The busiest summer of my life (Part 1)

I love those mornings when you wake up and their is a soft frost on the yard, burned off by 10 with promises of spring and heat. I'm mostly a summer person. I love soaking the rays into my skin and filling myself with the sun. I also love the winter and fall, don't get me wrong. I love sitting in a chair with my mom, curled up with coca and a book. I like the glittering snow, however, I don't like driving in it. For a while, I love the big coats and the smile thats legit frozen to your face... after a while though, its just too gloomy. I wanna go do stuff!

My summers are typically filled with travel. I am an active member in my FFA chapter, I was a Rainbow Girl, and 4-H has me so excited about being involved, that sometimes my trips overlap! I also LOVE community service.

One year, I was able to get to all of my trips, it was the only year I knew of when the OSU 4H Summer Conference didn't overlap with Oregon Rainbow's Grand Assembly, Eastern Oregon Livestock show was just after I had gotten out of school, and even my 4H camp  training counselor fit in there, all in the same month. I had like, a half a day in between trips, which I used for packing and catching up on sleep, as well as the long car/bus rides. However, that was also the same year I cracked my ankle a few days after school got out. My doctor was a little more than shocked when he found out that I would be spending the next 14 days gallivanting around Oregon, which is why I could not get my ankle casted. I spent half of that summer on crutches or in a wheel chair, but it was a really huge summer for me.

It was the first summer that I went to the OSU summer conference, and I fell in love with the campus and the people, and the whole 4H environment. Earlier in the year, when we signed up for classes, I had decided to take a class that was actually just tryouts for a state talent show. Me and my mom had discussed possible songs, and I made a cute little dance to "Our Song" buy Taylor Swift. Seeing as I was in a wheelchair, I totally scraped that idea last minute and sat in the try out room, trying to figure out what I was going to do.

I will start off by saying, the talent we had packed into that little room was amazing. We had dancers and singers and instrumentalists, all of them prepared with some amazing performance. I felt really small, sitting in my wheelchair with no clue what I was going to do.

I was the last one in the room, which seemed huge then. the judges were looking at me. they asked me what I was going to be doing, and thats when I saw the cup.

This is insane, so imma just split off real quick and tell you the back story. My best friend is from Russia, and I had taken a trip up to the mountains with her that summer, before I had cracked my leg. while in the mountains, she had taught me this game that they played called The Russian Cup Game.  Earlier in the year, my friend Madison taught me the words to the cup song, because we were going to do it in our school talent show. I had never put the two together, I had never rehearsed.

I sat there, smiling, dying of shyness, and asked if I could use one of the judges old Dutch Bros cups. Yes, I performed the Cup Song off of Pitch Perfect. I was like 100% sure I would never make it to the actual talent show, but that night a bunch of my friends wheeled me up to the auditorium and we looked at the results. I had made it, my friend, however, had not.

I couldn't believe it. My friends were jumping around my wheelchair yelling "you made it!" "I knew you could do it" it was all very awesome for me. People who walked by looked at us like we were nuts. I was laughing and crying at the same time, totally in love with my friends.

The next night, I was so nervous to perform. all they had was a makeshift table for me that they had to go find, I was flustered because I didn't feel like I looked good, and to top it all off, I couldn't make it up the wheelchair ramp to get to the stage. The sign I had made looked elementary. I was scared out of my wits.

The room was packed with at least 500 people, yet there was dead silence. I kid you not, no noise. It was just me and my wheelchair in front of hundreds of people. I couldn't even remember the first words so I sat there looking dumb for what felt like ages, then the cup slipped out of my hand as i was doing part of the song, and i felt my face burn red as the flowers on my dress. After I sang (which I don't remember doing) I got one of the only two standing ovations, and won the thing.

I cant stop smiling when I think about it. That was a really big accomplishment for me, because I proved to myself that I was strong enough and brave enough to concur all of my fears. All I had to do was just be Georiga. Its hard to just act normal and do the things you love when your being somebody else. So tell me, who are you when you're done being everyone else?

Jigsaw Puzzle

I'm Georgia, I'm 16 years and 11 months old. 

Georgetta was the name given to me at birth, but I tried quite a few names out before I was just Georgia. I was Isabel in 4th and 5th grade. Harry Potter was my imaginary friend. I was Abby Duck in 6th grade, because I liked the name Abby and I wasn't allowed to put my name on my Facebook page. In middle school and some of freshman year,  I went by Georjedi. It was a nickname my father had given me when I was younger and I just didn't feel like I was really a Georgetta. Sophomore year and part of this year was defiantly... different.  During the summer, I was a mix between Beyoncé and Gacole (ja-cole)  (Yes, I know. Just last summer!) However, during the school year, I was mostly Gacole, feeling too mature for my other names. 

Each name has its own story. I was trying to put myself in different puzzles. maybe I was more country than city, maybe I liked music more than this or that. I didn't see how you could have one passion, and that's all you are. The truth is, that's not how it is. I spread myself in too many puzzles, when I was the only puzzle I needed to focus on. I tried being a part of this puzzle, that puzzle, and always ending up feeling like I was not a piece of that picture. I started to feel like I didn't belong in any picture. It wasn't until recently that I realized that pieces of me weren't something else, but that everything else were pieces of me! 

I was taught that nothing would change until I do, and so that's what I did. I reconstructed myself over and over and over, giving myself different names and clothing styles and music tastes. I was so focused on the visible change that I wasn't paying attention to the important change, the one that happens in your heart. I wanted to be a little bit of everything, so that there was no way people couldn't like me. I also felt like if I wasn't really ME, that then it wouldn't hurt so bad if people didn't like who I was, because it wasn't really me. You know what I'm saying?

 I had a friend this summer who really opened my eyes though. I was running around being someone else so much, that I had lost touch with who I really was. Heck, I didn't even know who I really was. They want to work for a company that builds NASA's space shuttles and things. They told me that they want to see their name in the stars someday, but they are afraid of failure, so they don't tell people. I never would have guessed that they were anything but 100% confident in themselves. 

Its hard to really embrace who we are. I have another friend who was scared of admitting that they liked horses because they were afraid it seemed dorky and cliché.  One day they stopped denying it and just accepted it. They said it felt good to just let it out. It was a simple statement. Yet, it had such a huge impact on their lives. Your passion shouldn't be a secret that you're scared of sharing.

Yes, I am a teenager, and I am still trying to find myself, but its a lot easier to do that when you can at least be honest with yourself. Its hard for me to publicly proclaim that music is my passion, something I want to change others lives with. I'm scared that if people don't like my music, they wont like me. 

We are all awkward, soul searching, pieces of a puzzle. We are  a puzzle. We are made of of thousands of different things, created differently, one piece at a time. I used to see 18 at instantly being adult. Like, the day comes and the rock drops and all of a sudden you are a house owning, bill paying, on-your-own adult with a full time job and the world to take care of. Little did I know that it was one day at a time. You don't just suddenly become anything. its a process, just like building a puzzle. Just one piece at a time and the picture slowly starts to take shape. 

This puzzle is gloriously different though. It will continue to grow as you do. that puzzle will never be finished. it will have dark pictures and glorious colors, triumph and struggle, and all of life's twists and turns. I'm not sure how you build puzzles, but I build mine from a corner up. Its time to be the corner stone of your own puzzle. Who are you when you're done being everyone else?