#4: Let's break all our promises, shall we?

I'm definitely not one to make new years resolutions and carry them out, but I am even less likely to make a promise and keep it. So, this year, I made a resolution that I would make absolutely no promises.
Funny thing is, I know I made other resolutions, but I completely forgot about them. Not making promises is really easy. It's actually a relief.
See, I have a lot of problems when it comes to promises. I end up making promises because people just can't seem to calm down unless I promise them something. To me, they're just empty words to comfort someone. I've tried to keep my promises before, of course, but they've always ended up in pieces, like shattered glass. And then the person gets hurt because of it. So why not rid of them, right? They're no good to me.
So, purging my self of promises has actually been going pretty well. I don't feel tied down or pressured to do something that is out of my power to do.
Do you make promises? Do you break them? Or do you promise never to promise again?

date penny collected is 3/29/12 date on penny is 2009

#3: Taste the Rainbow

With our culture drastically changing, people have to let go of the old ideas of "what is right and what is wrong" and accept that we are who we are. While the population of LGBT's is still small, it is definitely growing as more people become confident in accepting who they are. Only 8 states in the US (including Washington DC) actually support gay marriage. Almost all of the south has passionately disagreed with gay and lesbian marriages. They've all passed an amendment that doesn't acknowledge gay marriages from other states. The only one that hasn't, is North Carolina.
While I'm rather grateful that it hasn't yet, the state is still deciding on what to do, and it's tipping closer and closer to agree with the rest of the south. South US has always been very religious and very republican. I don't agree with their views and their strict "if you don't follow what is in the Bible, then you're going to Hell" sorts of views.
People need to start waking up and realizing that everyone is different. That's how it always was and how it will always be. You can't be angry at a gay couple just because you're straight. Who are you to say it's wrong, when those people are probably more in love than you are? I have a lot of friends that are either gay or bi, and they're probably the most fun people I have ever met.
This is the 21st century, not 1920. Things change. I don't think that love should have to be limited to the opposite sex. If you love someone, then that's love. No one should oppress you like that and say that you're wrong.
Black and white people have barely managed to get around racism. It hasn't even been 60 years since we got rid of black and white segregation. Is this going to be a huge debate about whether it's right or wrong to be gay? Are we going to deprive LGBT's of their human rights? We're still humans, and if people really did read the Bible, they would know that God wants us to love everyone, no matter their race, age, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

~penny collected on 3/25/12 (thank you lily for all the pennies that you gave me. that will last for about the rest of the year) date on penny is 1990.

#2: Nocturnal Humans

I'm very grateful that more and more people seem to be becoming nocturnal, or at least that the big grocery shops are 24 hours. Because if ever one day comes that I want to flip my sleep schedule upside down and become nocturnal, I'll at least be able to buy my groceries/work somewhere without worrying about them being closed.
During the summer, I'm very, very nocturnal. I'll go to sleep at around 4-6 in the morning and wake up at 3 pm. And the great thing is, my entire family does this. So we'll all stay up into the ungodly times of the morning and then wake up in the afternoon and have breakfast together.
With the fact that human beings are diurnal, I think that our days shouldn't be limited to when the sun is up or down. There's things you can do in the sunlight and all, but there are just as many things that could be going on in the nighttime, and when people consider 10:00 pm to be "late," it's very limiting to my schedule.
I have a feeling that when I grow up, my schedule is going to be very odd. I suppose it depends on what my job is.
Another problem, though, with having a nocturnal schedule, is that a lot of your friends will most likely not be awake, and therefore social lives will be put to a pause. But I still think that it would be nicer to have a schedule in both the day and night, and when it's night, not have all the shops close at ten.

~penny collected on 3/24/2012. date of penny is 1988.

#1: Dream Pillows

I heard of an idea that revolved around a pillow-- this pillow would be able to record the dreams you had at night, then you would be able to connect them to the computer through a USB cord and watch them through your computer. I thought this was a brilliant idea, considering you forget about 90% of your dreams at least half an hour after you wake up. Were such inventions possible, I'm sure that the ability to watch your dreams twice would not only be very fascinating, but dangerous. Your dreams are your own private-- and very subconscious-- thoughts, and people have the ability to keep their dreams secret if they wish.
Along with the Dream Pillow, there should be a high-security protocol as well. Our dreams would be protected; only the person that dreamt them would be able to see them again. If they wish to share it with someone, then they would just have to tell them.
But I just think that this would be a fascinating invention, as I have had many dreams that I honestly wish I could have remembered more fully. To be able to access the information that only your subconscious thoughts can come up with would bring on a whole different way people see things, I believe.
Or, with such mysterious information as dreams, would seeing them twice with perfect clarity take away the fascination we have with them? Would knowing the actual detail of what happened-- and not feeling the emotion of it-- ruin the mystery of it? Some thing we have for a reason, and some things we have are very limited for a reason. The reason for dreams is to be taken a little further away out of reality, to be a little scared or mesmerized by what we dreamt about. Watching it on a computer screen would certainly take that away.
Just a thought.

~penny collected on 3/22/2012. date of penny is 1996 (fancy that, my birth year).

A Penny For Your Thoughts Project

This is my spring/summer project. For every penny I collect, I'll make a blog post. The point of this is to increase my writing, be more creative, and have more incentive to collect pennies. The posts can vary from a simple idea, a short story, a poem, a thought, anything. The only thing I cannot write about it my current life, unless it is in story format. For every blog post I make, I will include the date of the penny I picked up and when I found it.
So, let's have fun with this.