High School Flashbacks

This weekend, my best friend from Texas came to visit me since she loves spending her birthday amongst the gorgeous Colorado mountains.  Can't say I blame her.

Since it was her 23rd birthday (and I really should have stopped reciting 'nobody likes you when you're tweeeeeenty-three'), we hit the breweries, local Fort Collins restaurants, and, yeah...more breweries.

A brew with my boo. #beer #brewing #sanitas #monday #vacation

A photo posted by Madi Scruggs (@madicscruggs) on Mar 14, 2016 at 3:17pm PDT

I always love it when people come to visit but in the same vein, I wonder just what local Fort Collins hangs define this town.  There's nothing I want more than for my friends and family to see how amazing this city is.

Everyone keeps asking me why I want to stay in Fort Collins so badly and the answer is honestly really simple.  I moved to Fort Collins for college on my own-- it was the first city I ever discovered by myself without my parents and really got to know.  I know the roads, the places, the old buildings and the new ones, and I could tell you the businesses that line College from Laurel to Mulberry.  I know the best parks, the best taco place (Mexicali, duh), and the best thrift stores.

I definitely want to keep moving.  I don't want to know only one place my whole life and I doubt that that will happen, but for right now, I want to stay in Fort Collins because right now, it's my home.

AND I LOVE MY HOME!

Beautiful sunset last night.

A photo posted by Madi Scruggs (@madicscruggs) on Jul 22, 2013 at 3:55pm PDT

Pink Kitchen.

Yesterday was a pretty crazy day.  My work was involved in Fort Collins' annual St. Paddy's Day Parade in Old Town and I got to walk alongside the float taking pictures!

Oh. Did I mention our float featured local band Slow Caves and was basically an all-around badass experience?

About to shred the Fort Collins St Patrick's Day Parade as Ferris Bueller, Cam, Ed Rooney and the Garage Attendant on the @943thex float. #saveferris #twistandshout #slowcaves

A photo posted by Slow Caves (@slowcaves) on Mar 12, 2016 at 9:01am PST

Afterwards, the Shelb-ster and I decided we didn't want to hang around and be bored all day, and since she moved into the same building as me (just a little earlier than I'm planning on being in there) and we're both looking for vintage, character-filled pieces for our homes, we headed to the flea market.

 There were so many swoon-inducing pieces.  I didn't entirely know what I was looking for when I first went in there, but of course, everything that caught my eye was pink.

The pink phone I grabbed right away.  I saw a little girl carrying around a desktop phone that looked similar and got SO jealous, so we made it our mission to find another phone just for me.  And we did! I can't wait to hang this up in my kitchen.

The fish was such a last minute purchase...but honestly, come on.  It's so cute.  That'll go in my kitchen, too, and while it is a cookie jar, maybe I'll pop takeout menus or tea bags or something else in there-- haven't decided yet. 

Now, I realize I'm headed towards having a pink kitchen.  The kettle I have is light blue, though, and the kitchen chairs I want to use are white, so I really have to figure out this whole color scheme thing before I actually move in. 

Any ideas for me?

I just signed a lease!

And it's really, really, REALLY exciting.  I want to shout it from the rooftops.

I think I already have, actually.  Maybe not from the rooftops, though.  Maybe in my car on my way home.

Right now I live in a house with two girls and it is...rough.  I used to live with my two best friends-- my sister and my old roommate, Hallie-- and then Hallie got a job in D.C. and Molly decided to move in with her fiance.

The girls in here are great, but it's hard living with two people who you don't know and still deal with a really stressful job...sometimes, all I want to do is come home and relax but people are talking and cooking and humming and it's a lot. 

Like I said-- they're amazing people, but I'm done with roommates for...a long time. 

OK! Done complaining. Now I want to talk furniture.

I am literally going crazy waiting two and a half months to move into my new place.  It's an old building with radiators and hardwood floors and a big, old fireplace in the living room.  My parents are being kind enough to give me their giant old burgundy couch, which isn't the cutest thing in the world but it's comfortable and reminds me of home.  I bought my dream black-and-white plaid shag rug (on sale, YUSSS) but now I have to figure out how to decorate the rest of it.  My pintrest is BLOWING UP, to say the least:


I'm such a decor snob, but something I'm resigning myself to is to not be so over the top about matching. Usually, I'm weird about things like mixing wood (browns) with black and white, and mixing colors that don't go together.

 If you know me at all, you know that I am OBSESSED with color-- my bedroom is the perfect hodgepodge of pink, yellow, blue, red, and white. But it doesn't all have to 'go' perfectly, and this is what I keep telling myself over and over and over. Wood can go with black and white and light blue can go with dark red and gold can go with silver....OKAY, that one's actually not going to happen anytime soon.

  I'm just anxious to get decorating, and I want to be in my place so badly I've started having dreams about it. I only have two and a half more months to go, and it's just gotta be a patient waiting game for me. For now, I'll just have to keep scrolling through pintrest and picking out my favorite rooms.

OH EHM GEE.

It has been almost a year since my last blog...that is CRAZY!

I have come to terms with the fact that I am terrible at blogging.  I'm going to stop apologizing for it.  You already know this about me and (hopefully?) find it endearing.

Or not. (Insert my signature goat laugh here)

I feel like I'm not going to do a 'year in review' or anything...I mean, maybe down the line I'll do that with a video.  I think that's a good idea because Molly, my sister, and I have always wanted to start vlogging again.

I still have 700 subscribers sitting pretty on my YouTube channel (which is a lot to me!!) and I feel a bit like I'm neglecting them by just leaving them be on that channel with no updates.  HOWEVER, I live with roommates right now-- great people, but not people I feel comfortable vlogging around.  In a few months-- June, to be precise-- I will be moving out into a new place on my own and then I think I'll have plenty of time to vlog again.  FINALLY!

SO while you wait patiently for a 'year in review' video, I'll just give you a few updates since you last saw me in Washington D.C. freaking out about my new big-girl job.

1. I'm blonde now. 

This is actually fairly recent, and I honestly don't know how long it will last. BUT, I'm loving it right now.  Everyone told me I would look terrible as a blonde but I just thought, 'you know what? Life's too short.' And I did it.  And I LOVE it.

2. I'm the digital girl for four radio stations.

You've seen the last post-- I was crazy nervous about my new job as a Digital Managing Editor for Townsquare Media.  Now, I love it.  It's a ton of work and it's very challenging, which is kind of the stock answer so I'll try to make it more interesting....

I just learn new things every day!  I learn things about social media, what works and what doesn't, the best YouTube practices, all sorts of stuff.  There's stuff I'm good at and stuff I'm not, stuff I love and stuff I hate.  Being in this position is like being in a...marriage, I guess.  Hahaha (GOAT LAUGH!). 

Sometimes it's hard, because I feel like I deal with people who don't really respect my position.  And that's kind of standard when you're 22 and in a super cool position-- but it gets hard.  Otherwise, though, this job is awesome.

(The photo is of me at the Colorado Broadcasting Association Awards of Excellence, by the way, which was my first-ever awards show)

I'm not going to go too much more into detail, because I want to kind of just let my life unfold in this blog again like I used to.  Hopefully I'll be better about blogging, but if not, I'll try to at least do one a week and make it a little more cohesive before I can finally vlog again. YAHOO!

It's been crazy.

Over the past few weeks, a lot of crazy stuff has happened.  For one, I went to D.C. and had an amazing spring break with my roommate, who's been interning there since February.

Another thing that happened to me is that I got a job.  A real-person, big-kid job.

So, all in all, things have been crazy around here. 

OH-- and I saw Whiplash. Twice.  Did I ever talk about how I saw Whiplash twice?

(here's a tweet from me to show you how obsessed I got over this movie)

I wanted to update things on here just because I am notoriously bad at being consistent as a blogger and also because I am about to get really, really busy in the next few weeks.  I feel like I've never really fully dedicated a lot of time and work to a job in the past-- I've either had normal internships or flexible hours from fully part-time gigs.  Now, I'm a necessary cog in a machine.  It's a strange-- and overwhelming-- feeling. 

Some happy news, though-- I am perilously close to graduating.  I use the word perilous because it sort of feels like I'm about to fall headlong off of a cliff, into the unknown.  I have a lot to learn about life not in college...or school in general, I guess.  I've never lived in a world where I didn't have to worry about homework or balancing grades and a social life/a sleeping schedule/a normal person's diet.  This is going to be an amazing next step for me. 

Let's hope it's a good one!

Parade

Man, how I love Fort Collins.  Why?  Well, one of the reasons is that Fort Collins has an amazing local community.  FoCo is always putting on events and festivals and whatnot to celebrate whatever's going on in the world at that moment...or just in Colorado.

Recently (last week, actually...I'm a tad late on this) FoCo put on the St. Paddy's Day Parade in Old Town.  I actually have a few Irish friends, or at least I call them that considering this past summer we all met in Ireland through a work abroad program through my school and have been buddies ever since.

I recorded the fun and compiled the data into a fun, short video, and here's the final footage below:

Writing probs.

Ever since I finished my first novel (it's called Fixed and I can't wait to start the publishing process.  But you know this already...), it's been so hard to dedicate myself to writing a new one.

The funny thing is, I have plenty of ideas.  I'm overflowing with 'em.  I have about four solid paths I can take for my new literary journey, and each one is a completely different genre.  There's fantasy, dystopian, YA romance, and historical fiction.

Do you see my dilemma?



It's hard to even decide which one to "keep coming back to", considering each one fits a different mood.  After I watched The English Patient last week, all I wanted to do was write my 1940's post-war story.  After Copenhagen, my travel romance seemed like the way to go.  The other night, randomly, I wrote two pages of my fantasy story in fifteen minutes.  What's wrong with me??

If you have any advice for a confused, all-over-the-place writer, please give it.  I have no idea where to start and no idea which one to go with and stick with.

(P.S. I just had another idea...and it's really great.  DAMN YOU, MADI!)