"We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody's" -Kifah Shah

I don't know what that involves, but something tells me that it starts with books.

I've spent a lot of time with kids and their parents, which leads me to thinking about how to raise a daughter, or a son. But more pressing, how do I raise myself? At a certain point, my parents' job was over, but the responsibility was passed onto me. I am still working on, well, everything. I still have bad days and get mad at everybody. There's truth to what I say, but it's the incomplete truth, full of only the mean stuff and none of the good. The people who suffer it forgive me easier than I forgive myself. So those days still happen. Less now than before, I hope. I still have days during which I eat indiscriminate Mexican food from the cafeteria instead of the salad bar. But more and more, I am making it a priority to make my own food because I like knowing where things come from. Indiscriminate and undetermined are adjectives that should not be used to describe what I put in my body, but that will happen sometimes because sour cream can mask all uncertain flavors that make me question... a lot of things about my decision-making capacity. 

I want to be conscious of these things but also there's more to it. This brings me back to books. So, absolutely nobody has asked me for advice on living a better life and this makes complete sense to me. See above. Life is a mess. But if I could give a piece of advice, primarily to myself, I think it would involve something like, Get a library card. Then get some books- about anything- and read them. Develop curiosity and sense of creativity.

So that's what I'm going for here. I want to figure out how I make everything I do something that makes me better. I am trying to use up everything I have, each day. I want to balance out creating things with my studying. I'm starting to view studying as an activity that helps me more knowledgeable. I guess that was supposed to be obvious. But for so long, it's been something that is obligatory to not fail tests. Now, it is beginning to feel like storing up reserves so that I can help make people better. And that's important to me. Last week was the beginning of this process for me and I hope to continue building on it this week.