I’m a dork and I can be lame, but I refuse to let summer pass with no accomplishments and/or funny stories. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I AM DONE EXAMS. And I received my gr 10 piano exam mark, a beautiful 74 and more importantly A PASS.

Anyway, here goes, and I’m just writing in the order that I think of them, so they’re not in order of importance or anything official like that.

1. Learn to solve a Rubiks cube. And discover my inner dorkiness.

2. Take lots of pictures with a digital camera and print them out and put them up (I’ve been so inspired by my black and white film photography class, it was so fun and I love darkrooms …. but digital is so much easier)

3. Watch Snakes on a Plane

4. Volunteer somewhere

5. Make some money doing something cool

6. Go downtown and participate in one of those fun looking festivals

7. Write an editorial for the local newspaper. Or more like, keep writing editorials until one actually gets published and I see my name in the paper

8. Write a letter

9. Learn more piano pieces, especially Chopin’s Nocturne No. 1, of which the first dozen bars is the most beautiful thing ever

10. Do yoga at Lululemon. I really want to see how that works, do they clear the area and set up mats?

11. Break into my new black heels, so that when I actually need to wear them for long hours, it won’t be as painful

12. Learn to play the guitar. Or at least a few songs?

13. Stop eating ice cream and muffins and danishes every fucking day.

14. Make some new friends! <- this is really important, I’ve been really aloof and stuck in a bubble this past year

15. Get to know Toronto <- this is important too, I need to discover more of my own city

16. Don’t eat for 24 hours then go to all you can eat sushi.

I think that’s it for now. That should occupy me for a while. This summer’s going to be great

Even though it feels more like spring, with all the rain rain rain around here, summer break is inevitable. I finish my last exam next Monday, but unlike all my other friends with plans and schedules and dates to remember, I have nothing.

Two months of no plans. Not that I’ve never gone through this before, but I don’t want to spend another summer lazing around doing nothing. I’ll probably spend summer hopping around from organization to organization, trying to complete my required volunteer hours and maybe obtain some so-called “leadership experience” so I won’t have to bullshit my way again through that section on all those forms for various programs I apply for.

What really annoys me is that a good 75% of my friends are spending their time this summer doing “camp” related things. Whether it be camping, or actual camps… That could be working as a counselor, counselor training, whatever the hell “leadership camp” is… What is with the Canadian obsession with camp?

Oh well. I’m going to have fun this summer, maybe a get a job so I can have fun doing things that require money, which is usually easier. And they can spend it cleaning horse sables (I’m not joking, my friend is actually doing that).

I’m going to take lots of pictures.

But before that I must finish my exams. Which involves studying. Which involves looking over Julius Caesar one more time. Which we all know equals pain.

In the small circle of my closest friends, only one has a pool. This is because where most of us live, people do not have space for pools in their backyard, but she lives far away in what Canada Post deems “rural land” so she is not faced with the same limitations as us. Anyway, she holds a series of pool parties every summer, as a small gathering for all of us. Now, she planned this around last month, for THE END OF JUNE. End of school pool party, rather appropriate right?

Well the end of June is here, and it is still cold.

I don’t like this.

Someone once explained to me that global warming in fact makes it colder, or something like that. It doesn’t make much sense to me, or maybe that someone didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. Either way, it’s cold. It’s not winter cold, but where I am, it’s the type of weather where you wear jeans and a tshirt, or shorts and a sweater, but not both. That’s not what I deem pool party weather, where low self-esteem teenagers don their bikini bodies.

Plus it’s raining on this certain date.

WEATHER, WEATHER, WHEREFORE ART THOU NOT SUMMER?

Really, that’s all I want. I want to buy a cheap, plain shirt. Long sleeve, short sleeve, tank top, it doesn’t matter.

But for reasons that I cannot understand, I have difficulty buying this shirt. I cannot find a loosely-fitted/fitted plain shirt under fifteen bucks. Everything out there is either too long, or too tight.

Problems with LONG - I am not a fan of the long shirt trend. I prefer either shirts that end right above my belt, or cover about a quarter to a half of my butt. That is it. I do not want a shirt dress, I want a shirt! And with the uber-long-shirt trend still whirlwinding, like it has been for the past few years, stores are coming up with the “NEW, LONGER LENGTH” update.

Problems with TIGHT - I think this is self-explanatory. 5% spandex on everything is just simply too much. Even the 100% cotton shirts seem to be… small. I don’t need every cubic centimetre of my body fat being showcased like an exhibit. That, and I like to breathe. I can’t breathe with that clinginess.

Oh, and one more. Everything is see-through. From a retailers point of view, this is a smart marketing strategy because it forces one to layer and therefore buy more shirts. From a consumer like myself’s point of view, that shirt is useless because wearing layers when it’s 30 degrees is dumb. And wearing see through shirts single layer so one’s bra is the focal point… is dumb. Therefore, the shirt is dumb.

The not too long, not too tight, and not too seethrough plain shirt… still looking.

I just had an epiphany. Literally, five minutes ago while eating dinner. So I thought I’d make note of it before it slips my mind.

[note: this is a cheesy post about self-improvement and resolutions]

It’s no secret that I love watching teen dramas. One Tree Hill, The O.C., even Dawson’s Creek.

When I watch just minute-long clips of scenes from a show on Youtube (which I do, because I’m lame like that), it’s always a happy scene. One that I can laugh and smile to when I watch it. And I’ll watch it ten times and maybe even once more. For this reason, Gossip Girl is not in my list of loved teen dramas, because it has too much drama and not enough happy moments.

It came to me that I watch teen dramas not for the drama, I watch it for the happy moments. I watch teen dramas so I can see people my age engage in happy things and be happy. It makes me happy. I think, in a way, it gives me hope. When I watch the people around in me, in real life, be happy, I don’t know, it just makes me more depressed. It’s like I feel more isolated, more aloof. But when I watch people on TV, it’s different. It’s funny that way.

My Twitter bio says something along the lines of “trying to find happiness in life”. I’m not a really happy person. Well, actually, internally, I am. I just have difficulty showing it and really living in the happiness. I don’t want people seeing me as a depressed pessimist and a lot of people who don’t know me do.

And so, I think I’m going to change that. This past year, I’ve been oddly unsocial. I keep a list of really good days - usually those that I’ve done something wild or met someone great or had an amazingly fun time somewhere. And I found this past year to be lacking in those. So, I’m making a resolution to myself to be a happier person. As cheesy as this sounds, I want to be someone like Audrey Lidell, from Dawson’s Creek, who may be a fictional character, but she’s confident and happy… confidently happy.

I want to be someone who can live in the moment, all the time.

… after I finish my exams.