if wishes were trees, the trees would be falling

I don't understand all the Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers stuff these days. I think I missed out on the whole listening-to-people-relatively-close-to-my-age-bracket thing when I was young. The closest I got was boy bands, and I didn't particularly love them, I just did whatever my sister did. Part of that was squealing over the Backstreet Boys (but NOT 'Nsync) and hanging Hanson posters on my walls. I was more into R.E.M. and U2 when I was younger. I still am, and although for years I thought I was kind of weird, I'm glad I made those choices. And what's more, I don't understand why all the preschoolers are so obsessed with current music. I mean, when I was four, I listened to Raffi. Now all the little kids are listening to the High School Musical soundtrack and talking about how "Troy is my boyfriendddd." I don't know whether it's cute or creepy. I'm leaning toward cute, but slightly premature. Ten or eleven would be a better age to start, I think.
I was feeling bad before again. Partially because I internalize all the things people say to me, and a lot of those things are negative. But you know what? I'm fine with being the whistleblower... the instigator... the whatever. I was talking to my mom about it, and she gave me some good advice, as per usual. "Some things need to be brought up, and if they piss people off, you know you've done your job." I was thinking that maybe if I do go back to school, I should do journalism. But sometimes I get so bored writing for other people, and I'd be doing a lot of that. Maybe I should write for a newspaper again. I liked doing that, most of the time. Although I will say I don't miss editing my paper in high school. ("But what's wrong with a five-sentence article? Why do I have to 'expand'???")
Oh, on a side note, there is a link between R.E.M., journalism, and me. Yeah, who knew? A few years ago, my uncle the journalist got in trouble at his job for going to an R.E.M. concert. There was even something about it on CNN, if I remember correctly. I might try to find some links later. I guess he's a lawyer now, or something. I should find out. I don't see my extended family as much as I would like to.
I've started to realize that I can't always make people think how I want them to think. Is my opinion always right? Uh... definitely not. If my opinions were right, math in schools wouldn't go beyond addition and subtraction, chocolate milk would be the national beverage, and all females (and, heck, any males who really wanted to...) would have eighties hair and shocking pink lipstick. (A carryover from my pageant past, I suppose. But I really do like big hair and 'fun' makeup. Or at least what I call 'fun.') But sometimes, people are just brainwashed when it comes to certain things. I've been toying around with a book idea that deals with that. I won't give any ideas away here, but it would be a non-fiction book, preferably written with someone with a doctorate or master's or something, about a loss of morals in one area in particular. Yeah... like that explains a lot. Maybe someday I'll go more in depth. Maybe not.
As a throwback to the whole growing up thing, I kind of feel like I should be married already. I know that's not true; I'm only 20, and I work with a fair amount of people who are older than me and not married, so I don't know why I even worry about it. In the past, I just felt immature for not being 3/4 of the way down the aisle by now. Part of me tells myself that I just can't get a boy, but that's not true and I know it. I just can't get a sober one... oops! Yeah, not as fun as it sounds. They've always been drunk and I haven't been. I would like to find someone who shares my morals. I don't want to settle, but I'm starting to feel like that might just happen. I don't want to end up divorced. I don't want to end up trapped with someone I hate. But that's really all I've seen so far.