Tornadoes

There has been lots of bad weather going on in the South recently. There were more than a dozen tornadoes touching down killing three people in Alabama and two people in Tennessee. Up to 20 buildings in Alabama were destroyed and three adults and three children are injured as they were trying to find shelter. Besides the two people dying in Tennessee there are nine others injured as well. My heart goes out to all the families who might have lost someone or had their things destroyed. I think the storms have stopped for now and hopefully they don't come back.

How my break went

Thanksgiving break is over and I worked about forty-five hours from Wednesday up until today :( Thank goodness for Starbucks and energy drinks! I do not think I would have survived Black Friday without them. I am glad that school is going to start again so I can get a break from work! Although it was good to get a break from constantly working on papers and assignments. I will definitely be looking forward to my next paycheck but until then I will be catching up on my sleep as much as I can. The only festive activities I did during the break was put up my Christmas tree today after getting off from work and eat left over turkey, because my family made four this year. I hope these next few weeks go by smoothly so we can hurry up and finish up this semester. I am so ready for Christmas break to start!

So much to do!

I am about to graduate and holy hell there is so much out there I want to accomplish.
Of course I have my own list of personal goals--do more art, start reading for pleasure again, etc.
But the list of things I would like to accomplish as a valuable citizen and advocate just keeps getting longer and is starting to include things I never would have imagined I'd find myself interested in.
Honestly, this class has rekindled the small flame within myself that would like to be a politician.  I have researched requirements for running for city council, have reconsidered going to law school, etc.  I truly feel young people need to start fixing things from within the system.  I also plan to get heavily informed and involved in local elections because that is where real change starts.
I hope to get more involved in environmental and animal rights activism and would like to get a job at a non-profit after graduation.  I am also considering some kind of counseling.  I have also gotten back into writing which I used to do a lot.
When I look back at what I wanted to do my senior year of high school, and then at what I wanted to do when I first started at Texas State, and then where I am now my mind is blown.  I am ever-changing.  There is so much I want to do.  And each step on this journey gets me a little closer to whatever it is I am meant for.
Such an amazing yet terrifying feeling!

Arctic sea ice is declining when it should be growing...

I read this article from Business Insider on the Arctic sea and actually found it very interesting/scary. The article explained that every year the ice in the Arctic goes up and down with the seasons, but this year there has been a downward trend in ice..and the article blames global warming (which i totally agree). The article stated that we are at an all time low this time of year for ice in the Arctic. One really interesting part about this article is a video from NASA that was posted with the article showing the a map of the Arctic sea over the years..Heres the video
https://youtu.be/8auMIfF50Ng

This video is so crazy to me! I don't know about you guys, but topics related to global warming issues and climate concerns really freak me out! I really hope something can be figured out about these global warming issues!

What Black Friday and the holidays actually mean to a retail worker

I've never understood why people have their Thanksgiving dinner at like 1:00pm just so they can go Black Friday shop at 6:00pm. I feel like the whole meaning behind Thanksgiving has been forgotten. People post on Facebook about how thankful they are, yet they are the same ones fighting to get a item during the Black Friday sales. I work at the outlets, and unfortunetly I was not able to go home for Thanksgiving. I haven't been able to spend Thanksgiving with my family in over three years. Every year I'm at the outlets at 5:00pm prepping for the store to open at 6:00pm; this year was no different.  Everyone is so excited because the holidays are here, and I don't really share hat excitement anymore. For me, the holidays just mean working 40 plus hours a week and extended hours. Although I will be done with school in a few weeks, I will not be able to go home because no employee is allowed to request off during the month of December. I am blessed to have a amazing job, but it sucks being limited on the days I can see my family.

Black Friday Stories

I was not one of those people who had to work but all of my friends did. They each complained to me how it went. I had a friend who works at Target and they did not open until 6PM but she went in at three and said that there was people in line before that time. To me that is just insane, like did you even spend time with your family. Like what is it about those deals that makes everyone pick those then sitting at a table sharing time with their family. I also had a friend who went into work and ten minutes into work they were cleaning up someones pee, like come on if that was an adult that is gross, but if it was a child then why were the parents not paying attention to their child instead of going crazy for those sales. I also saw so many snapchats of people who were working and some stores were crazy packed. And there was also people sleeping on the benches they have at the mall, like I don't get why people do the most for some sales. I needed to go get a gift that I forgot to get the week prior, it was the most difficult thing, and I only went in for a gift card. I feel like there is no time during the weekend where the stores were slow. I hope anyone who worked this busy weekend got time to spend time with their families.

Standing Rock and Thanksgiving

I just watched a video of Shailene Woodley and she is standing at the site of the Dakota Pipeline and she kind of explains how the treatment of the Native American society has been wrong from the very beginning. In schools we teach children that the native americans were bad and that they didn't deserve the land. We aren't telling them the truth and maybe that's why many people don't care that the pipeline is being built on the Native American sacred land. We took from them long ago and we still don't have a problem doing it today. The video is very eye opening. I'll post the link below. Let me know what you think.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shailene-woodley-thanksgiving-standing-rock_us_5839bdfae4b01ba68ac4ac0e?ir=Entertainment&