Annie Leibovitz climbed Mt. Fuji with her first camera.

"The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There weren't going to be any pictures without it."

-Annie Leibovitz (Annie Leibovitz At Work)

That is perhaps the most inspirational story I have ever heard.

But yet I still find it difficult to concentrate, to persevere in school, to actually get the job done.

Here's my personal itinerary:

1. 365 project
2. Finding someone to job-shadow
   
3. Get an internship
4. Finding a scholarship
5. Continue reading The Beautiful Fall
   
6. Continue reading Annie Leibovitz At Work
7. Start a scrapbook of fashion

Here's my academic itinerary:

1. Column for TPT
2. Mr. Chantilly story for TPT
3. Graded Review for Algebra II
4. Chapter 29 for APW
5. Science Fair speech practice for Chem
6. Finish reading Frankenstein for English seriously, I loved it. Frankenstein = must read.
   
7. Helping my little sister with her homework did it!
8. APT

Bolded stuff are due immediately tomorrow.

So how shall I get about to motivating myself to doing such tasks? I don't know. But I figure that exercise comes in hand. I recently (i.e. 30 minutes ago) went out with my little sister to look at our shadows in the snow, since that's one of her homework assignments (she's only in Kindergarten, don't be hatin!). And obviously, I took photos. But I forgot to exercise. Ugh. Fail.

Now I feel miserable since I didn't get to work out. Outdoors. :/ And working out indoors is one of the most terribly drab things to do, in my opinion.

Earlier this morning, my cousin and I discussed about finding our inner "IT" like Thoreau and and Emerson, as he put it. I'm not sure what Thoreau and Emerson did, or what my cousin means by them finding their inner "IT", but he said something about one (?) of them going into the woods for a few days, enabling him to find his inner "IT." My definition of inner "IT" would be enlightenment. Here is how I plan to someday find my inner "IT":

1. Meditation. Seriously. This is not a joke. I would love to know how to meditate.
2. Yoga. Again, serious.
3. Climbing a mountain like Mt. Fuji with my...future camera (hopefully a DSLR) though this will be in the bucket list (i.e. the one thing I'll do before I die type of thing)
4. Hiking or camping isolated in a mountain or forest for a couple of days...
5. Take Amtrak alone
   

These are things I plan on doing want to motivate myself to do this year:

• Going to the Smithsonian every Friday(?) by myself with my AP World homework (this is going to sound hilarious and ultra dork/nerdy, but I'm going to do my homework in an epic way by going to the Smithsonian to get into the mood and all that!)
• Just taking the metro alone, traveling around D.C.
• RUNNING
• uh....a lot of other extreme ideas.

You probably don't see how running or taking the metro and traveling is going to help motivate me, but I think it will. In a way I can't explain. So let's see how many of these things I'll actually be able to do. I just forgot you have to pay to take the metro. Every time. Sigh.

And let's see which piece of homework I'll do next and how long it takes me....