Life Without An Aux Cord: Toxic

Well…this is still happening.

I am still trying to keep this series going, and the fact that this blog is actually being posted before Sunday at 11 PM means that I am surprisingly giving it a good attempt. I know that my few avid readers, shout out to the three or four of you, may see this earlier-than-usual post and be shocked, but I have high hopes that this will be a really good one. Fingers crossed. Well, you cross your fingers, I have to keep mine uncrossed so that I can type.

Now that that horrible joke is passed, let me get onto the song this week. The song for this week is Toxic by Britney Spears. Yeah, they are still playing that song on the radio, and no it was not during retro lunch. For some reason Britney Spears is coming back. Did you know she has her own Vegas show now?! I guess now that she is somewhat normal again, people are starting to pay attention in hopes of seeing her go crazy again. Whatever it is, it is causing her old songs to resurface, specifically Toxic. After hearing the song, I looked up the lyrics and not surprisingly they are very dirty. I decided just to go with it though. The relation between my life and the song this week is going to be much less of stretch than last weeks, which I know is not as fun, but it is just as applicable to college life. And again, this will have nothing to do with my love life or lack thereof.

I will be focused mainly on the second part of the chorus, “I’m addicted to you/Don’t you know that you’re toxic/And I love what you do/Don’t you know that you’re toxic,” because it is the least dirty part of the song, but mainly because they relate really well to what I am going to talk about. If you have not guessed it by now, I will be talking about my addiction to watching TV and videos on my laptop. This ranges from Netflix to Hulu to YouTube and to any other source I use to watch TV. This stupid habit takes up so much of my time. I do not watch anything when it actually comes on TV because normally I am busy doing something else, but instead of just deciding not to watch TV at all, I watch the shows the next day on the internet and waste time that I do not have. You know, I do not think I could focus on any school work though if I did not know that Leslie got her job back at the parks department in Parks and Rec. I will literally get home after class, think about all of the work I need to do, and then realize what TV shows came out that day or remember the cliff hanger from the episode I just finished the day before, and it is all downhill from there. You would think that I would have some self control, but when it comes to this weeks Dunphy hijinks, I just cannot help myself. Eventually,  I will catch up with everything or get bored of staring at the screen and do my homework, but that normally does not happen until it is dark outside. I have also recently gotten really in to YouTube. There are people on it who literally make funny videos once a week and get paid big bucks for it. (Where do I sign up?) I will find myself go onto YouTube to watch these videos and then a couple hours later my computer will die and I will finally be able to pull myself away. I will even keep up with some vloggers (that’s what their job title is, how cool) like I do TV shows. A vlogger named ItsGrace (Grace Helbig, go watch her, she’s kinda funny) makes videos everyday, so everyday I will watch her new video. It’s bad. Watching all of this stuff is just toxic. Here is where the song lyrics come in. Just like Britney, I am addicted to you…tube and watching TV on the internet. Britney asks if her guy knows that he is toxic, but I do not need to ask that, because the internet has no mind, so obviously it does not know that it is toxic. And finally, just like Britney likes the things her man does, which probably means buying her flowers and walking her home at night but not asking to stay the night, I like the things YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and other television sites do for me: keep me up to date with all my shows and keep me entertained. I know it is not the greatest way to spend my time, but just like Britney, “Its getting late/To give [it] up.” I cannot stop now, I’m already hooked and it would be tragic to not know how all of my shows finish this season.

Okay, that’s it for this week. I do want to end with a disclaimer though: to anyone reading who is concerned that I am not actually getting my studies done, stop worrying. I am getting everything done, feel free to check my GPA, I just have to get my fix of internet TV before I actually get to the task at hand.

Thanks everyone for reading. I am actually really enjoying making these, and the music I am hearing from constantly having my radio on looking for songs is really entertaining. Also, anyone else who shares this addiction to internet TV with me, lets start a support group. I can YouTube support group videos to figure out how to do it and we can call it ITVAA (figure it out).

Life Without An Aux Cord

Life Without An Aux Cord: Quit Playing Games With My Heart

Well, guys, this is what you have all been waiting for, the second installation of my last semester blog. I actually got more views than what I was expecting on my last post, so this series may actually be a hit. And I am actually keeping up with it so far, so everyone keep your fingers crossed for me that this is my big break and I become famous (jokes…I don’t really want to become famous, did you see what fame did to Bieber? I’m not here for that).

Okay, so this weeks song (if you do not know what I am talking about, go look at the introduction blog) is “Quit Playing Games With My Heart” by the Backstreet Boys. If you have never heard of it and we are the same age, then you were deprived as a child, or you were just on team ‘N Sync, which is fine, everyone has their own style. But, this song actually came on the radio on Friday during retro lunch and I knew I had to write about it. I never thought I would hear this song or even this band on the radio again, but thank goodness for retro lunch and no auxiliary cord. Also, if you do not know what retro lunch is, you are missing out.

I know what you must be thinking, “This is a song about love and breaking up and all that other relationship stuff, so is Hayden in a relationship, or did he just get out of one, or is there a certain girl in his life?” To set everyone straight and get this over with at the beginning of this series, I am not in a relationship, there is no special girl in my life right now, and I am living happily single right now. I tell everyone this all the time, I am too selfish right now to have a girlfriend.

Okay, now that that is out of the way, let’s get on to how this song relates to me. I guess you could kinda say it can be about a love story in my life, but not between two people, but between me and my bed. Yeah, I just typed that. I feel like one of the hardest things about college is the lack of sleep. We stay up late to do homework, or not do homework, and then wake up early for class. Luckily, I have never had an 8AM class, so I can sleep a little longer than some people. I salute anyone who has had to suffer the torture of having class at 8 in the morning. But I do not get to sleep in until noon, which is what I would like to do everyday. I end up running on very limited sleep throughout the week, and that can be ruff (spelled that way on purpose) sometimes. I bet you are wondering how I am going to relate sleeping, or the lack thereof, to this song about playing games with hearts, well just watch. I imagine the lyrics of the song as something my bed would say to me as I am getting up in the morning. Just go with it, and use your imagination, because I know that beds cannot think or talk and do not have hearts. Think about it though, the song says, “Sometimes I wish I could/turn back time impossible as it may seem.” This would be my bed saying that it wants to go back to when I was actually laying in it. It also says,” I live my life the way/to keep you coming back to me/everything I do is for you.” This would be my bed saying that it is there, staying comfortable, for me to come back to, and it’s whole purpose is for me to have a place to rest. Overall, I am normally not in my bed for the full eight hours I should be getting every night, so my bed is saying that I am really playing games with it’s heart and it just wants me to stop and sleep longer, just like the Backstreet Boys wanted all the girls to stop playing games with their hearts. I would have to say that I would agree with my bed and that I do need to stop playing games with it’s heart and sleep longer.

I know that this blog was a big stretch, but all of it to say that sleep is a very treasured thing in my life right now. It is something that I should get much more of, but probably will not have the ability to do. For now, I have to just keep playing games with the heart of my bed. I would say that I am ready to move on and start doing something that makes for a more structured sleep schedule, but what other time in my life am I going to be able to stay up until 2 in the morning and then take a nap the next day around 3? I do not think that will happen much, or at all, after I graduate college. Actually, I probably will not want that to happen anyway once I have a career.

Alright, that is it for the second post of this series. I hope it was a little more interesting than the last one. It was definitely less sentimental and more ridiculous. But let’s face it, if every post was sentimental, this series would get really boring and really draining really quickly. So, thanks for reading this, and shout out to all the college kids who also play games with the hearts of their beds.

Life Without An Aux Cord

Life Without An Aux Cord: Introduction

Hey everyone, so things are gonna be a little different on my blog for the next couple of months. First, it is not gonna be as sporadic. I am gonna try to blog once a week if it is the last thing I do. I really want to try and document this part of my life the best that I can, and also, I am really into YouTube vloggers right now, and this is the closest thing I have to being like them. Its a long shot, but I have a pretty good imagination.

The second change is that I am going to be doing a series during my last semester of undergrad. For those of you that do not know, I am a senior at Baylor University, and this spring will be my last semester as a Baylor undergraduate student. Therefore, this series will track my journey through the end of one of the biggest and greatest chapters of my life.

The name of this series will be “Life Without and Aux Cord.” The reason behind this title is that I drive a 2005 Ford Explorer and one of its quirks is that it does not have an auxiliary port, like most newer cars have. An aux port allows you to connect a phone, using an aux cord, into the stereo system of the car allowing the music to play throughout the car. Wow, I will never be a salesman because I definitely suck at explaining how things work. Anyway, because of this, the lack of port not lack of explanation, I cannot play music from my phone and am forced to listen to the radio if I want some entertainment while I am cruising the streets of Waco. And if you weren’t informed, apparently my lingo has time travelled back a couple, or more, years. This series will consist of me listening to my radio throughout the week when I am in the car, so just the usual life I live, but the twist is that I will take a really weird and random song that I would only hear on the radio and probably never actually play through my phone and I will blog about it and relate it to what is going on in my life right now. This is a really rough explanation of what is about to be happening, so to help the maybe one or two people who actually read this get a better understanding of what I am doing, I will give a quick example.

The song I heard on the radio this week that I thought was really weird that it was still being played was “Big Girls Don’t Cry” by Fergie. I think that is what it is called, and I do not have enough care to go and find out the actual title if this is not correct, so I am gonna stick with it. But I know what you are thinking, and I am right there with you. I did not realize Fergie was still relevant either. I never thought I would hear another one of her songs unless I was home for a break and I was in the car with one of my friends who still enjoys the song “Fergalicious.” I know, I know, it is probably time for them to move on, but I do not know if that will ever happen.

Okay, so you are probably wondering how this song would relate to my life even a little because of the whole not a girl thing, but there is one line in particular that I heard, and that I am gonna focus on, that could describe the beginning of the end of this journey: “And I’m gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket, but I gotta get a move on with my life.” Going into this semester I realized that when I do graduate in May I am going to miss many many many things. I am gonna miss everyone I have met here at Baylor. Thank you guys for being great and helping me survive this ruff (spelled that way on purpose) but amazing time in my life. I am gonna miss the freedom and relaxed nature of being an undergrad. It is stressful, but not nearly as stressful as what I will be enduring next semester. I will definitely not have as much free time when I enter law school (yep, that’s what I want to do with my life), and will definitely have to spend more nights with textbooks around me instead of watching Netflix on my computer. That’s gonna be tough.  I will also miss being able to go home and help out with the youth throughout the school year. That has been a huge part of my college life and a time that will probably be ending as I graduate. I have loved being able to do this and I am really gonna miss that group of people and the way I have been able to help. I am also gonna miss the atmosphere and classes that I am taking at Baylor. I have had the privilege of taking really interesting classes here at Baylor that I won’t have the ability to take during law school. They have allowed me to learn about things that were really interesting and that do not fit in the usual core topics such as math, english, and science. The atmosphere has been great too. Everyone is really friendly and the teachers have all been great. They are all really concerned about the students and care that they do well. I have been really privileged to have the opportunity to learn from these type of people. So like the song states, I am gonna miss those things like a child misses their blanket, however, just like the song says, I need to get a move on with my life. This time of my life is up, well, it will be in a few months, and it will be time for me to take the next step and move on. I know that it will be great, but it is always scary and nerve-wracking stepping into a new situation. I also have no idea where I am going to law school yet, so that’s a thing too. I know that everything will work out, so I am slowly but surely coming to peace about leaving this comfortable life I have created in Waco to venture way out of my comfort zone. It’s going to be a crazy transition next semester and a sad, but fulfilling, end this semester, and I am going to go through it with a positive attitude and a smile on my face, “…because big [boys] don’t cry.”

So that’s what my blogs are going to be looking like for a while. Watch out for one next week. It may come on Sunday or it may come next Saturday. Even though I am trying to be more organized with when I type them, I am not gonna put myself on a certain day of the week time restrain, because the creative process can sometimes take a while and sometimes requires me to watch TV on my laptop instead of actually writing anything down.

Well, thanks everyone (probably just my mom) for reading! I will try to make the next couple ones more entertaining.

Life Without An Aux Cord