Art & Positivity

Diana by Hiram Power

June by John White Alexander

Today has been long with ups and downs. One of the best parts of my day was visiting the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and seeing these two beautiful pieces. I love the moon on Diana's tiara, and the slight ambiguity of the title June delights me – is that woman June, or is the painting a tribute to the month? Art is incredible, and I'm thrilled I was able to stop by the museum today.

When life is hard, I have to focus on the positive aspects. Life cannot be bad, but it can be easy to get overwhelmed. (Life can't be bad because God is life, and God is The Best.) I'm a little overwhelmed lately with a barrage of papers and exams and presentation in the next two weeks. Having so much to do makes it easy to slip into a crisis mindset in which everything is bad or an inconvenience, but that's just not true.

Today I had three meals and clean water to drink and clean with. I visited a free museum with a wide variety of art styles and uncensured pieces. I can type this blog post and listen to music and have electricity. I go to a fantastic school in a fascinating city. I'm safe, and alive, and relatively healthy. The temperature was nice today, and there are a lot of flowers to admire. I'm blessed, no matter how many tasks there are on my to-do list.

(If you care, here is my to-do list for today:

• read True American
• read "Living Water"
• write JUPS reflection paper
• study vocab (Spanish)
• study grammar (Spanish)
• study cultural content (Spanish)
• work on presentation
• this blog post
• submit passport application
• start linguistics homework
• email Prof. Amster
• submit financial aid form
• call Grandma Ruth
• confirm housing assignment
• probably do laundry
• go to Mass at Father Steck's
• decide whether to apply to be a peer advisor
• remind parents to bring boxes when they visit

Some of these have been completed already today, but most have not. Cheers, folks.)