Tired and insecurities

I have been exhausted as of late, even on the days I've gotten extra sleep. I think it's because I've been trying to eat healthier, which has inevitably led to not eating as much, which is probably counter-intuitive. All the same, I feel better eating a sandwich wrap and soup than I do eating a burger and pasta, so I think I'm going to continue eating as I have. I think things would be better if I woke up sooner, so I could actually eat breakfast once in a while.

I've felt very out of it the past few weeks and I haven't been doing things like I usually do. I'm usually keeping occupied on the internet and the like (usually to a fault), but lately I find myself just sitting around feeling unmotivated. I'm hoping that the two week break will get me energized to do stuff again, but that doesn't help me right now. Finals left, a room to clean, packing to do...and that's overlooking Christmas shopping and sending gifts out, which is going to be a task of the ages, methinks...

More than anything else, though, I've been lacking creativity. On all fronts. Usually I get tired of writing poetry, so I write prose, or vice versa. I haven't wanted to write anything since November. I mean, I have ideas in my head, but I have no desire to write. And usually that transfers over to music, and I increase my clarinet practice time. Haven't touched my clarinet since my jury performance on Monday afternoon. I think I just need to read more. And I think I'm going to try drawing lineart over the break, because there's images in my head. I don't know. We'll see.

I've been listening to a lot of music lately. More than usual, I think. Mostly music I've listened to before, though. I feel like I'm waiting for something to happen. No idea why, though. I certainly have no reason to be expecting things to happen, there's nothing remotely exceptional coming up save for the holidays. Maybe I'm just being paranoid or something. Ah well.

I'm waiting to hear back from my school's lit magazine. I sent in a few poems, though I probably won't know if I've gotten in until February or March. If one does get in, then it'll be the first time I'll be published in a print magazine. If not, I'll probably be a bit upset for a while, but that's what comes with sending things out for publishing. It could be worse. I'm just nervous. With online magazines, I don't know the people, I don't know the process, it's all out of my mind. But with publishing here I know the people involved, I know the writing preference of the faculty advisor, and I know that I'm not as experimental or as traditional as some of the writers here like to read. So I guess that's my concern, and likely why I'm feeling so insecure of it. I don't know what the staff is going to think of my writing. But I've got months to worry about that. In the meanwhile, I suppose I ought to study.

Two finals to go. I can do this.

Keep smiling.

It's been a while...

Life is taking it in turns to be underwhelming and then overwhelming.

I was so excited at the prospect of moving back to school, and at the prospect of having everything taken care of, and then I arrived and...felt dull. The loan fiasco didn't help this, of course, but I was rather unchanged before we knew about the loan, so it didn't cause it, either.

Mom turns to me and tells me I need to pray about the problems we're having right now. She knows I don't. She knows I won't. Even if I did, it wouldn't bring me relief. She wanted me to go to church too. I thankfully have an audition that morning and need to be here, but I wouldn't have gone anyway. I wrote this earlier today, though I won't post it on dA. I don't like it.

I am not at church. I am not going
to church. I am not going to pray.
I am going to write. I will write
about strings and chains and I
will say the same as anyone else
who is sitting in church or
kneeling at sheets. I don't worship
false gods. I don't believe in
the pen over anything else. I
express myself through my words
and through my actions. I don't
need a building to speak. I can't
act with my hands folded together
at the crux of my wrist as though
cuffed. I am not going to pray. I
am not going to church. I am going
to write.

It's not that I don't believe that there is a god. I think there very well could be one. It's just that I don't feel that, if there is a god, he would put us somewhere and then expect us to spend all of our time praying to him. If he put us here, he wants us to do stuff here. So we need to stop wasting time praying and start spending time doing.

School starts Monday. I am...less thrilled than I was before. I usually love the prospect of classes, for as sad as it sounds. But I am not excited. I'm worried about the loan, and about being kicked out, and I'm terrified at the thought of having to live with my parents during the school year.

I'm terrified I won't live up to the expectations people set on me. I'm terrified I'll grow old and end up like my father. I'm terrified that I'm already an adult and I don't know how to file taxes.

My mom told me that I always worried about adult things when I was a kid, and that she had to tell me to worry about kid things.

I never was very good at listening to her. It's not her fault.

I don't have much to say on the writing front. When I write these days, my quality filter doesn't seem to work very well. I hope it's that my writing's getting better rather than I just have no idea, but somehow the latter feels more correct.

This feels cathartic.

I've been stressing about random things for the past month, and now it just feels...like the tide going back out to sea.

I'm listening to Imogen Heap's "Canvas" right now. It is entrancing and helping my mood profoundly.

I think I've run out of things to say now. But I have liked saying them, more than usual.

A plethora of completely disconnected thoughts.

Breaking the small habits...not so sure about the big ones...

I am a chronic nail-biter. It's been an awful habit of mine for basically my entire life. I chew on my nails when I'm nervous, when I'm anxious, when I'm bored, when I'm hungry...you get the point. More recently it got so bad that I was chewing all of the white ring at the fingertip off, and then chewing past that as well. I was beginning to worry that the white rings at the tip might not grow back, so I told myself last Sunday that I was going to stop biting my nails. I'm happy to say that though I did come very close to biting them a few times over the week, I didn't bite any of them, and they've all grown back. I haven't felt like biting them today or yesterday, either.

I'm cleaning things up. I used to let things gather for weeks on my floor and then I'd spend hours cleaning it all up. My floor is currently empty save for my electrical cords and shoes. The shoes are lined up against the wall, and the cords are tucked under the desk. The trash was taken out this morning. The doors and windows are open to give the air a chance to circulate so the room doesn't smell so stale. Except my suitemate needs the bathroom, so now the bathroom isn't airing out. Oh well. The rest of the room is.

People walk too fast when they don't need to be. Walking fast when you're in a hurry is one thing, but on a Sunday when there's really not much of anything that needs to happen on a schedule, there's no reason to be walking as fast as some of the people around here do. It's beautiful outside. There's a wonderful breeze right now. It's somewhere between 70 and 80 degrees. This is ideal weather, and people are in such a hurry to escape it for some reason. I had a wonderful walk to and from the cafeteria, just moseying along as I did. Gives you a chance to appreciate the things you miss out on on the average day.

I seem to be growing so slowly now. I'm learning to make up for the mistakes I've consistently made before, but I am still missing on so many levels at this point. How long does it take for one to properly collect their thoughts? Am I still on schedule, or am I falling as far behind as I feel like I am? I hope I'm not lagging behind.

School ends in two weeks. The thought of once again needing a job scares me. I suppose I will make do, if nothing else.

Things are going to go well. So long as I remember that and smile, I will be fine.

Sporadic thinking

I re-opened Worlds Apart today after months of letting it sit. I felt compelled to write more of it. It's hard to believe, as I write the story so sporadically. However, when I start writing after not writing for so long, I go back to read what I've already written, to make sure that I remain consistent to what's already down.

Now, it's a habit of mine to write each chapter in its own word document. I do this so that the thoughts can be organized more easily. I don't actually like chapter structure, and when I finish the story, I'll either be re-working or removing the chapters. More likely reworking. I am not a fan of chapters, but I think that after a while it would become difficult to read, as everything would mesh together. Anyway, went off on a tangent. The reason I brought that up is because out of curiosity, I wanted to see what the word count was for the story so far. I'm seven chapters in, working on the eighth. I am not even a third of the way into the story yet.

19645. I have almost 20 thousand words.

This blew me away. In less than three years of writing this story on and off, I have written 6k less than half the expected length of an average novel. There are people who write 50k in one month. I am not one of those people. I cannot trust myself to sit and write and write and write prose as though my life were about nothign but writing prose.

However.

After finding that I have made that much progress with this story already, I have decided that my goal for the remainder of this year is to finish this story. If I write one chapter a month, I'll be relatively close to done by the end of the year as it is. However, I know myself better than that. I never write one chapter at a time. I write a chapter and a half, and then leave it for months. So, my goal from here will be to write consistently. To finish this bloody first draft once and for all, so that I can finally allow myself to go and revise the first chapter. It desperately needs revision.

This is good news, though. I am going to do this. I will write. I will do this.

Beyond that, I've made a decision. By the end of this year, I want to be able to call myself a proper writer. I want to be published at least once. I want to finish this novel. I want to write poetry that people can enjoy for its topic AND for its technical skill. I want to be a featured writer. I want to be featured for my writing, not just because I know how to get work done.

I want. I WANT MY SELF-ESTEEM. By the end of this year, I will be able to call myself a writer.

I. I will. No more passive writing because I think I'm not good enough to do anything with it. No more. No more telling myself I am incapable as a means of striving for improvement. I will strive to improve because I CAN be good enough. Because I have improved so far, and I can do so much more. Because I want to. Because I need to. Because I am tired of fighting for approval from others when all I've been looking for is approval from myself.

"Oh now, feel it, coming back again, like the rolling thunder chasing the wind, forces pulling from the center of the earth again, I can feel it!"

It felt so good to say that.

I didn't even realize how much I've been holding myself down. I didn't know. I always told myself it was a means to improve, that if I kept myself down I would work harder. Somewhere along the line, I hit a point where it stopped helping me.

I have been preventing myself from having self-esteem, all the while thinking that I was making things better on myself.

No more.

The next time I smile...it will be me smiling for myself. And I will be happy with myself, even if I am not happy with other things.

Now, back to writing.

Filling out job applications...

I was filling out some applications for bookstores today, and I got to the part where it says "Position Desired" and stopped. I thought about filling in "Cashier", but I'm not sure. I'd much rather stock the books on the shelves than be a cashier. But what is that position called? They're not stock workers, stock workers work night shifts, and I've already put myself through night shifts once, I can't do that again. So I stared at it a bit more, then decided to move on and fill out the rest of the application, and that I'd come back to fill it in later. I finished the rest of the application just fine and went back. That application's sitting next to me right now. I still haven't filled that box in.

It upsets me. I don't know what job I want. I need a paycheck. I don't want my life to just be a set of jobs for pay. I want to have a job that I know I can do for a prolonged period of my life...but I have no idea what job that is. I hate that I can't seem to map my own life out.

This is all very petty. I dislike the fact that I'm sitting here complaining about not knowing things about myself when there's much bigger things to be worrying about. I was talking with someone about this recently. I think it was Juli. I don't talk about things that bother me much. I don't usually like to. My problems are so small. I complain about such unimportant things. I mean, this is a piece of paper that I'm stumbling over. That's all it is. I'm being stumped by a piece of paper. People are in the hospital right now, and I'm whining about a piece of paper. *sigh*

This is why I try to keep my complaints minimal. Because it's not fair for me to make a big deal of such little things.

Smile like you mean it.

On days like these, smiles can change someone's day for the better. Always smile, even if it seems there's nothing at all to smile about.

~Rakumo

Another revelation...

I went to hang out with a friend tonight, as we usually do on Saturdays. This time she brought some co-workers of hers along. They seemed very nice, and we talked at the cafe we go to hang out at. I'm skipping details and likely telling this story very poorly, but it's going on 3 am and I'm in dire need of sleep. I merely want to get this out before I go to bed.

So, we were talking. Or rather, she was talking, and the conversation would jump from one group to the other. Obviously, I can't talk about work. I don't work there. So when they talked about work, I kind of listened and for the most part spaced out a bit. But the instant it wasn't about work, I was engaged in the conversation, and we all had a good set of laughs about stuff. On the way out, we stood around for a bit, just talking some more, but mostly standing around idling.

This had so much more significance to me when I started writing, and it seems I've forgotten most of it, but the gist of the realization was that even though I can talk to people off the bat no problem, I apparently struggle to actually connect with people on levels that don't involve laughter. This may or may not be a bad thing. If we assume people bond because of common ground, then I suppose I'm just good at figuring out what makes people smile and laugh. Beyond that, though...well, some people I can connect with emotionally without having to try at all. Others, it takes more effort. Funny how that works. Not surprising, just...funny.

Life revolves around funny. I just need to learn to smile and really mean it every single time.

Recently...

I've come to a big realization that I am much too dependent on things coming my way, rather than being proactive about going out and making them happen, both on a smaller and larger scale. I am going to do everything I can to change this. It worked so well for me for housing. I haven't been so active about things as I was with that. I want to make things happen. I called res life repeatedly over the past week and made it clear that if I didn't get a place to stay, I would not be able to attend the school. Lo and behold, I not only got a room, but I was able to snag a room to myself with a shared bathroom, which was the best possible outcome overall. If this is what happens when I apply myself, then I absolutely must apply myself to the rest of my life too. If things could be better simply by my applying myself to living, rather than sitting and waiting, then all I need is to shift myself in that direction and things will improve. Right?

It seems to me that things will work best if I apply myself. So, let's get to it. I'm going to go send an email to the attorney general, I've got a shot at a city internship and I will be damned if I miss out on it.

Keep smiling, everyone.

Hello again.

Funny to say hello again when I technically haven't been here before, but still, it is again and I am glad to be here. The last time I made a blog set for myself, I was rather unhappy with the things I blogged about, and frankly I would like to keep my childish complaints to myself. So I've made this blog instead, for my thoughts but not to whine.

Smile at everything. Once you die, there's no more smiling, so smile while you can.