I can taste the sweet freedom of winter break. I have completed the treacherous Nine Project Week. I have lost several days of sleep, survived many hours of car-sick feelings, and thwarted some minor hallucinations.
I return to this mortal realm only to see all of you struggling, and I would like to give you words of comfort. It is hard! You will be tired! But you CAN do it, because you are all fucking fantastic.
You all make me as happy as this cleavage bird:
Please let me know if you guys need any help! I have a lot of free time until the end of the semester. I can research for you. I can distract. I can recommend games or movies or TV shows. I can chat. Let me help all of you!
When I was working on my projects, I found that ingesting too much caffeine and listening to instrumentals really helped me focus and write. Also, video game music. Lone Star is a song from a quirky indie game I picked up in a Humble Bundle. You can tell it was designed for a touch-screen tablet or phone, but is workable on a computer as well. It's kind of like a puzzle/action/mystery game, where the main character is on a quest to conquer some unconquerable power at great cost.
It is full of interesting, original music and incredibly silly and witty one-liners. Colorful, yet dark pixel scenery sets a good tone for the gameplay. The world is a little small, but there is a lot of originality behind the way it is laid out and the events that occur in it. It's even a thought-provoking game, in a "what the heck is going on and whyyyy" kind of way. Most indie games these days are platformers, puzzle, or physics games, so this was a refreshing game to play, and something I'd recommend to others.
Your brain is fried, your mind is tired, and no matter how long you stare at the blank Word document nothing comes to mind. You can't do it. You're tapped out.
You can do one of two things in a situation like this. The first is to sit there with grim determination, gritting your teeth and trying to force your brain to do what you need it to do. This method has iffy results in my experience; more often than not I wind up sitting there for hours until my inner thoughts become silent screams of frustration. I get tense, I get sick, I go a little nuts thinking about all the work I have to do and how my life's purpose has been reduced to sitting in front of a computer trying to write something that just doesn't want to be written.
I imagine none of this is particularly good for your health.
The second option is procrastination.
Play a game. I find puzzle games in particular to be the most useful. There's this one I play on addictinggames called 3-D puzzle something or other and it calms me down every time. Organizes my thoughts. It's pretty great.
Talk to someone. Vid chat, over aim, texting. I guess you can make a phone call if you absolutely have to. If you're lucky that person will be willing to spend four to five hours on complete nonsense with you, but it will be quality nonsense and you'll wake up in the morning and crank out another 3,000 words for that novel project you've been working on all semester (Thanks, Rachel!)
And when you need just a little break, write a blog post. Write a blog post on procrastination. Get all meta on that shit.
17: days until I come home
10: places I STILL haven't been and want to go
5: assignments for creative writing portfolio
2: essays to research and write
1: theatre journal to finish up
But
we all know I Can't Math so it is possible these calculations are
inaccurate and the countdown may be a failure - blinking lights,
drumroll, anxiety, and Large Multimillion Dollar Light Up Countdown
Board all a waste. I suppose we'll see.
I don't feel like
I've done a whole lot here, but I've grown to love London anyway, and in
quiet moments between paragraphs about the First World War and Trade
Unions I stare out my flat window and find myself desperately wishing
that I could stay. But then I think of pumpkin pie and my family and you
lovely people and I can't wait to get on the plane. I miss you all more
than I can say, darlings.
ALSO WHAT ARE MY EMOTIONS
DOING. ESSAYS AND MINI-MENTAL BREAKDOWNS OVER THE FUUUUTURE AND UGH
ESSAYS AND FUCKING ESSAYS AND FUCK EVERYTHING I am going ice skating.
I
almost posted this on the Other Blog, because OH MAN SARAH you are such
an eloquent writer it is most definitely Not Fair. And how could I mar
that gorgeous prose and those stories that give me hope and what can I
say in response I've been trying to think of how to phrase the sensation
in my ribs when I read it, but can't quite get it down and now here I
am, puking up a hasty update but I figured I should let you all know I'm
alive and can we all do a little honeymoon when we're all in the same
state again, just for a night because hey! We're Just Married!
But,
then, I've been listening to this song for days and days because why
not and no gif really encapsulated the weird headspace I'm CLEARLY
occupying here (Overuse of Capitalization and Run On Sentences must lead
to some horrible diagnosis oh god forgive me guys) SO YOU GET A SONG
AND A HORRIBLE POST. NOW I HAVE TO GO I AM HONESTLY GOING TO GO ICE
SKATING ILU ALL.
Hi! Remember me! Hi! I am such a terrible person! I always read and never post because, don'tchaknow, I'm so so so busy.
So here I am, a few hours before second thanksgiving when I will be able to spontaneously embrace all of you after....months? years? and despite that it always feels like I saw all of you yesterday. Who does that? Who has that?
So I have to be honest, I haven't kept up with the last...two months of post? So I went back and read them and was just crying, because it made me miss all of you. I just, I think, get so wrapped up in my life, and being the Editor-in-Chief of a newspaper and a responsible person who suddenly writes a senior thesis and reaaaaalllyyyy lonnnngggggg papersssss about poetry, and has every hour of her day scheduled down to the minute because otherwise I will drown instead of doing the slowly sinking thing I'm managing now that I just FORGET that there is something else out there.
Looming.
What I meant by my title is this (answered in a circular way that will probably find its way back to some holistic theme):
My super smart brother, who spent literally his WHOLE life saying he was going to be a theoretical physicist, is now applying to get his masters in education and will probably teach high school physics in Boston. How perfect is that for him? it is!
His friend Andrew, who wanted to go to seminary and be a pastor until suddenly he didn't is getting married even though he cleans malls right now or something like that. Doesn't have a clue what's next.
My friend from school was dreading spending thanksgiving with her family because her cousin is in nursing school and she's only an English major and well, we all know who's going to have a nice job don't we heh? *insert snide comments, pointed questions and knowing looks*
My mom said to me yesterday, out of the blue, "You know, I was thinking the other day, when you girls move back in after school, that small bathroom will be yours and you can keep all your stuff in there. Isn't that perfect?" And I was literally stunned because me moving back in with my parents after school suddenly just became a thing that was happening. (and because that was a perfect idea even though there isn't much counter space in there...)
The best laid plans...My brother stopped coming back home after his freshman year. He just always seemed to have ideas. I feel like I have tons of ideas but no will to act on them. All this real world stuff just makes me so lethargic. Grad school is a huge no. I'm done with school for a while, and I'm broke to boot. Plus, I literally just skipped two days of school to come back early and was like, FORGET SCHOOL MAAAAN. so clearly further higher education is not for me right now. Do I get an apartment in Chicago and work in the book store (which is a very very very real thing). What if that becomes a thing? What if I really like it? What if I just pick up and move to Taiwan where I learn Chinese (mandarin) and teach English? That's also a really really real thing. But what if these really hard months between seeing you guys become really hard years? I'd be lying if I said I didn't still hold the bookstore we all need to open as the ultimate goal in my life, but I feel like that's a lot of pressure to put on people.
I guess the thing is, no one really knows what the next step is, because no one has planned it for us. That is so so terrifying isn't it? Its all on us, you, me now and I'm floundering. But I'm also pretty stoked for it, ya know? And, well, we have each other and I don't think I need much else right now. Except maybe someone to write these papers for me.
So, if that doesn't make up for months of not posting, I don't know what will (besides more consistent posting of course).
A quick catch up for my life atm: My favorite bar in town burned down and I am DEVASTATED. I'm writing/illustrating/designing a children's book for my book design class and it's going to be printed like a real book. In hard cover! I also have finally hit my academic stride and am earning all A's this semester...though I have some pretty big research papers coming up. I'm still figuring out what my next step is, and I'm so so scared. I have bubblegum pink pants that I'm wearing tonight and I love them, even though I never thought I would ever wear pink. Like, ever. I'm also working a lot at the bookstore this winter break, so please come visit me and prove to my co-workers that I have friends. You can all buy some wine and books while you're there.
I have also been listening to Blind Pilot a lot, even though it makes me sad sometimes. I like to think this is one of those songs they play in the last few minutes of a movie where the heroine has gone through some life changing moments, and even though the future is so uncertain, she's a better person for the experience and moving forward. You know, she just walked out of some building and is looking into the distance (the universal movie sign for thinking ahead to the future) with a small, hopeful, slightly embittered smile on her face--I am not projecting at all.
Man I am so glad for this semester to be over. Or at least for November to be over. I am not excited at all for my last semester at college because that means I have to face the real world?! What??? My friend who graduated last year with only one major (Entrepreneurship) is currently making a living by being a custodial engineer and selling bodily fluids (plasma). I am not excited for finding a job.
I mean what do I even want to do?
What do you even want to do?
In other news, one of my projects entails launching a professional KickStarter page. That means making a demo video of the product we're raising money for. And since I can't understand all of these Royalty Free/Creative Commons rules, I figured I'd write my own song. We'll see how that one goes, but I am a little excited. I just can't seem to get the right sounds on my came-with-the-computer music creating program though... prepare for disaster!
Also, it looks like Walk Off the Earth released the first single from their EP:
So I registered for my final semester as an undergrad this morning!
It's so insane. I swear high school took way more time to finish. What is this madness.
Next semester should (hopefully!) be fun, though. More fun than this current semester at any rate. A lot of my classes I picked because they sounded interesting, not necessarily because I have to take them. I'm stuck the extra semester thanks to Spanish anyway, so might as well, right? Right!
So next semester's adventure includes:
a foray into film and literature
Studies of the novel (in its natural habitat, I assume)
Theories of Gender in Lit Analysis (which has the very unfortunate shortened name of "Theories of Gender in Lit Anal")
MY FINAL SEMESTER OF SPANISH OH MY GOODNESS
And an 8 week course in which I learn how to make books. Not write them. MAKE THEM.
