Do you ever envision yourself doing something that just makes you say, “Yeah right!”  Fantasies, if you will, that you know would be amazing but totally impossible at the same time.  I definitely do.  I think about it every night.  I wish I could be like Yanni or William Joseph or any of those New Age artists.  I’ll go to bed thinking about it, and visions will pop up in my mind of me at the piano with all the lights, crowd cheering, and a perfectly played melody flowing from my fingertips.  I see people in awe, crying, smiling, in a totally emotional state.  The music forming images of their own as if people could just stare right up at them.  An experience that can just bring you to a completely higher state of mind.  I wish I could do that.  I envy those who can.  I think about how, for me, music is one of the most powerful forms of inspiration… the ones that don’t even require words.  But of course, I wake up in the morning each day remembering that God obviously didn’t intend for me to be the next Yanni but instead the next Congiundi.  I think I’ll be more than okay being a chemical engineer who just plays piano casually, but it sure would be amazing to be up on stage.

I love inspiration.  I love the emotional current that flows through my body when I’m inspired.  For me, it doesn’t take much.  I try to take in everything that I can.  Tonight, being my bored self, I turned on the video that I had made of my family’s 2009 California vacation, and one scene in particular really just got the inspirational juices flowing.  The scene showed my entire family interacting.  I joked with my little sister, asking her why she didn’t come to the Apple store with me.  My other sister rolled her eyes jokingly.  My mom called “Punch Buggy” and I laughed as my little sister yelled in surprise.  And then my Dad simply stayed cool as all the commotion occurred.  And as I was watching all of this, I thought of my relationship with my family.  I thought how my little sister and I are so close and how even though I try, I sometimes take our relationship for granted.  I thought about my older sister and how we have learned to take care of each other.  I thought about my mom, how she’s always been there for me at the worst of times, how she’s sacrificed so much just to make her children happy.  And then I thought about my dad.  I watched and just nodded my head as I thought about how the scene summed my dad up perfectly.  He was reading items off of a kids menu at a restaurant to my little sister.  My sister, being the picky eater that she is, continuously said no.  ”Chicken Fingers?” “Noo.”  ”PB&J?”  ”Nooo.”  Finally, he looked over and simply said “Okay, well you can share with one of us.”  As she asked what he was eating, he coolly read some sophisticated meal off of the menu.  My sister stormed off in disgust, and as the camera panned back to my dad, he was just smiling.  That summed it up right there for me.  As I watched with my eyes and heart wide open, I thought to myself, Wow… I have the greatest family in the world.  End of story, nothing more about it.  And now, as I write, I wish I could be with them because without them, I wouldn’t be here.  I wouldn’t be anywhere.

Since the Fall, I have been working my butt off trying to secure a Summer internship with any measly chemical company that is willing to hear me.  Starting in the Fall, I did everything that I was supposed to.  I attended the career fair.  Called industry contacts.  Sent thank-you letters.  Submitted resumes.  Dressed up countless times.  Researched company website after website.  Oh, and must I mention interviews galore.   Four in the Fall and three in the Spring, to be exact.  After six denials, I was about ready to give up hope.  Even harder was that I had to turn down a job offer for a co-op because I didn’t want to delay my graduation.  Go figure.  The one offer I get I can’t take.  But then last night happened.  I came home to an email, and what did it read?  The seventh company—success!  I am proud to say that I will be interning with Sasol this Summer in no else but Lake Charles, my hometown.  It just goes to show that you never know what good things might happen to you, you just have to continue trying.  If you stop, you’ll never give those good things an opportunity to occur.  I just got a job offer less than a month before the Summer, but hey, I’ll take it!

Naturally, that excitement carried over to this morning as I eagerly accepted the offer.  The day only got better.  I continue to wonder in amazement how much power a person possess to totally reverse his life’s direction and totally change everything.  I like to think that I’ve reversed my direction, and I’m maintaining it full speed.  For the past week, I had been painstakingly studying my butt off for this thermo exam that I had tonight.  Nights usually ended around 2 in the morning only to preceed yet another late night.  That being said, when test day comes, my mind is focused, in the zone, ready to go.  Everything around me has to be perfect as to not distrupt the intellectual flow.  If it does, like it has in the past, anxiety rushes through my body, and thoughts fly around in my head without any direction.  The flow is broken.  Tonight, I was sitting in the lounge getting ready for my exam, and one of the things I typically do is check the batteries on my calculator.  I did, and they were apparently dead.  At least, so I thought.  I popped in a fresh set, but still nothing.  Uh oh, I whispered in my mind.  I tried resetting it, pushing different button combinations, trying a third set of batteries—everything failed.  Keep in mind, I am about to go take a major exam, and my beloved HP 50g reverse Polish calculator isn’t working!  I could have gone berzerk.  Hell, I defenitely wanted to.  Instead, I quickly calmed myself down, and my heart began to stop racing.  I coolly reminded myself that it was just a calculator.  It was just a calculator.  Just a calculator??  I started to get angry, and all of a sudden all I wanted to do was throw it down on the ground as hard as I could.  Then I again realized that it was indeed just a calculator.  It wasn’t worth it, especially since I had an exam in now 20 minutes.  I thought about all of the progress I had made in the past couple of weeks.  I thought about the little things that kept my days enjoyable—the blue skies, my music, laughter—and I remembered that I still had so many other things going for me.  C’mon, I had just gotten an internship.  After all of those thoughts, the only next logical thought was, “Why even waste your time getting upset over something as little as this?”  Wow, did that put things into perspective.  Some advice: If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, just calmly remind yourself of all of the great things that you have going for yourself.  You’ll soon realize what a logically ridiculous sight it is to get angry at such an insignificant thing.   I collected myself quickly after, whipped out my backup calculator (An HP-48gx), and was on my way.  I would deal with the calculator issue later.  As I walked to my exam, I knew that I had just overcome something that had plagued me so many times in the past.  To put it simply:  It felt good!

I walked home tonight in a very refreshing sixty-degree weather while listening to Jon Schmidt and William Joseph.  I watched all the busy cars passing by and realized how lucky I was to be able to walk and enjoy the night.  You know, if it’s one thing I’ve recognized over the past week and a half, it’s that I have really (and I mean it this time) begun to recognize how appreciable the little things can be.  Today as I was walking to class, I looked up at the blue sky and just started laughing for no particular reason.  I just… did.  It was amazing.

I’m glad to say that while I’m not quite at the top, I am surely climbing at a very fast rate.  I’m thinking that I will conquer my Everest quite soon.

I love when events unfold in obscure ways, when experiences seem so scattered, but how at the end they all connect to create such a rich day.  I definitely was not thinking about this last night, however.  I made my lazy self get out of my apartment and head to the library where I entered my “creative flow” and studied my butt off for my thermo exam.  I have to tell you—it felt great.  For some reason, I get the ol’ adrenalin rush as I’m intently focusing, and memories rush back as I think about the past semesters during finals when I would pull all-nighters with my friends.  Always filled with energy drinks and blood-shot eyes, I always enjoyed those times, and as strange as it might seem, those have always been some of my fondest memories.  So, as I finished up the last of the night’s studying, I headed to Bernie’s around midnight to grab a bite to eat, drove home, and instead of going to bed, what did I do?  I found out via facebook that a fellow classmate enjoys playing the same awesome New Age music that I do.  Before I knew it, I had my keyboard out, and I was playing Jim Brickman’s “If You Believe.”  Two hours later, I was still playing.  By 3:00 A.M., I was finally in bed, and being the prepared engineer that I am, I knew that it would be difficult to wake up for class the next morning, so I turned my alarm up extra loud just in case.  I failed.  I woke up to the peaceful quietness of 11:00 A.M. quickly followed by any curse word imaginable.  Not only had I missed every class for the day, but I was already running short on time to get ready for work.  Even more disappointment set in as I realized that I had missed seeing my exam grade that I had only been anxiously waiting for for several weeks.  I took a shower that should have only been possible by a super-human, got dressed, ate some bread, then headed out the door only to be late by a mere three minutes!  As angry as I was, I couldn’t help but laugh as I walked to the bus stop.  Why was I mad, I thought.  This was funny. I slept through the loudest alarm known to man, missed all my classes, and am on the verge of being late for work… sounds like my day is already over!  What a story this would be!  Work was long, yet enjoyable.  Even though I still could not stop thinking about that exam grade, I performed my duties.  I prepared the pilot plant for demos that would be run later in the afternoon, talked with the owner of an engineering business, and most importantly, walked out of that place with more knowledge than when I walked in.  No matter how monotonous or slow-paced the day is, if I learn something that day, then the day has been a success.  After eating dinner, I came home, plopped down on my chair, and wait, what was this?  I had an email.  Who would have known that a single email could finish off what I would consider a more eventful day than usual.  I clicked on it, and as I read, I screamed “YES!!” in total excitement so loudly that my roommate knocked to see what all the commotion was about.  One letter was all it took.  An A.  What a great ending to what turned out to be a great day.