anna catherine

y'all are tired of hearing it: new year, new me. understandable. but i've got a good feeling about this year. i'm discovering myself in ways i never thought i would. after surviving a record breaking hurricane (yeah, guys, legit) and losing a lot of things (i.e. my florist job, my puppy, and my vocal chord's reliability), somehow, i don't feel devastated. i feel focused. okay y'all it wasn't immediate, but hear me out. last year, i felt yucky. last year, i kept up horrible habits and regretted it. last year, i felt lost and alone and sad all the time. i felt like i was constantly running a marathon. and this was before  the hurricane. i decided early in december that i wanted to make changes. i wanted focus. i wanted stronger faith. i wanted to not feel like i was drowning. so i made resolutions, like i do every year. but this time, i can sense that something is different. and if i'm being honest? i don't know. i don't know if i'm g...

Most of my friends turn out to be fake. I'm not including the imaginary ones. I am so pessimistic on this blog. I promise I'm not like this alllllll the time. I must be going through my emo phase or something. (That was a joke.) Sometimes I wonder if it's just me, that I am just super pessimistic and I'm the one affecting my attitude. However, my common sense and logic (such as it is) is telling me that's probably not the case. I've gotten into a slump. I ran into my former best friends this past week. Instead of the usual painful reminders of how they used to treat me, I could only think of all the good times we had (which was almost worse). I found myself missing them, missing them horribly. I can't understand why. I've taken steps to ensure that I won't be hurt by them again, but this also means that I won't be friends with them again. I miss all the long conversations we had. I miss waking up to a message from them. I miss telling...

I know. It's late. I have to wake up early tomorrow so I can rush to school and do some late homework and pretend like I practiced for guitar class. But something amazing just happened to me. I've been super stressed out lately. And by lately I mean this school year. I've been thrown this way and that, desperately trying to keep my head above water so I'm still on good terms with my teachers. Learning three instruments and learning a ~new~ kind of math (it's music theory but it feels like math so much) and trying to write a few papers in between has been a little bit crazy. Fortunately, I also am a little bit crazy. So I'm making it work. This one song I've been learning has totally thrown me for a loop. I'm not even sure why. Maybe it's because it can't decide what key it's in. Maybe it's because Bach plays his singers like violins. Maybe it's because I can't breathe. Take your pick. In between taming the monster that is th...

(to my friends reading this: you know who you are and don't take that title too  literally. ily babes) My whole life, I have been excluded. Ouch. Harsh, Anna. Sorry. I wish I was exaggerating. I'm not trying to be a downer, I'm really not. And yes, I've heard all the stories about me as a kid. How friendly and outgoing I was. How the old people at church called me "their baby" out of the three babies that came to church. How I'd talk to anyone, "make friends" with anyone. Funny, huh, that I'm also known as a loner. I don't know how it started. Ever since my childhood best friend started going to "real school" (that's homeschooler code for a school where your mom isn't the only teacher) and I found myself having to branch out and try to make other friends, I've seemed to face a lot of closed doors. Don't get me wrong, I've made some great friends since then. I really have. I love my friends. But...

Yesterday morning I woke up with only one thing on my mind: I'm not being the person God wants me to be. From the outside, people probably think I have my whole life together. I make good grades, I'm a member of a national honor society, and I have a great job. Unfortunately, more often than not, I'm not a good steward with the gifts I have been given. I wait until the last minute to do my homework, my room is a junkyard, I wake up late, I only practice enough to get by, and I stay up late every night on social media. Not only am I making bad decisions, I'm not treating my body like the temple it should be. I'm gluttonous and slothful and I know it. I don't want to be that way anymore. Granted, I just escaped a grueling month. Granted, I'm taking more classes than some. But I know myself. I know I can handle this and thrive instead of barely getting by. There are so many things I want to do. I want to blog again. I want to take pictures of my dolls fo...

Welcome back to my recap of my senior trip! This is the last post of this series, but I have another great post planned for tomorrow, so please stay tuned! On this day, we weren't really sure what to do first! Since our first planned event, It's Tough to Be a Bug , wasn't open yet, we went to Island Mercantile and Discovery Trading Company and looked at some of the animals. Then, we went to Dinoland to ride TriceraTop Spin and look around. After we finished wasting time, we went to It's Tough to Be a Bug and man, it was INTENSE. I was actually scared sometimes. 😆 Next, we still had to kill time, so we looked at all the animals in Asia. My favorites were the tigers! They were beautiful. Then, we looked at all the stores in Africa until it was time to go on safari. The safari was a lot of fun, and I saw lots of interesting animals that aren't as well known as the usual giraffes and elephants. My favorite lesser-known animals were the okapis. They have s...

Hi, everyone! This post is probably going to be a lot les accurate than the last one, simply because I did so much at Magic Kingdom that I don't have an accurate account of what order we did things. However, I did my best. ☺ On this day, we headed straight for Fantasyland to see Mickey's PhilharMagic . We hardly had to wait and the theater was practically empty, which was super nice. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that the 3D that Disney uses doesn't really work with my eyes. I did try to enjoy the show as much as I could, but I kept seeing double. 😢 After this, we rode It's a Small World . You really can't go to Disney and not ride that. 😆 Then, we went to the Carousel. I had the prettiest horse that was covered in lovely flowers. We still had some time to kill, so we went to Sir Mickey's . Jack and his mother (from Jack and the Beanstalk) greeted us at the door, and one of the cast members gave us Mickey Mouse stickers. We also went to Fantasy Fair...