Know thy crazy, f'ed-up little self

So, in one of my many late-night Skype sessions with my best friend in the world, I was presented with the idea of writing down everything, major or minor, good or bad, that you've done. Sound vague and pointless? I thought so too, until I read part of her list...and realized, promptly, that for someone who called this girl her best friend, I knew so little about her. This is a girl who I have loved and admired since I met her two years ago, at a sad excuse for a bonfire in the middle of the Northern Michigan woods, and I honestly did not think, back then, that I would ever know her as well as I know her now.

She's told me secrets before, of course, and I've told her plenty of secrets in return. We know things about each other that no one else knows. But there is a difference between hearing a single, isolated secret or memory, and seeing it all written out, in black and white, the good and bad, the beautiful and terrible, the exciting and boring--and then you realize, as you read this long list, that the person whose list you're reading has done and been so much more than you had ever realized.

Then, when you read your own list, you suddenly understand that you, too, have done so much more, been so much more, than you ever could've imagined while it was all floating around, detached and blurred, in your memory. It's empowering. It's amazing. You have this sudden desire to go out and do more, and be more, until your list is 100 pages instead of just a measly five or six--and the best part is, you have the confidence, the drive, to do precisely that.

I'm not going to post my entire list. For one thing, it's way too long, and for another, I don't want to share every secret of mine with the entire world. I'm not ready for that. But I want to post a sample of it, just to show you what it looks like, and hopefully encourage you to make your own list like this. Trust me. It's worth it.

IN MY LIFETIME, I HAVE...

· Met my idol—twice
· Spent more time listening to Red Jumpsuit Apparatus than can possibly be healthy
· Fallen for a douchebag. Multiple times
· Written, directed, and edited four narrative shorts
· Directed and edited two documentaries
· Written countless stories, poems, essays, and screenplays
· Fallen for a gay boy
· Made friends with an Interlochen alum almost three times my age
· Fallen in love with a transgendered college student
· Kissed a girl
· Kissed a boy
· Thrown up at school
· Walked into walls
· Fallen in love with my best friend
· Hated myself for being overweight
· Learned to write by writing fanfiction
· Competed in synchronized skating competitions
· Competed—and won medals—in martial arts tournaments
· Gotten a second-degree black belt in Moo Sool Do
· Gotten rejected by over twenty film festivals (but never stopped trying)
· Gotten into one film festival
· Had my film played on my college’s TV station
· Had my screenplays read publicly
· Cried many, many times
· Lied to my parents
· Felt inferior to my best friend
· Felt inferior to my boyfriend
· Went off the diving board when I was five years old
· Ran a stop sign in my first driving lesson
· Climbed into the catwalk of a theater, terrified every step of the way, but exhilarated once I got up there
· Kept secrets, both mine and others
· Told other people’s secrets to my best friends and felt terrible afterward
· Gone to Coon Creek Orchard countless times with my parents
· Gone to the Pinery with my parents
· Gone to boarding school
· Gone to online school
· Gone to a public high school
· Witnessed illegal drug use
· Fell off of chairs, tables, and down stairs
· Pretended to have read books I hadn’t read just to impress a boy
· Pretended to be an atheist so a boy would like me
· Pretended to hate another boy so a boy would like me
· Got rejected from four colleges
· Got accepted into five colleges
· Gone on a zip line
· Gone canoeing (and hated it)
· Gone hiking with my favorite teacher
· Gone whitewater rafting
· Learned to relish acceptance after countless rejections
· Read and fallen in love with Harry Potter
· Discovered the hard way how unpleasant it was to hate people
· Gotten bullied in various forms, for various reasons
· Worked on twenty short films
· Written countless song lyrics
· Listened to so much music so loudly it’s a wonder I haven’t gone deaf yet
· Wished on over 1,000 stars
· Sung my favorite song in Spanish over and over again for no reason
· Drawn endless pictures with sidewalk chalk
· Played in my backyard for hours on end
· Watched an inestimable number of movies
· Been in a long-distance relationship
· Written a blog
· Become a member of the counterculture
· Gotten into a Facebook catfight with a boy I wish I hadn’t hated
· Gone swimming in the ocean
· Had many glorious snowfights
· Sat under the table at dinner

• · Participated in NaNoWriMo
• · Had my first all-nighter when I was seventeen
• · Went as Milady de Winter for Halloween and felt classier than I’ve ever felt in my life
• · Saw A Clockwork Orange and decided it was the movie of my soul
• · Read Peace Breaks Out and decided it was the book of my soul
• · Read Twisted and decided that I would have to make the movie adaptation
• · Read far more books than could possibly be listed here
• · Watched/listened in total amazement as the president of my college calmly and objectively watched my movie, then told the head of Advocacy Team that it was “a great effort”
• · Ate lunch with Interlochen’s finest teachers
• · Lost faith in my once-favorite teacher, and desperately wished I could regain that faith
• · Engaged in an endless battle of wits and soul with my junior-year thesis advisor—still not sure if I lost
• · Hated myself for failing, multiple times
• · Faced a much-needed four AM intervention from my roommate and a fellow MPA
• · Realized my mistakes far too late to correct them
• · Hated a boy so much that I let it change who I was
• · Made the first gay-themed film of my school—and cleared the path for other students to make those types of films
• · Watched my first horror movie and decided to be a filmmaker afterwards
• · Fell in love with Tim Burton
• · Watched helplessly as my best friend was taken away from me mid-school year, twice
• · Started a resistance with my best friends
• · Sung loudly and happily in the Bowl late at night, rules be damned
• · Made (bad) movies with my dad from the time I was in elementary school
• · Saw countless plays and musicals
• · Saw The Rocky Horror Show live, twice
• · Learned to play the piano
• · Taught my dad how to play the piano
• · Learned how to do improv acting
• · Tried out for high school improv team and didn’t make it
• · Got tiny, insignificant roles in just about every play I tried out for
• · Gave up acting and went into filmmaking full-time
• · Took a video/media class and was ruthlessly and relentlessly tortured by the boys in said class
• · Tried to make a movie in that class anyway
• · Went to Interlochen Summer Arts Camp to learn how to make movies
• · Fell in love with Interlochen
• · Applied to Interlochen Arts Academy and got in
• · Loved Interlochen so much that I never wanted to leave
• · Hated the MPA department so much that I sometimes wondered why I’d gone into filmmaking in the first place
• · Fell in love with filmmaking all over again thanks to my best friends
• · Graduated with honors, for which I did not receive credit
• · Won an iPod Touch in a school contest
• · Lost so many contests I’ve stopped counting
• · Won an obituary contest at my library
• · Was runner-up in a poetry contest at my library
• · Volunteered in the kids’ section at my library for three summers
• · Joined the most amazing Christian fellowship to ever exist at my college
• · Threw myself into a pile of snow, just because it was there
• · Participated in two ice shows
• · Jumped into infinite piles of leaves
• · Sang in a church choir
• · Cried hysterically watching Elephant
• · Survived Whooping Cough and Swine Flu
• · Danced, played pool, and bowled all night with a boy I was madly in love with
• · Been given amazing compliments by the most beautiful, soulful woman I have ever met
• · Prayed at the strangest times
• · Gone sledding with my dad
• · Gone on countless amusement-park rides

· Places I’ve been:

o Northern Michigan

o Montana

o Canada

o Texas

o Ohio

o North Carolina

o Maryland

o West Virginia

o Virginia

o Kentucky

o New Mexico

o Chicago

· Places I’ve lived:

o Northern Michigan

o Southern Michigan

o Maryland

• · Found my first best friend in a martial arts class
• · Lost that best friend a year later
• · Reconnected with that girl, but no longer called her my best friend
• · Read A Separate Peace when I was thirteen years old and cried inconsolably
• · Wrote notes to my best friend in a semi-useless attempt to get her through difficult times
• · Decided that Cyrano de Bergerac is the play of my soul
• · Saw The Godfather and that Francis Ford Coppola is vastly overrated
• · Got fired by a fifteen-year-old
• · Been called:

o “You sneaky woman you”

o Little girl

o Lazy

o Annoying

o Stupid

o “Fingernails on a chalkboard”

o Ridiculous

o Compassionate

o Skilled writer

o Terrible writer

o Hopeless

o Naïve

o Pathetic

o Boring

o Weird

o Wild

o Over-emotional

o Useless

o Hipster

o Uneducated

o Too smart for my own good

o Wonderful

o Beautiful

o Ugly

o Fat

o Loser

o Dumbass

o Irritating

o Dateable

o Too curious

o Too sensitive

o Too loud

o Too shy

o Too quiet

o Too judgmental

o Too modest

o Too Christian

o Arrogant

o Atheist

o Hypocritical

o Lovely

o Kind woman

o Smart woman

o Kick-ass woman

· I’ve played the role of:

o Filmmaker

o Daughter

o Surrogate sister

o Best friend

o Cousin

o Girlfriend

o Enemy

o Rival

o Student

o Teacher

o Charge

o Protector

o Scapegoat

o Rebel

That's the EDITED version of the list. The real list is much longer, much more revealing, much more in-depth. But do you see now what this does? You know what to do now. So go do it. Make a list like this. You'll be surprised what it does for you.