just one of those days

1. as my title suggests, today was just one of those days. it was slow. not much happened. lazy sunday..."lazy sunday/wake up in the late afternoon..." the song "lazy sunday" by the lonely island always makes me laugh.
2. but really, I did nothing today other than continue packing, break up a bird fight (weird, I know), and watch some telly and read some magazines. 

today I want to write a brief statement about characteristics. I have always been an independent person--my own woman, I guess you could say. flaws and faults I have aplenty, the most important being my stubbornness. ask anyone, I am hard-headed, stubborn as a mule, and bullish in my fierceness. while I have long accepted this facet of my personality, I also accept it was both a merit and a fault. stubbornness means that I have principles and stick by them; it also means I am not easily talked into things that I don't see as good (generic vocab choice). and while I appreciate my stubborn nature, I know that it can be frustrating and that I can be inflexible and hard to deal with. on the note of double-sided characteristics, I bring up my empathetic quality. I understand feelings of others, especially those in pain or trouble, and most would say that this is a merit. having lived with it for some time now, I see it as a double-edged sword. I love that I am compassionate and empathetic, but it only makes me thin-skinned and vulnerable and hard to distance myself from others. why is this a bad thing? well, it isn't always; but it definitely can be detrimental. use your imagination to see all the ways this characteristic could screw me in life. overall, I think it's hard to paint a person into good and evil, virtuous and malicious. we all have characteristics that can work for or against us. what is most important is accepting that people cannot be one or the other--by nature we are all a shade of gray (not literally, of course, I see myself as a different color on each day--that's another post). it may be hard to see the value of the tenacity that a suicide bomber has, or see the detrimental effect that taking too much care of other people can have; but having this vision and insight is crucial to understanding people for who they really are--not just judging by one facet or another of his/her personality.

I almost forgot! my very first item for my goals list (since it is a sunday). it was hard to just...think of something I wanted to accomplish. but after some thought, I have decided that a goal of mine is to return to hawaii. it was a beautiful and shaping place for me, and a return trip is mandatory!