FUN!

When I'm having a bad day, this song always makes me feel better. When I'm having a good day, this song takes that day from good to great.

I've been having something along the lines of writer's block recently.  Obviously I've gotten over it to some extent, but I still feel like something is trapped or blocked off somewhere in my head that needs to be gotten at in order for things to progress.  Letting go of the issue entirely sometimes helps things to surface, like when I used to do math homework and sometimes the answers to hard problems would come to me if I stopped working on them.  That's where all this music comes in.

Distraction







That last one is kind of old, not to mention awesome.

The writer's block started, I think, when I got something published.  Of course, the issue I was supposed to be in was late, and for a while I was convinced that my writing had somehow driven the whole operation to shut down.  It usually comes out on the 20th of every month, but the May issue was delayed until just a day or two ago.  If you want to read a few of my poems, along with some other really good stuff, click here.

Anyway, at the time I found out that someone, no matter who, had read things I produced and liked them, I thought I could send things elsewhere and have similar results.  Not the case.

Being rejected is not the worst thing ever.  However, having that rejection contain something so odd you can't even process it makes you kind of want to give up.  I'm sure whoever wrote this particular rejection letter was just trying to make me feel better, and I know it's really hard to give someone bad news with some sort of positive spin, but they really could have done better.  I might be overreacting.  All they did really was call my poem "fun" but essentially not right for their publication.  That word "fun" is the problem.  What I sent them was not "fun".  It was very painful and personal, as most poems are, and I was hurt by what I'm guessing was either a complete misunderstanding or complete disregard of my work.

So, being a person who is all too easily impacted by every minuscule event, I began wondering if anything I write makes sense to anyone other than me and if that other website who took my poems was only being nice and etc. etc. on until all manner of depressing thoughts had been explored.  Then I couldn't write anything.  I try to get out a poem a week, just to keep up some sort of schedule and because I now have the time for such things, but almost three went by and nothing was happening.  The word "fun" had totally destroyed me.

Then some nice things happened.  My friends came home from school, so I had some people to talk to, interact with, and places to be at other than my house or work.  I also found the music I used to listen to back in high school, the punk and the hip-hop stuffs I had been shamed out of keeping around by my cooler hipster college friends.  Now, I've always held on to music like what I mentioned earlier, but that's mainly because it's supposed to be stupid, lighthearted crap for laughing and jumping around.  "Fun" you could say.  What I'm talking about now meant a lot more to me than that.

What I've found out from re-listening is that it still does









And I started feeling better. I am, dare I say it, having fun. There's still that feeling of not-quite-ness in my writing, but at least I am, in fact, writing.

I've taken all this new found energy and put it in to a fun poem.  I've sent that fun poem to the same publication that mistakenly took the other to be "fun".  Maybe they'll notice a difference?

On Wolves

Biology prevails!


This whole video is bonkers, but that line is probably my favorite part of it.  That being said, though, I really do like this song.  And TV On The Radio in general.  And wolves.

Since there is something else that I really want to write about, but I don't feel able to do it just yet, so I am going to talk about this for a while.  Bear with me.

I was obsessed with animals when I was little.  I would often pick one and then research it mercilessly for weeks at a time until I had essentially mastered it, then move on to another.  When I was at a pretending age I almost always pretended to be some sort of animal, usually a dog or a wolf, as those ended up being the types of animals that really held my interest.  Wolves in particular were my knowledge strong point.  I stopped reading and largely caring about wolves around when I entered Jr. High, but I still remember some things about them, like how intelligent they are and how well structured wolf packs really are.

So, when most youngsters where in to Harry Potter, or whatever else kids my age were supposed to be enjoying, I was reading Julie of the Wolves and its sequels.  Again I don't remember much about this, but I know I loved these books and that they fueled my imagination for several years.  My uncle found out about this interest and fueled it further by gifting me on every applicable holiday with little gems like this one:

Note that this is not just a disembodied wolf head, which would really be bad enough, but this is an entire disembodied wolf torso.  I'm not even sure you could call this a disembodied wolf shirt when most of the wold is in fact shown, but they still had to fade out that last bit, as if they cannot make wolf shirts without the wolf fading out to some degree.  You could also consider this shirt to have a bonus because you don't only get the one running wolf, there are more wolves running inside of it.  If only they were fading out as well.  This shirt seriously boggles my mind.

Anyway, I've had this shirt a long time time.  I don't wear it outside anymore, but I'm pretty sure I did at some point, which I think shows that my parents really didn't protect me as well as they should have.  I wear it to sleep now, as it has that perfect amount of wear necessary for a shirt to feel fantastic.  Its also really funny.

I actually had lots of these when I was young, but most of them either wore out or were thrown away in a fit of sensibleness.  Can you imagine that I had trouble socializing as a child?

Like I said before, the wolves were put away around when I turned twelve or thirteen and have largely stayed put locked up in my memory.  However, every once in a while I see something like that TV on the Radio song, and I remember what now feels like a weird dream I had where I thought I was a wolf.  I remember how much I used to know and care about these animals, and how my kid-self had a whole little world built of and around them.

It's interesting for me to find out that wolves factor as symbols into other people's lives as well, and what they mean for them.  One of my poetry-writing friends has a series about wolves that I react to on some core level because of her chosen image.  Any song mentioning wolves appeals to me on some level beyond my own comprehension.  There's really an interesting mix of music here if you click each link.  That last one is some German band I found while looking up these other videos and typing "wolf" so much.  I think this paragraph had intention when it started, but I got so caught up in linking music that it turned into mush.  Ah well.

The point is that I am now permanently set up to feel towards the image or idea of wolves some fundamental emotion stemming from my childhood preoccupation with being something other than myself.

I just figured that out now writing this post.  So at least there's something.

This Ended Up Being About Grammar. I'm Not Sure Why.

Today really was a good day, though I'd have trouble explaining why.  I worked for most of it, and there was definitely the (perhaps even worse than) usual group of bizarre and demanding people, but the point is that I was able to cope with it, which is both new and exciting.  More often than not I am completely unable to gracefully withstand the odd and slightly cruel way sales people are treated.  Of course, I am slowly becoming notorious for relapses, so I'm not expecting myself to respond this well every time, but knowing that I'm capable of doing so will certainly help me along.

If I haven't mentioned this before, I work in a department store now.  In the shoe department, to be exact, which is pretty much what I did back in high school, though I'm not at the same store.  It's a little bit sad to have gone through so much schooling, to have had as many good experiences and opportunities as I've had, just to end up right back where I started.  I'm trying to treat this like a launching point, like a return to zero before going off in a whole new (and hopefully more successful) direction.  In any case, this job is reintroducing me to the non-academic world, which I had almost forgotten existed, and giving me enough funds to keep from defaulting on my student loans.  I'm content with that for now.

Every sentence in that paragraph begins with the letter "I".  A couple of them also begin with the same word, which is somewhat bothersome.  Around 6th or 7th grade, I was told by my English teacher not to start multiple sentences with the same word in the same paragraph.  I'm sure she said this only to prevent the "This happened.  Then this happened.  Then this happened," style that many youngsters are prone to, but this rule had lorded over my writing forever since.  In academic papers, in poetry, even in my own head, I am always aware of what words I'm starting off with and how often they're being used.

I have a similar issue with commas.  If I write a sentence with one comma, or maybe two, the sentences both before and after it must have some other amount of commas.  The sentence structures must be appropriately varied within a given paragraph, so as not to sound monotonous.  Each paragraph would also ideally have at least five sentences.

That one does not.

On one level these rules have done a lot of good for me.  They've forced me to think carefully about what I write and how I write it, which has probably helped make me into a better writer.  However, I know full well that most people do not notice or care about all these little details, and I'm starting to feel like I'm holding myself back by sticking to them so strictly.  In any case, this nothing-alike-too-close-together way of writing is so ingrained in my system that I have to make a conscious effort to go against it.  Maybe someday I'll be able to just type and not over think so much, but for now all I can do is just be aware of my over thinking and over think about it.

Did you count the commas in those last two sentences?  I know I did.

You know, I always start out these blog entries with one idea in mind, only to wander off on some crazy tangent.  This was originally supposed to be about the Jung/Meyers-Briggs personality types, can you believe that?  I've spent so long on this other stuff, though, that I'm not sure I still feel like talking about what I meant to, or that I even remember what I wanted to say.  Maybe next time?

I had a dream the other night about a friend of mine's ex-boyfriend.  Nothing scandalous happened, it's not like I stole her man or anything, the two of us were just hanging out.  It was weird, because I was never really friends with the guy and have no actual conception of what hanging out with him would be like.  It was also weird because I woke up with the feeling that either dream him or dream me had said something really important, but awake me couldn't remember what it was.

Dreams are important markers for me, because they mean that I'm having complete sleep cycles, which doesn't really happen all that much.  However, things have begun to improve drastically.  The main reason for this is because I now sleep with a mouth guard.  Not a retainer.  A mouth guard.  It makes me feel a little like an idiot, but it's bumped up my life quality about ten or so points, so I'm dealing with it.

When I got my wisdom teeth removed last summer, the X-rays they did showed that my jaw bone was thinning out.  The doctor explained that this was happening because I grind my teeth in my sleep, hard enough to completely destroy my own jaw.  There's already some permanent damage.  My jaw pops when I take big bites or food or yawn too wide, and it starts to hurt or even lock up if I sing along with the radio too long (I'm sure it would lock up if I talked too long, as well, but that's never even sort of started to happen).  Nothing can ever be done to fix those things, but I can slow down any further degeneration of the bone by using a mouth guard while I sleep to cut down on the pressure and friction of my grinding teeth.

I've had the thing a few months, but I've only just now started using it seriously because I need to sleep better so I can act like a proper human being at work.  Even after a few weeks, though, I've already scraped up the guard and left a few pretty deep dents from my lower incisors.  I think it's only a matter of time before I chomp right through it.  It scares me that I exact that much force on myself, self-destructively and subconsciously.  This jaw thing, I think, is like a microcosm of my larger life patterns.

I've figured that there will come a day when I destroy my jaw bone entirely.  Maybe by then they'll have some sort of bionic jaw they can replace it with, but then again having a bionic jaw might only make things worse.  I could grind right up into my own skull or something.  Either way, for now I am able to sleep and dream, and wake up feeling like I am actually awake.
__________________________________________

I'm pretty sure I felt like I was going somewhere with the above ramble when I started it late last night, which is why I saved the draft in the first place, but coming back to it this afternoon I have no clue what that might have been.  My apologies.  Even so I'm still going to post it, because I think there's some telling stuff in there.

Xangas and Failing at Life

When I was in Jr. High (and potentially early high school) I had a Xanga.  Said Xanga is long gone now, deleted, actually, since at that point in time I really didn't like the idea of my words floating around the internet once they stopped carrying meaning for me.  Now I have old blogs sitting around all over the place.  Whenever my life changes enough, or I start a new chapter, so to speak, I start up a new blog.  The old ones get bookmarked on my browser, and I occasionally look back over them and remember what I was going through and what I thought about back in the day.

Anyway, my old Xanga had a picture of the characters from Saiyuki as its background (still my favorite manga) and played the song "Cool to Hate" by Offspring.  You could not turn the song off.  I had that Xanga for a long time, I think, and now that I've become the sort who likes to remember what I've written, it makes me kind of sad that it's gone, because I have next to no idea what I ever wrote in that thing.  However, I do remember one entry, where I basically called out a friend of mine for something she said because it upset me and I wasn't strong enough to talk to her about in person.  Instead I just embarrassed her on an open forum almost everyone we knew would read or potentially hear about.  The whole thing was pretty much settled online, and we both went to school the next day free of grudges, but I've always felt a little strange about how I handled things.

Even now, I still have a bad habit of telling people things in writing that I should really say to their faces.  I'm so much more confident in my ability to write than speak.  If you've ever talked to me, you know I trip on my words a lot, get confused in the middle of my own sentences, and generally muck up whatever points I try to make.  So if it's something really important, I feel better writing (typing, really, paper really seems to be on its way out, doesn't it?) out what I want to say, looking it over, making sure it's what I mean and that it's effective, then sending it out to whoever it needs to get to.  I know this isn't a good way to conduct myself, that I should grapple with my awkwardness and insecurity by really facing people, but as my recent drop-out-of-school-and-leave-town-without-telling-anyone debacle shows, I'm hardly reformed in this respect.

One time in my freshman year of college, someone witnessed me having a panic attack.  He was the first person to see me that bad outside of my own family, and he was actually really helpful.  I wanted to thank him for being there for me, even when we weren't exactly friends (we knew some of the same people, but never really talked much), but between the aftermath of the attack and my constant fear of not articulating myself properly, I sent my thanks via Facebook message.  I don't remember his response word for word, though I know it was something along the lines of "no problem."  What I do remember is that he mentioned exercise could help with my anxiety.  So of course, instead of follow his advice, I just worried about whether that comment had any sort of backhanded, you're-a-fatty-so-go-fix-yourself double meaning.  I'm pretty sure it didn't.  Anyway, I still never talked to the guy much, so it turned out to be just this one meaningful moment I had and never responded to properly.

Here's another good avoidance story, though there's no writing component: my sophomore year me and some friends were sitting in the front yard of our dorm doing homework, lounging in the sun, etc. when a couple guys came to get the campus bikes that were also sitting in the yard.  As a side note, our campus supplied several bright red bikes for anyone and everyone to use, but it was sometimes difficult to locate one so it wasn't odd to see a few people scouting around for them.  Anyway, I noticed one of these guys was wearing a NOFX shirt.  I really like this band, and was having a hard time struggling with the leave-punk-behind-you-and-listen-to-some-real-music attitude a lot of the people around me were pushing, so I got excited and did something totally out of character for me.  I went out of my way to address this stranger by telling him, "I like you shirt."

It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it totally was.  NOFX guy responded to my comment by inviting me on a bike ride.  Now, I'm so wary of people and socially out of whack that I have no idea if his invitation was weird or not, but we did already have the bikes right there in front of us.  Either way, it freaked me out.  I also can't ride a bike very well.  These reasons combined led me to decline his offer, so he left and I went with my friends out to eat somewhere.

What's funny, and kind of sad, really, is that I saw him again towards the end of year.  He noticed me walking by and said, somewhat cheekily, that he liked my backpack.  I laughed, but kept walking.  Poor NOFX guy (I'm actually just realizing how awful this really was now as I'm typing it) tries again to have some kind of conversation, but again, all I remember from it is one thing, him saying "don't be shy."  Again, I don't know if that's weird or not.  What I do know is that I responded with, "No, I think I'm just gonna be shy."  I actually said that to someone.  Someone who seemed pretty nice, interested, and, as is against type for what I usually attract, good looking.  At least, I remember him to be good looking.  I know it was only two years ago but, as I've already shown, trying to pin something down in my memory is very much like playing darts blindfolded, so who knows?

That was the last time I ever saw NOFX guy.  Maybe he was a senior and graduated.  Maybe he just gave up and started staying away from me.  Either way, I feel like I missed out on a real opportunity there all because I can't bring myself to properly communicate face to face.

That's what this is about, I guess, how avoiding direct confrontation, whether the message itself is good or bad, can lead to missed opportunities.  I've lost chances to have good friends, and potentially more, by worrying over saying the wrong thing.  If there was a more fulfilling way to end this post, a way to tie up loose ends, or something, I would.  But I can't.  This is what I'm like and I'm trying to get better but it's really hard and I don't know if things will ever improve.

What I can say is, if you're out there, NOFX guy, and you're still willing, I'll go on the bike ride with your now.

A Brief Update, of Sorts

I feel like I left things here on something of an ominous note last time, and then didn't speak for about two months.  The problem is that I actually have things to do with my time now, so I'm not sitting around moping or writing blog entries.  I'm working.

Having a job makes a big difference.  My energy is being used to perform tasks and interact with others rather than overtweak poetry and hate myself.  Of course, it also means that I'm not writing as much poetry, so even happiness is a little bit sad.  I'm trying to figure out how to balance everything right now, so I can do what I need and still do what I want.

Other things are happening, too.  Living with my parents has been tough, especially with my dementia-addled grandfather there, as well.  I never got along with him, he was always the typical patriarch/angry old man, and that persona coupled with the fact that he had no idea who I was anymore, or that he was in our house instead of his own, made things near unbearable at times.  However, he still managed to be funny or nice once in a while, and that helped to keep everyone going.

Last week we moved my grandfather to a Veteran's nursing home up in Sandusky.  On one hand, it needed to be done.  Everyone in the family was wearing out and, especially after I got a job, it was hard to figure out who was going to watch him when so we could all get things done with out lives.  On the other hand, it's heartbreaking to see what was such a strong man be reduced to the lifestyle and mindset of a small lost child.  No one really knows how to feel about him leaving.  You almost can't enjoy, or don't even want to enjoy, your new-found freedom due to the guilt of how you've obtained it.

Even so, it feels like some kind of heavy black cloud slowly dissipating over my head.  Things aren't great, but they're ok, and they could quite possibly get a whole lot better later on.  So hopefully I can keep the good trend going.

Being Boring

My birthday was this past Thursday.  I don't know if this is a problem for other people, but I always feel a lot of pressure to have fun on my birthday, which makes it really hard to actually have any fun.  It was the worst on my twenty-first birthday, when you're pretty much expected to party yourself into oblivion, and I had just gotten back from England a month before so I was still dealing with reverse culture shock and catching up with what all I'd missed while I was gone.  I honestly think I went to bed before midnight.

This year really wasn't much different.  I'm not sure what the proper morning period is for a life plan, but I'm not quite over it just yet.  Plus, everyone I know is somewhere else.  Last Thursday came and went with little to no ceremony.  Of course, I did manage to have some fun this weekend, and I know next weekend my brother and I are having something of a late joint birthday party (his birthday is today), but not doing anything on the actual day was kind of nice.

It's hard for me to enjoy myself when I know that I'm supposed to be enjoying myself, and it's even harder to admit I'm not enjoying myself to the other self-enjoyers around me when this happens.  This is why I don't like watching a lot of movies, especially comedies, and especially with other people.  There's nothing worse than watching a movie everyone around you loves that you can't seem to find anything funny about at all.  You don't want to ruin anyone else's happiness, so you just do your best to smile along and not give voice to your real feelings.

Sometimes this is what I find myself doing on my birthday, trying to assure whoever I'm with that they've provided me a sufficiently good time.  But not this year.  This year I "borrowed" some good music from the local library, had a big bowl of ice cream cake, and vegged on my parents new couch (my parents made a really good decision with this new couch; it's fake leather, and whatever they stuffed the cushions with is so springy that if you plop down on them hard enough you could potentially bounce right back off).  Maybe it sounds boring, but I was relaxed, and thus fairly happy.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, another chance to feel pressured.  Just yesterday my mother felt the need to comment on my current (i.e. perpetual) lack of boyfriend.  For once I can point out that my life should probably be on some sort of track before I try to bring other people into it, but there is something of a stigma for those not attached on February fourteenth.  For women (am I old enough yet to be referring to myself as a woman?  I'm not sure) it seems you should either be in a relationship, desperately attempting to be in a relationship, or a single-and-proud-of-it-Valentine's-Day-hater.  If your are none of those things there's nothing for you, at least not in my experience.

So tomorrow will be the same for me as any other day, hyping myself up on copious amounts of tea while searching for a decent job and writing poems that will hopefully at some point see the light of day.  Again, maybe that's really boring, but it feels better than what I was trying to do before, so I'm content.