Progress

Sometimes with studying and e-mailing all day for Teach For America stuff, I feel like I don't make much tangible progress. I know I'm technically making progress on the time I'm supposed to be putting into the prep work, but still. So I've been making lists on my phone purely so I can cross stuff off of it. One longstanding item on the list has been to work on organizing my clothes and bedroom. To give you an idea of the chaos, here is a before picture....

And an after picture...

Dude, working through that mess felt like I was machete-ing (just made a verb I think) my way through the Amazon rainforest. I even killed a deadly jungle spider today that was crawling on my ceiling. I also vacuumed my room for the first time in far too long. It's just that you couldn't see the floor before, you know? But now it's got those fresh vacuum lines that we all love. I obviously had to clear more junk out of there to even see the floor. Have you ever counted how many t-shirts you have? After four years of high school, four years of college, and playing on sports and intramural teams the whole way, you pick up truckloads of t-shirts. I got rid of over fifty of them and still have piles left! So needless to say there's a fairly large donation headed its way to the local thrift store...

Being in my room at my parents' house when I can actually see the room is kind of cool. We moved here before my freshman year of high school and I got to choose the paint colors. OBVIOUSLY 14-year-old-Anna chose orange AND yellow, and my 15-year-old dear friend Clara came over to help me paint. I covered the walls in VanGogh prints and others that I liked, including this one...

I think I just really fancied the idea of strolling through London in the rain in 1890. Or something. I don't know, but it's a goodie that I've always loved. As a trophy for this huge room accomplishment, I've rewarded myself with having this movie on while I work on my TFA homework...

While now I will always check for a colonial woman dressed in traditional garb churning butter on the wing of every plane I board after watching this movie, I love it. Making progress is a beautiful thing.