I have somewhat nerdy hobbies

I've done absolutely nothing productive today. Here's what I did do though:

That's right. I arranged my books by color. I mean, that's a totally legitimate use of my time, right? Notice how I don't have any bookends, so my books are flanked by candles and a camera. Classy. I need to invest in some bookends, I'm thinking either these or these are freaking awesome.

I sort of love books. A lot. When I'm older I hope to have a huge library. Something Beauty and the Beast-esque. Growing up I was always surrounded by an abundance of quality literature. My mom used to have a business buying and reselling books, so I went to an extraordinary amount of book sales, bookstores, antique stores and garage sales looking for books with her. Since then, she has been slowly paring away our collection to only the very best, but every time she wants to get rid of something I protest. I feel like there's always a chance she could get rid of something I'm going to really want to read in the near or distant future.

In reality, I will probably never read a good number of the books we own. I have this problem where I get books and then never read them, or I only read part of them and never finish them. Of the 29 books in that photo I've read somewhere between 4-6 of them all the way through. Pitiful, I know. In my defense, since these are the books I have at school, a lot of them are books for classes that I only had to read part of. I also still have some books for a class that I went to once and then dropped. Yeah, some of those I haven't even cracked open.  I'm probably going to read them someday. Just maybe not soon.

You may not believe it, but I do actually finish books sometimes. I have been known to do nothing but read for days on end if I have a good book. It's one of my favorite pastimes. (I actually hate when people ask me what my hobbies are, because they all sound super nerdy. "Ummm... I like to read... and sew and knit and stuff... and make art...") Because I was homeschooled, I had to be really self-motivated, and I remember getting in trouble a lot because I would spend too much time reading when I was supposed to be doing other schoolwork. How sad is that? Who gets in trouble for reading too much? Me, apparently.

Failstruggle.

There are a number of things I feel like I should be good at, but I'm really not. For example:

1. Flower arranging.
I mean, how hard can it be? You just throw some flowers in a vase, cut the stems down and done, right? False. I have yet to understand how this can be such a struggle. Even when I buy those really nice bouquets that look fantastic in all their wrapping, when I get home and put them in a vase, they look unfortunate, no matter how much cutting and arranging I do. You would think that this would come naturally, since I'm an artist, but no.

2. Parking.
Yet again, how hard can it be? I'm a fairly decent driver, but when it comes to parking, I'm sort of screwed. Especially if I'm driving a large car. Parallel parking is just a mystery to me. How did I pass my driving test? I don't know.

3. Comforting people.
This is the worst. Inevitably people will come to me and relate some tragic story and then start crying. At this point I'm just lost. What do I do? Do I say something? If so, what? I usually just end up awkwardly hugging them and saying something ridiculously lame, like, "That's so lame!" Exactly. I suck at this.

4. Making small talk.
I have this problem where if I will never see you again I don't feel the need to get to know you or really talk to you. I don't actually care what you do for a living or what you're doing next weekend. I will most likely forget it all in about 10 minutes anyway. I know, I know, this sounds horrible. I suppose it is. But are we really enriching each other's lives at all? What are we gaining from this awkward chit-chat? Nothing, I say. NOTHING! This view on life is probably all due to the fact that I am horrible at making small talk, especially at college. Once you get past the "What's your major" and "What classes are you taking" questions, I get stuck.

5. Spelling
I used to be good at spelling. Somehow I lost that skill. I'm not really sure how.

Apparently, writing blog posts is also not one of my strong points.

In other news, yesterday I was wearing a name-tag at work that said "Sam." It took a good amount of time before I actually noticed.