Oh yeah,

Jocelyn is back on the team. We had a huge circle thing during practice today, and we all said what we felt about what she did to us. We all forgive her though, just as long as she doesn't walk out on us again.

"Ohana means family. And family means no one gets left behind, or forgotten."

I remember as a dance team we all used to say this :) Ugh I'm going to miss this third family of mine next year when mom forces me to quit :/

Facade.

Through the ups and downs I just try to stay level headed. I hear a lot of bullshit but I never sweat it. Cause when you ask about it, They gon say they never said it.

(via gardenstateofmind)

I'll elaborate later. But I saw this off of Tumblr and love this. I need to do my chemistry powerpoint for now though.

Staying focused.

I'm really starting to take to heart what Dad told me a couple days ago. I'm changing my attitude towards my goals. I need to get it together in school, I need to set those high expectations for myself that I used to always do. Straight A's, and no less. Which means I need to bring up all my grades... haha. Oh gosh what have I been doing, I let myself go too much.

Also, I'm trying to really improve with dance. I want to perfect my cartwheels since my right cartwheel is NEVER straight; I'm too used to doing left cartwheels. And with State competition coming at the end of the month, I want to get more stunts down. Jordan taught me hang glide freeze and turtle freeze since he knows I need to strengthen my forearms first before learning a lot of other things. I want to get an invert down but I can barely keep myself up doing a handstand so I need to practice that. All in all, I need to be more fit and get stronger to improve in this. I already have hang glide freeze down, but I need to stabilize it more. It's cause I have no muscles! :(

Focus focus focus.

My motivation is just... gone.

I'm not even really sure why I'm crying right now. But just a bit ago my dad came into my room for a "talk". See, Dad never does "talks" unless it's serious so I got nervous at first. He started off saying, "You know what I noticed last night at the quad concert Michelle? You've changed." I was confused, "What are you talking about?" He noticed how throughout the concert, I was so tired and lethargic-looking. So I replied, "Well yeah, last night I got pretty bored. The concert wasn't exciting or anything." His response, "No... it's not just that. I've noticed that this is how you're always looking, every single day. Michelle, your face constantly looks exhausted. You've lost that glow, that vigor."
I proceeded to tell him about how it's true, I AM always tired. I'm always up at night doing homework because school is killing me from the inside out. He told me, maybe I should lighten up on the classes, take fewer honors classes. But no, that's not the issue. I've come upon this as my own realization and explained to him, "I know... It's just that, I feel like I've lost that drive to keep going. I've lost my motivation. Every single day feels so routine and I can't take it anymore. Everything at school is just so tedious, a repeat of the day before. And it's not just now, the same thing happened last year. Heck, it's BEEN happening ever since the 7th grade. Each year, during the middle of second semester, I start to lose that drive I had throughout the year to succeed. Everything is just so boring, I feel like what I'm learning in all my classes are all so pointless. There's no excitement in my day, just the same thing over and over."
Dad started to tell me, in the most loving way, about how sometimes life turns out that way. And that I shouldn't just view the things I learn at school as pointless. It might seem useless right now, but you never know what knowledge you'll need in the future. He says he understands because sometimes, even with working, he starts to feel like every day is just a repeated process and gets monotonous. After a lot of talking, he summed up his advice, "Michelle, you can't always change the situation your in, but you always change your attitude towards it."
Dad also told me about my horrible sleeping habits, and how I need to change them. I agree 100%. It's funny how I've known this for the longest time, and how I WANT to change, but I haven't yet.

I'm going to try from now on. And even though I've lost my motivation at school, I still have dance, DECA, family, friends, and of course God to live for. I need to get myself together.

Thank you Dad. Seriously, thank you. I'm going to try my hardest to change my mentality.

Nostalgia.

Feeling super nostalgic suddenly, reminiscing on memories with people I don't have in my life anymore. It's like the best but most saddening feeling, walking back around the bittersweet roads. I miss these people terribly, you don't even know. They all left an impact on me no doubt, but now we don't even talk. I can't even do anything about it, they're just going on with their lives, I'm going on with mine. One moment I'm so thankful that I actually got to spend time with them at all. The next moment I'm either sad that I know I can't talk to them any longer or angry that they just walked out on me, without a word.

Oh man, I seriously need to start sleeping earlier. Late-night over-analyzing does me no good.

Royal Impact.

Okay, Jocelyn is out for good. It's whatever. She brought it upon herself, so if she's willing to walk out on us and turn her back on us, I'll do the same and so will the rest of the team.

Practice today... my gosh we're changing 8 counts but at the same time it's taking so long to get the hang of it since it was a transition part too. It's like we're all trying our hardest, we're fine without Jocelyn's stunts, we all got assets of our own to bring to the team. But it's just frustrating because we're only 4 days away from Districts, AND Sarah and I are having issues with our English teacher. Since we need to go to the orchestra concert rehearsal tomorrow during 2nd and 3rd period, we end up missing the important exam for English. We talked to Ms. Hunter about it and she was just like, "You HAVE to take it either today or tomorrow after school." But Sarah and I have dance practice! With so little time before competition, I don't want to miss any dance practices, plus the exam might be a whole hour long. Hopefully we can negotiate with her to let us take it Thursday after school since on that day practice starts at 2:45.

We all need to step our game up like CRAZY. You have no idea how bad all of us want this. I know we got the potential too, but in the past it seems like not all of us had the exact same drive as everyone else. But oh man, this is DISTRICTS. I want to go to State for sure. We need to give it BEYOND our all or we won't make it.

So this week, I'm disciplining myself like mad. Get schoolwork done earlier, so that at night I can go to LA Fitness to practice in front of mirrors, and also work on my flips/splits/stunts so that they're cleaner. I really need to get over my fear of handstands -_- I hope my brother helps me with freezes and such because then I can work my core too.

I feel like school is such an incredible bother now. I want to focus focus focus on dance because this will be my last year on the team and going to competitions. School decides to pile on all the work now though, and it's so exhausting. Not to mention orchestra has that concert and Large Group Festival thing. I need to practice my violin a lot too.

Off the team?

My thoughts are hella scattered right now and I'm not sure how to feel about everything overall, so bear with me. This post might lead to nowhere but it's getting everything out of my head.

So today after school, the dance team (except for Jocelyn) had a meeting for about a half hour. We were wondering what to do about her--should we let her stay on the team if she wants to come back, or "kick" her off?
No doubt, she disappointed all of us. I know so many of us shed tears when we first learned she'd walk out on us, but over the weekend we've developed anger. I love her to death, but she was being so selfish.
I learned that on Thursday night, after that practice and everything, Jocelyn still moved out of Jeana's house. She went to live with her dad in Everett. Ugh I'm so frustrated with this, because Jeana was really just being a good parent! But Jocelyn's REAL father... he fails as a parent. UTTERLY FAILS.

BLAH, rewind. Okay I'm going to explain Jocelyn's past.
Jeana's sister had Jocelyn when she was a teenager, so she felt like she wasn't ready to care for a daughter yet. She still wanted the best for her though, so then HER mom's cousin & spouse said they'd take care of her. Jeana and her sister let those cousins take care of Jocelyn because those people said they'd do this and that for her... well they'd be good parents. BUT, they turned out to be people that didn't go by their word. They didn't discipline her or anything. You know how when we were all young, if we did something wrong, like stole candy from a store, our parents would tell us it's wrong and punish us? Yeah, well that didn't happen with her. She didn't ever get in trouble. She grew up with these adopted parents that never bothered to train her, all they did was buy her things. For 12 straight years, they let her do what she want. It's not her fault, when everyone was young we never really knew right from wrong, or what expectations to meet. Eventually though, she felt like she wanted to live with her real, biological mother when she was 12. So she asked her adopted parents, and they just said Yes. Shows what wonderful parents they were.... they didn't fight for her or anything. They let her go without a second thought. I mean, adopted or not, if you cared for a child for 12 years, wouldn't you feel some kind of emotional hurt when your kid wants to leave? But yeah, I guess they didn't care, so they let her go.

So now she moved to Oregon to live with her mom. But then in her school there, some nasty rumor started up about her, and she couldn't take it anymore. She left that place after awhile and came back up here to Washington. So the sensible thing would be for those adopted parents to take her back, right? NOPE, they DIDN'T want her back. Instead, they called Jeana's grandma to see if they would take Jocelyn in. Yup, JEANA'S grandma, not Jocelyn's. So that would make it Jocelyn's GREAT-GRANDMOTHER. No one that old can possibly take care of a teenager, they already have health issues and such to worry about. I can't believe those adopted parents had the audacity to do that.

So that's where Jeana came in. She took Jocelyn in because there was no where else to go, and she knew that Jocelyn's biological dad up in Everett would do horrible parenting. Now this was pretty much the first time in Jocelyn's life where she had expectations set before her. Where discipline came into play. And so this past Thursday, when ALL she had to do in front of us and Jeana was apologize as a punishment, she couldn't take it anymore in Jeana's house. She wanted OUT of Jeana's house.

So Thursday night, she moved out and went to live with her Dad in Everett. We can already see how this is SUCH an unwise decision. She came to school today, and during the day, she went up to Lashaye and Monika, and was showing her new iPhone her dad got her. And the shopping spree they just went on... blah. That's exactly what Jeana knew would happen, her dad just BUYS BUYS BUYS her THINGS. And Thursday night Jeana called their house to see if Jocelyn was okay, and the dad picked up. He said he won't allow her to talk to Jocelyn. You know what he said that really pissed the whole dance team off? "I think Jocelyn needs a vacation from expectations." What. the. fuck. She's a teenager. She NEEDS expectations... grades, morals, restrictions. But nope, her dad has ZERO expectations for her and just buys her stuff.

Ugh, so as you can tell, in a sense it's not Jocelyn's fault she thinks the way she does. She grew up with people who never loved her, with no discipline. Her whole entire life she has never had that "ride or die" kind of friend, and has gone through things that makes her have great trust issues.

Still, her walking out on Jeana and the whole entire team was SELFISH of her. Completely.
So at the discussion today, we all gave our opinion on whether or not it'd be wise to accept her on the team if she wants to come back.

From a competitive dance team standpoint, it'd be best if we don't let her come back. We're only 4 practices away from Districts, we can't let this drama distract us. We need to focus and concentrate on improving. Ayana heard Jocelyn wants to come to practice tomorrow and see how things work out, but seriously... Jeana is our coach. Nothing will be the same anymore, the amount of cooperation, the tension... practices won't just flow like they always do. So everyone agreed it'd be best if she was OFF because we're pissed off that she left the whole dance team hanging, and we don't want anything like that to bring us down in performing/competing.

On a personal note though, I feel like it wouldn't be best because... her whole life she had trust issues. The dance team is LITERALLY FAMILY. We're all so close and have bonded like crazy over the year. We consider ourselves real ohana. So if we kick Jocelyn off the team, won't Jocelyn have even more trust issues? The one outlet in life where there were 12 other people who GENUINELY cared about her, if we turn our backs on her she might never learn to trust.. well anyone.

So I don't even know, still. I think I want her off the team, because that would be best for the team in general. She turned HER back on us. But at the same time, I feel like leaving her behind would only hurt her more. Not to be conceited or whatever, but seriously, she NEEDS US more than we need her.

Sure, for the competitive dance team standpoint, she's a huge asset to the team since she can pull off flips and stunts, and got great facials. But it's not too big of a deal, if we all focus enough we can step our game up to the highest possible.

akfnsdfhaighgnajgwjan. Like I said, my thoughts are everywhere.