Mirror, Mirror

I've been in Denver for almost a year now. I go to school full time, I work two jobs, and I'm currently in the middle of moving to a new place. I've done well for the last year. I've gotten good grades, I've done well at my jobs, but as the classes have gotten harder, my stress level has gone up and now with moving adding to an already difficult quarter, the cracks are starting to show. For the first time, I'm not doing well in a few of my classes. I'm struggling with finding enough time to study. I'm struggling with feeling exhausted all the time. I go seven days a week. The snow day we had last Wednesday was the first full day I'd had off in a few months. The cracks are showing and I don't know how to fix them. I live in a stupidly expensive city. I can't afford to quit one of my jobs. I'm trying to graduate by next summer so I don't incur a ridiculous amount of debt and so I can actually start working. I mean, I'm 28. Most of my friends and fellow students around the same age have at least one associates degree and most have a bachelors. Me? I'm at my fourth college trying to get the associates degree I failed to get two years ago.

The Gender Conundrum

We live in a world where gender is an ever-changing concept. It's no longer a simple black and white matter of you're male or you're female. Now we have transgender, non-binary gender, gender fluid, agender, bigender, and the list goes on. It can be a bit of a challenge to keep it all straight.

I was raised Christian, so anything deviating from the normalcy of heterosexuality was bad. Homosexuality? Bad. Bisexual? Bad. Transgender? Bad. And so on and so on. I learned to look down on those people, I was taught to look down on them. I had teachers and leaders who vehemently spoke out against them who painted a picture of horrible people making conscious decisions to live in sin, teachers and leaders who framed my perception of those people. I often wonder, if I hadn't left home and gone to college in another city, if I hadn't been removed from my familiar little closed off world, would I still be as close minded as I was then? But while my eyes were certainly opened and I became slightly less judgmental, I was still extremely close minded. It wasn't until I actually began to really meet and get to know these people that I realized that they were humans just like you and me, not these entities of evil I'd been taught about. And not a single one of them was claiming to be gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans or whatever in order to snub God, it was simply who they were.

Harry Potter 30 Day Challenge - Days 3-5

Apologies for missing a couple of days. Life got busy so I had to postpone. So, I will be doing three days today and then three tomorrow and after that, fingers crossed, I'll be able to stay on track!

Day 3 - Least Favorite Book
This is a hard one for me because I love all the books so much. So understand that when I say Chamber of Secrets is my least favorite, I still love it. I don't have any hugely specific reasons of why it's my least favorite other than it's just never been one to hold my attention as much as the others. Probably the only real specific reason I have is that this book contains the character of Gilderoy Lockhart. He is without a doubt the most annoying character in all of the books and not always in a good way. He has his moments where is obnoxiousness is comedic and it works well with the story but there are a lot of other moments where I just want to smother him with a pillow and have done with it. So while there are aspects of the book that I really, he kills other parts for me. Still a wonderful book though!

Harry Potter 30 Day Challenge - Day 2

The Hogwarts Express has come and gone, the newest witches and wizards have been sorted into their respective houses so it's on to day two of the challenge!

Day 2 - Favorite Book
Choosing a favorite book is hard, I'm honestly the worst when it comes to having to choose my favorite anything and I love every single book. But if I absolutely had to choose, it would be the 3rd

book in the series: The Prisoner of Azkaban. It's always been one of my favorites but it took me a while to really pinpoint why I loved it so much. One reason is that it's such a pivotal book in the series, in my opinion. You have some very important characters introduced that play some major rules both in Harry's life and in the other books. And one of those characters introduced happens to be one of my favorite adult characters: Remus Lupin. His kindness, sincerity, and just overall goodness make him an amazing character and I really love how his relationship with Harry develops throughout the book. The book also introduces us to Hippogriffs which happen to be one of my favorite magical creatures. But probably the aspect that took me longest to figure out is that this is the last book where we see our main characters happy. Obviously there are some serious ups and downs and it's not all sunshine and daisies, but the following books take a much darker turn. Here we have Harry discovering that Sirius and Lupin were best friends with his father. We see his joy at not only having

that connection to his parents, but also finding out that Sirius is his godfather and he know has people who care about him. It's that tangible link to his parents that he's longed for. And finally, I love this book because it introduces the Patronus charm. Rowling has stated multiple times that the Dementors that first appear in this book represented her depression. As someone who has now struggled with serious depression for years, I really liked the idea of using happiness, a happy memory, to combat the soul sucking darkness that threatens to obliterate everything positive. I found it to be an encouraging reminder that depression can be defeated or at least held at bay.

Harry Potter 30 Day Challenge - Day 1

Since I am once again doing a dismal job of keeping up with this blog, I figured I would do something fun to get me back into the habit. If you have been following my blog for any length of time, you will recall that I did something very similar back in 2014 with Lord of the Rings prior to the final Hobbit movie premiere. Yes, it's actually been almost four years since then. I can't quite wrap my head around that. In any case, while the Lord of the Rings trilogy remains both my favorite movies and favorite books, the Harry Potter books have long ranked as a second favorite. Since it's the first of September, this seemed an appropriate way to kick off the month. If you have never read Harry Potter, you seriously should because the series is truly amazing and there is far more to it than just magic, but if you are disinclined just be aware that there will be spoilers. So without further ado, here is the beginning of the Harry Potter 30 Day Challenge.

Day 1 - How Did You First Get Into Harry Potter
Ironically, my parents are the ones who actually got me into Harry Potter, ironic because I grew up going to church and what not and most Christians have an issue with the Harry Potter books. That

still puzzles me because I've read a fair number of Christian books in the past that also included magic and yet those were somehow acceptable. But I won't get into that. So my parents got me the first three books for Christmas one year shortly after the third book came out, if memory serves. I remember not being entirely thrilled with the gift because even then if something was super popular, I tended to avoid it. Although I was a bit young for them when the first book came out, I was old enough when my parent's gave them to me to relate to the characters and really connect with them. Plus, it also introduced me to a totally different culture and country which was more than a little awesome. And, obviously, once I actually read the books, I fell completely in love with them and though they're more than a tad worn, I still have the copies my parents gave me.