And So...

I realize that I'm lonely. And it hurts.

I'm lonely for a multitude of reasons but one true all standing answer rings clear: I'm lonely because I want to be lonely and because I'm afraid of being un-lonely. Yeah, that makes no sense, that's completely and utterly retrospectively cynical of me, but it is the truth and I guess that has to stand for something. 

I don't know what's really happened to me over these past few months of being back at home. I guess it all came to a head when I thought I wasn't going back to school, though it had been slowly building up sometime during the middle of my first semester. Then, it eventually dawned on me that I had finally arrived at the college of my dreams which, despite a few liberal art-school hipstery cliches-- and rather disappointing contrived approaches to making me feel "unique"-- was totally awesome and right for me; that I was in one of the most trendiest and exciting cities in the United States just brimming with possibilities for my budding writing career; that on every corner smoking a cigarette, rocking a Naruto sweatband, and reading the latest Detective Comics (okay, I never SAW this type of person, no doubt they're there) was the chance for a new friendship--that I had remained what I thought I'd finally escaped: Me. 

Me-- still the quiet, cold and distant seeming girl who wears old graphic tees with a nappy afro and greasy skin who barely talks to anyone and makes awkward conversation when presented with the chance to speak. I hadn't changed. I hadn't blossomed or became this awesome, modern person who knew all the pros and cons to expensive coffees at Starbucks or downed a few shots with people who were very much on their way to being bestsellers on the New York Times (okay...I never really thought that would happen but the shots thing with at least normal people and the coffee thing...totally hoped that would happen). I was still so me, so boring, so awkward seeming, so quiet as a means of defense than actual want. Nothing was different besides the fact that I was in a new city and talking to new people. 

I guess I feel like I failed there. I vowed to take the opportunity I was given to be somebody else and I failed. I didn't change. I went there me, I came home me. I didn't want that to happen. 

Don't get me wrong. I made "friends", there were people who liked me, but nothing to hit the ceiling over. Nothing to convince me that I was coming in to my own. Nothing to convince me that I had made an effort. At first I blamed it on the city and the flakey, too busy people who thought they were so much better than me. I even blamed it on the cafeteria food which currently has bloated my stomach to resemble something akin to a camel with scoliosis (yeah, it's that fucked up). But who am I kidding? I'm to blame. 

I really don't want to waste this post going into my miseries and my whoa-is-me's because I do that enough already. I'm a whiner. I complain a lot, and sprinkling it all over with some poetic words and moody diction doesn't really change that. Things are the way they are because of me, and it's a hard pill to swallow but I'm trying to force it down. 

Yeah. I don't really like using the internet as a platform for my innermost feelings. I know that's what it's come to principally but there's something rather depressing in showing the world just how much of a depressing person you really are (I need to stop). 

I'll just close off by saying that I wish things we're different. I wish I wasn't so sad all the time. 

Oh Whoa...I'm Posting Again...

But I don't think this will be a very long post. I don't have much to say and my mood has been absolutely bleak and foul this month. So the good news is that I'm possibly (and I stress possibly) getting back into school this semester thanks to some generous benefactors. The bad news is...well, everything else. No money for books, might not be babysitting as much anymore which means less money, and I probably won't be in school for the entire year-- which means that I'll be back in my grubby little hometown staring at my ceiling for another depressing few months. 

Things aren't great and I guess the only concession is that they could be a whole lot worse, but right now those two lines are blurred and I'm too tired and defeated to be optimistic. So I guess that's it for now. 

Oh, and the writing thing? Don't even ask about that. 

Money is the Root of Everything

It really is, ya'll. 

Things aren't going so well right now. My life, school, my family...everything is really shitty and I feel like I'm watching all of it come to head behind a thick glass window and I don't know how to stop any of it. I don't know how to break that glass. I thought this summer...I thought all summers...was supposed to be a relaxing time full of vacations, lazy days, afternoon naps and endless bouts of watering my crops on Harvest Moon. So that when August came around I would be primped and ready for the next school year, ready to tackle all my fears and...

Nothing. 

I've never had a summer like that, not in a real long time. Summers for me have always been about death and change and watching my mother's face get more drawn as she resigned herself to signing away money we could have used for food so that she could pay a bill or satisfy a growing overdraft in her bank account. Summers for me have long stopped be fun and lazy and carefree...they're just a few months to prepare for more heartache when winter comes along...a grace period before the inevitable swallows us all whole. 

That's life, I know, and I'm preaching to the choir here with all my complaining but I just always thought...I always thought that when things got as bad as they are now that something would happen, you know? All the stories I use to read, about plucky kids down on their luck with magical dragons underneath their beds and fantasy realms in their closets...I always thought that would happen to me. That some deus ex machina factor would shine into my life and everything would be fine. We would all be saved. My mom use to always tell me, "It will get better, everything will be fine" but as I grew older I realized that it was just a band aid. A band aid on a wound that was growing more and more diseased and pus filled as the years wore on. It's at its boiling point now. It has festered and bubbled in the heat of all the chaos of our lives and it's about to burst. We're about to move into a cramped apartment with little space to do anything; I'm headed back to school with a huge bill I can't pay for; I think my relationship with my dad and stepmom is about to finally take that long awaited plunge it's been threatening to take...it's about to get a whole lot worse before it even gets average. 

I don't know what to do. I would like to be naive and Disney-optimistic and say that writing is what's going to fix everything, my writing, but who am I kidding? I'll never be able to make any money off this thing, I don't have the drive or talent to keep it going. I'm looking at coming back to school early, going to community college, and getting a dead end nine to five job somewhere that only pays the rent while I scrounge for saltines in the back of my pantry because I can't afford food. Things are going to get worse...I've long stopped wondering if better was even an options for us, for me. 

Not feeling too good about the future right now...if I even have one. 

 

The Writing Life (or lack thereof...)

Hahhhh...

Not writing in a long time is a LOT like not exercising for a long time. All the muscles you may have previously built up turn into mush when you try to take it up all over again. 

I think I need to regulate myself to a schedule. I'm a repetition person; routine is my friend, my guiding light. When I continually do something over and over again it forces me to concentrate. I have a spontaneous mind and I get bored easily--not such a good thing when you're trying to make writing your career of choice. 

So yeah, I need to work on getting on a schedule and sticking to it like glue. 

On another note, I've been trolling George R. R. Martin's blog a little bit these past few days (excuse me, not his blog but his livejournal that acts as a mouthpiece for some of his current happenings and projects, ie possibly a way to placate his ravenous Song of Ice and Fire groupies). 


On it he said that he isn't one of those "ooh look at me, I wrote three pages today, guys!" kind of writers, though not in so many words. Yes, it made me feel guilty because that is exactly what I set out for this blog to be---a kind of validation of me trying to recapture my prose generating mojo along with tracking my day to day writing progress. I'm guessing Martin's thinking is more akin to "just DO it and stop bitching about why you CAN'T do it". 


Yeah, but I'm not some Santa Claus beard, hat wearing 63 year old generating MACHINE who has a hit tv series on HBO based on his books, a new anthology coming out every other month along with a possible FILM adaptation of one of his said anthologies, who can afford to basically sit on his ASS for a year and do nothing but watch Netflix and eat Chinese food without worry of cementing a pathway toward failure in his life. 


(Okay. So maybe not but...yeah, I do sort of wish I could do that...a year of just staying at home--loss of social skills and friends aside--on my ass, pigging out on all the food I want and watching reruns of old shows on Netflix that I'm glad I missed when they were airing on TV so that I can watch them to my leisure...speaking of that, how great is Desperate Housewives? Chick lit, rom-com, grocery store romance novel cliches aside, how CAN you ignore all the great arcs and plot line and character drama when you are a TOTAL drama whore like I am? Can't be done)


Welps, I need to get this writing thing in order. My well is dry, my motivation is less than stellar, and, yes, I am in doubt about my potential as a writer/author one day but I get up every morning thinking about my stories, my characters, and sitting down and writing about them. How can I be wrong about this?

On another note, I happened to find this little piece Martin wrote on his not-blog about fanfiction. 


Now Martin's stance on the subject has been passed around enough I think to call it old news, but I still feel like it's an issue that's always worth talking about. In a nutshell, Martin doesn't like fanfiction because he sees it as a sort of killing, I guess, of the things he knows and loves about his favorite series including his own work. 


Me? Well, I am one of those dastardly fanfiction writers. Not the ones who insert a buttload of OCC's and strange plot lines and retcon into my favorite existing works, but I do occasionally (not as much as I use to) write some short story about a particular character or characters that I like and make some weird shit happen to them.


So what?


I get Martin's stamp of disapproval on his own work but the rest of his entry sort of came across as judgmental to me. He at the very least seems to be a purist of the highest order, and to him I'm guessing anything that changes the initial vision of some pre-existing work needs to go some place and burn and die quickly. Again, I totally get his sensitivity toward his own work but writing fanfiction off as this ungodly movement that is dedicated to making some characters gay or bringing back to life otherwise mutilated protagonists just seems really...unfair to me. Or maybe whiny is the word I'm looking for. 


Yes, published authors have the right to cease fanfiction on their own work--I totally get that. But then going back and saying all these things about why fanfiction is bad and why fanficton writers are bad writers and fans, blah, blah, well, you're kind of beating a dead horse to me. You can't stop fans from wanting more from your worlds, you can't stop people from reading your book and wishing something else would have happened to your character,you can't stop a fan from daydreaming of a scenario where...I don't know...one of your characters comes to them in a monokini offering a cocktail and hot steamy sex. I mean, I think it's sort of an honor if someone wants to have hot dream sex with a character you've created but I guess the idea grosses Martin out. Again, that's okay. 


He says he understands that fans can connect so deeply with a work that he/she would feel so incensed as to make up a story featuring them so what's with calling out fanfiction as the destruction of all good ideas in a story? And maybe he wasn't really doing that, but again it just seemed like he's one disgruntled fan--who also happens to have written a pretty great bestselling fantasy series about dudes fighting over an uncomfortable chair--who doesn't like it when people change the things he knows and loves. 

I'm kind of the same way, but I'm sympathetic to fanfic writers. Not only because I kinda am one, but it just seems really totalitarian of me to stop fans from writing about my work because I don't want to see a beloved character of mine turned into a hooker or something. It's fine when it's your own work, but decrying the whole practice is a little harsh. Fans come in all shapes and sizes, not every fanfiction is full of Mary Sues or senseless violence. 


I don't know. Like I said, his stance is old, this subject is continually debated, but my final verdict is that if I ever--by some weird act of motivation or eye opening revelation that I have GOT to get my ass into gear and write, write, WRITE--then I'm totally cool with people writing fics about my work. I won't go as far as to help them develop it or something like that but it's okay if it happens. You can't stop fan imagination, you can't stop people from wanting more, and I mean...when you set out to write fiction isn't that what you kind of hoped would happen in the first place? 

At least I do. 

No More Excuses

Hurrr. 

You know, I really don't want to use this blog for complaining, or at the very least not for too much complaining. Which I tend to do a LOT. 

So in mentioning this I'm not complaining, but venting, maybe? Just blogging about it, I guess.

Gotta find a job for school, work study, pretty big deal. I don't have a huge bill to tackle but it's definitely going to inflate if I don't cut it down some by finding a job. Work in Chicago (*cue Ms. Krabappel laugh*--or is it Flanders now?). 


But yeah, it's gotta be done. Not happy about that and only because I'm so nervous about actually finding a job. I don't really know what I'm good at and if anyone wants me to handle their money I'm majorly screwed (as are they). 


Yeah. Not gonna complain. Complaining just breeds bad feelings about stuff you know is mandatory and if anyone is like me they know that their complaining is actually a form of procrastination. Excuse-making. Complaining breeds excuses and vice versa. You know what really works for me when it comes to getting a job done? Doing it. Not overthinking it unless it requires some hard thinking. 


Same goes with my writing I guess. I produce my best writing when I actually sit me arse down and belt out two or three pages of prose, rather nonsensical or illuminating. 


I need to get into this new way of thinking now. Or maybe not thinking, just doing. 


Annnnd I'm out.

 

Boom. Boom. Boom. 

That's the sound of my doldrums a callin'. 

Okay, yeah, that was corny I know, but I'm not feeling the best today. Just called my school and despite changing to a cheaper room for next semester I'm still looking at a rather large overdraft that will have to be covered with a loan. I have no co-signers, no credit history, nothing that any loan company would consider giving me money for. 

I just don't feel good. 

I want to go back to this school, I do, but only for the experience that it has given me, not because I'm extremely in love with the city or made a bunch of new friends. I just have this dark, gross, disgusting feeling that If I quit right now and come back home I'll never leave. I'm so afraid of losing sight of what I want to do in life--it's scaring the living hell out of me. I see my future: I'm a twenty something still at home with Mom, a little overweight, sad, depressed, not a friend of companion to my name, and filling my boring days that aren't occupied with my droll 9-5 job with Netflix and too much Pepsi. I'm anxious, nervous, and I've sorta failed at life. My mom is sympathetic, but nothing can change the fact that I was the one bird she had that never left the nest. 

I'm being melodramatic, I'm being truthful, I'm really scared to death of what's in store for me. 

My brother old me I'm my own worst enemy and I believe he's right. I may be able to defeat the debt but I don't know how to defeat the her that is me. She's too powerful, she has my heart and mind, doubt is her Excalibur. 

"Don't let me get me."

Am I a Spiritual Person?

I guess my answer to that question would have to be, well, no. At least not right now. 

Not right now--at all. Currently, I'm more concerned with getting back into school and not drowning prematurely into debt; publishing a worthwhile piece of fiction and jump starting my career as an author; figuring out if I really want to go into television screenwriting along with the realization that it would mean I would have to live in dreaded LA; providing for my family in the long run, making sure they're all okay; for once having a normal social life and real friends to talk to and love; having a boyfriend again and regularly...well...you know. That kind of stuff. Not gaining too much weight, trying to look less dowdy and more my age...hell, worrying about if I'm finally going to get to eat at my favorite Asian restaurant in my hometown after having to push it back to scrimp and scrap for school next semester. I'm not worried about God, about heaven or hell, if they all even exist--I just want to live my life and worry about all that stuff when the time comes-- if the time comes. 

This "time" now being a concept I'm wondering about the true existence of. 

See, all my life I was taught to fear God, to love God, to serve God, and to believe that Jesus was his son, he's our Savior, the Holy Ghost, the Spirit, the whatever thing that makes all the old arthritic ladies at my church shove aside their walkers and do the Cupid Shuffle up and down the aisle of the chapel, their eyes rolled in the backs of their heads, the whites of their eyeballs glowing. I was always taught that this was right, that I should strive for this in my life. That one day I should be one of these ladies, kicking up my heels and acting out a seizure so that I could go to heaven and ride on the backs of lions and drink milk and honey. 

Then, my older brother converted to Islam and I started to believe that there was only one true God that I should serve. That my mother's Christian faith was a bunch of hoo-hah that I'd been wasting my time on, that I should be on my hands and knees everyday facing the East and wearing hyjab. 

Then I realized that I didn't want either of these ideologies. I didn't want to pray, I didn't want to go to mosque or church, I didn't want to care about God or Jesus or Mohammed, and why the hell they should be so damn important to me. 

I also realized that I never truly cared. 

I always went to church because I was told that it was indisputably the right thing to do, that I had to be a Christian and that I had to pray to this God and this Jesus who died on a cross for my sins. I started to read the Qu'ran and believe in Allah and smirk at the poor sad souls who testified that they slipped off their diets because they were tempted by the Devil, that their sons and daughters being in jail was the work of demons, and that God was the only thing that would save them and they were just "so glad to be here this morning."

I did all those things, but in the back of my mind I always had this little voice of doubt talking to me. "You sure about this?" It would often say. "I mean, are you sure about this?" 

I never was, but then again I was always taught that because I was a child I had no right questioning these things anyway. I could pick what I wanted to wear in the morning (and sometimes even that was hard with my mother), I could choose between Honey Nut Cheerios or Frosted Flakes for breakfast, but I never, NEVER could speak up about what I wanted religiously. Oh, no. No, that was strictly for Mom and Dad to decide and it was all for my own good. 


So now here I am. On the precipice of this great blank space when it comes to religion. Is it a place of torment? No, not at all. Just a space that I have yet to fill with what I want to denote my spirituality, my beliefs in a higher power or else wise. I don't walk around feeling guilty about my lack of care toward religion. I'm perfectly happy choosing what I want to put my faith into.

So yeah. Blame this little gem here for sparking this random thought. I actually completely forgot to mention this game anywhere in this post, or my thoughts about Buddhism, but I'm sure it will come up later. Just need a healthy reaffirmation once in a while.