED THE PICKLE
GENIUS HOUR IS GOING TO HELP ME DE-STRESS MYSELF BEFORE I decease or something...You know. Because that can happen. And I just go threatened by a fortune cookie the other night.

"It is the quality, not the longevity, of ones life that is important."(I had that in my pocket, I didn't memorize that)

Well guess what fortune cookie I'm going to have it all! Quality AND longevity! Whoop!

Okay, so I guess I'm going to work on finding ways to de-stress and live a happier and healthier existence.

Why will this be useful?

It's good to be able to calm down and not be so AHHHH about everything being just one way or no way at all. Especially with the whole I'm about to find out if I got into my dream school's stage management program or not ..I've gotten the whole accepting if I get accepted thing down. But what if I don't? I'm not emotionally prepared for failure either and going into meltdown mode is probably not the best of decisions because college. Trying to come up with a back up plan  in case I can't get in to the program or don't end up going to college for various reasons. Its just knowing that that's what you have to do and I'll feel...stupid if I don't go to college. Need to be more content in the knowledge that things happen as they happen and it's going to be okay and life is perfect as it is...

Don't mind my rambling on things bother you. Just all the speech and inner monologue going on all the time...all the time..

TO THE INTERNET!

BAKEMANIA (and technical difficulties..)

SO! As previously mentioned in m y last post I was going to be baking this last weekend and yeah. It was. Amazing. More than amazing. It was spectacular. Spent Thursday night doing homework and making cupcakes until the 11 o clock hour and it was the best thing ever.....

I'm trying to get photos onto the post but until I can get onto my laptop this post will be painfully blank, colorless and dull because school computers wont let me do things with pictures and the Blogger app is painfully useless to me right now and just. Ugh. Things. The tortures of life!

But yes these cupcakes. These Strawberry Brownie Beauties that I created just. Wowza. Delicious. There are three cupcakes that I have loved more than any other of the many batches I've made for the shows I've worked on and for other misc. events and these are(for now until better idea comes along) going into the book of Good Food Things(I should make a thing like that..otherwise I'm going to lose all the delicious recipes..)


Going to label all the steps here WITH PICTURES!

STEP 1

You make you mix. and make bloody certain that you've got enough cupcake liners and eggs because too often have I gotten home to the crushing realization that I need to go BACK to the store and just...*Grumbles*

So. Make your mix according to whatever directions you are following whether they be scratch or box(I used box).

Depending on how many cupcakes you want to make you're going to want two boxes for around 55 and one box for about 27.I'm not actually sure how many cupcakes I could have made, I only made 48 and still had enough batter for yet more cupcakes but I'll tell you more about what I did with that later...

STEP 2

Line your little cupcake pans with some awesome little decorative cupcake liners. Depending on where you go you can get the fun and fancy off brand ones for cheaper than normal boring cupcakes. I think they are just a smidge smaller but hardly noticeable. Just saying..for the fun of cupcakes and such...

Spray each cupcake liner with some cooking spray(whatever you use). Do it as individuals not as a big swoosh. it gets better coverage that way.

STEP 3

Put about 1-2 large spoonfull(s) of brownie batter into the bottom of the cupcake. Then once that is complete all but fill your cupcake liners with strawberry. Not too crazy but much more than the normal 2/3 full. You want nice beautiful rounded muffin tops not that crap that just barely makes it over the liner!

STEP 4

The box directions that I used had similar cook times but still not quite the same so I compromised with the highest number on the one that took less time. A little less than halfway and that actually did produce some nice cupcakes(about 20 minutes at 350).

STEP 5

Remove your new cupcake soldiers from their quarters and set them out on a cooling rack or the stove top wherever you put your baking things to chill. Your army has begun. Let them cool for the time of the next batch of cupcakes.

STEP 6

Once you have successfully gotten all of your cupcakes from the oven AND TURNED THE OVEN OFF(....don't forget about that. Parents/other inhabitants of your household will accuse you of trying to burn  down the house) begin frosting them with whatever frosting you will use or be creating.

If you don't have fun decorating things or don't think you have enough frosting to do fun decorating you can always do fun swirls with a butter knife or some handy tool like that. Do what you desire to do and whatever you see fit!


Since out opening night was on Valentine's Day I put little chocolate hearts on these beautiful creatures. But other chocolate pieces(Like Hershey's kisses..) would probably work just as well for non-lovey cupcakes.

STEP 7

Enjoy! These are delicious and always taste what you make I mean really you guys. You can't give people food without at least trying it..at every step of the way..shhhhh......

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

For those of you like me who get sleepy and just there's not quite enough batter for another 12 cupcakes with he strawberry and there's too much of the brownie but if you make more cupcakes you wont have enough  brownie left over for real brownies but you don't want to make brownie cupcakes.....

There's another way!

Just pour all the remaining batter into a small square pan and swirl it together(or layer it whatever you want to do). Bake for about 25 minutes and viola. Brownies! Deliciousness. As for that left over frosting....that's what spoons are for. Or crackers. Am I right or am I right?

IT'S PRODUCTION WEEK..

....YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!!

CUPCAKES!

Image from cupcakemojo.com which looks like a really delicious website, check it out!

More delicious sites here: Caterlicious

Glorious Cupcakes!

This is the blog who has these cupcakes! thatwinsomegirl

It's that time again, the winter show is upon us.

Don't mind me as I use this opportunity to advertise because YOU SHOULD GO SEE THIS SHOW IT'S LOVELY

COARSE ACTING STRIKES BACK

Friday, February 14  at 7pm

Saturday, February 15 at 7pm

Sunday, February 16 at 3pm

Tickets are $5 at the door!

In the Jackson High Auditorium

Okay but beyond the Show(which is awesome!)

I always make cupcakes for the cast because I love them, they're awesome and we put a ton of work into these shows. So as a reward people bring food. 

Well, seeing as our opening night is on Valentine's Day I decided to make a sort of Valentines themed cupcake..

How it's going to work:

A brownie bottom. A strawberry Cake batter layered on top and then! At the end of it all! Cream cheese frosting on top and a little chocolate heart because it's Valentine's Day so why not?!

Yeah. These cupcakes are going to rock. 

In past years I've made a cupcake that's half chocolate and half vanilla(vertically! fancy stuff not this layering jazz), super chocolatey ones with chocolate mousse in the middle and yummy homemade chocolate cream cheese frosting on top and various others. Generally lots and lots of chocolate and yumminess but occasionally I try and get fancy. And since this is Valentine's Day so it works. 

Will post pictures of the process! Which I always forget to do whoops..

Okay so I have yet to actually cut my Narwhal pieces. I've got the colors all picked out but. The Narwhals are well. It's a slow process.

HOWEVER!

I do a lot of baking sometimes and of late I've been baking things. Alas I haven't photographed anything. Sadness.

But here's some of the things I have made and I'll link recipes that are either like them or the exact ones! SO!

Chocolate Peppermint Bread

Similar Recipe Here

Okay so this isn't exactly the same recipe as the one I had made, the one I got I got for Christmas it was in a tube with the mix and things so I didn't have to mess with all the dry ingredients however this is pretty close. I didn't have that strange red frosting type stuff under my peppermints and my peppermints were more crushed because I used a hammer(a rolling pin also works) and a plastic zippy bag.

This bread actually went pretty easily. There were some problems getting it out of the pan, i don't think i greased it enough so some stuff got stuck on the bottom(Yay yummy leftovers! Can't leave good food to just get washed out!) but other than that it went really great. The bread was really delicious;. I wrapped it in foil and just left it in the microwave however if you stick it in the fridge that's good as well.

I think some tasty toppings with this would be some vanilla ice cream with a mint topping whose name I can't think of but that used to come in this glass bottle and it was green and really good and some dark chocolate drizzled on top because wow. Yum.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding
Recipe

Okay so this was not one of my prettiest creations however it was pretty tasty though maybe not my favorite one and I'm not sure I would do it again unless I had a spring form pan which I think is where my problems came from. Also I don't think I mixed everything together as much as I should have.

The bread pudding ended up taking two hours to bake. Again I think this was because of the problems that I mentioned before. It was taking awhile to get the consistency I wanted and to not just be raw pumpkin stuff.

But overall it was good. I think I will try it again if I ever get that kind of pan. Also some whipped cream and maybe some ice cream would be good if I could get it to normal bread pudding consistency. I would definitely like to try this again.

Normal Bread Pudding

Okay so normal bread pudding recipe I got from a  book that I have at home so I'll type it up later for you however this recipe was, as my grandmother often says, super easy. It turned out great and was the perfect consistency, texture and flavor. There was little that could have been done to make it more awesome and simple.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread
Similar Recipe Here

Again I got this from a little package so I'll have to put a close recipe. However This also turned out amaaazing though I think in the future I'll cook it a little less than the box says because I like my bread and such things to be a little doughier. But this was also really fantastic. Again I keep saying add ice cream but really like the breads and everything on their own are great. Just. Yes they are lovely and you should definitely try making them on your own.



A Note for the Bread Puddings:

Not everybody plans ahead to just have stale bread, I know I sure don't because I'm pretty spontaneous when I bake things. So for those of you that are like me and kind of bad at pre-planning when to make their deliciousness, set your oven to 350, throw it on a pan and bake it for 10-15 minutes and viola nice staled bread.