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Waiting Sucks, School is a Pain, and My Weird Downward Spiral

This is being typed on my iPod at 3am, so I’m going to say now that this is not going to make much sense, and will be riddled with misspellings. The picture is mostly there because my iPod refuses to post text posts, but it’s also something I need to remember.

Part I: Waiting Sucks.

I am not a patient person. In fact, if you asked anyone who knows me decently, they’ll say I’m quite an IMpatient person. I won’t deny that.
Lately in my life, I’ve found there’s a lot of things I have to wait for. These things vary in importance.
There’s Thor 2, which I’m looking forward to immensely, but I have to wait until November to see.
Then there’s things like having to wait to clear this drama class with my mom for next semester, and my dad telling me today that my mom made an appointment with our thyroid doctor a while ago, and the earliest they could get him in is the end of June.
Thyroid medicine deals a lot with hormones, and I’ve noticed lately that my emotions have been all over the map. That, plus my greatly reduced attention levels, leads me to believe my medicine is off, but I’ve asked my mom twice, and she still hasn’t told me she’s made an appointment. I don’t even know if she called. I sent her a text about it on Wednesday, but she ignored it, despite responding to a later text.
In addition, I’ve been intending to ask my thyroid doctor about possibly being ADD, but if I don’t get to go to his office, I have no way of fixing either of these problems.
So I wait. And continue badgering my mom.

Part II: School is a Pain.
This semester was more of a bitch than it had any right to be. I’m taking a PE class (where my grade is entirely based on attendance), a BASIC music class, and a science class with the laziest teacher on the planet.
Why is this semester sucking so much?
Two reasons. Every homework we had to do for music was 100 questions per section, with 3-6 chapters per assignment. 600 effing problems. It doesn’t help ANYTHING that I had a hell of a time getting the homework CD and had to make up multiple homework assignments at once.
The second reason is I AM NOT A SCIENCE PERSON. I don’t know what possessed me to take this class, but I am awful at it. It’s the only final I’m more than a little concerned about. Last semester, I would have felt invincible, but failing statistics last semester totally obliterated my confidence.
And the worst part is that I know it’s not over after this. I get a few weeks before I have to do my permit test, then a few months before another crying session trying to convince my mom not to make me take too many classes in the fall, and wanting to yell at her for a week at least afterward.
Just looking at classes the other day was stressing me out, but I’m trying to put together a decent schedule myself to limit crying and yelling later.
Also, I just realize I have to be up for PE in five hours. Oh boy.

Part III: My Weird Downward Spiral.
Toward the end of the semester, I’m always miserable, but this semester is even more stupid.
Remember how I said not talking to my friends makes my brain freak out?
Well, I haven’t seen my best friend in two months or so, and between her not responding to my texts earlier, and her phone being broken now, I’ve barely talked to her lately.
For most people, that’s not a big deal, but my brain has gone into “She hates me I hate me everyone hates me” mode. I was just talking to her on Facebook tonight, and just the fact that she sounded a bit half-hearted made my brain panic even more.
I don’t know what to do with myself when these moods come on. They come on suddenly and unexpectedly. Tonight, I was expecting to just plot stories out in my head for a bit until I fell asleep, but my brain had other plans.
I ended up not being able to sleep, and started talking aloud to myself and ended up in tears until I decided to email her about getting dinner together, then write this post.
Writing these posts makes me feel better. It probably seems melodramatic to other people, but without being able to rant to my friend, I just feel stuck. Getting it down somewhere, even if no one reads it, helps me get it out of my head.

BONUS PART IIII: Posting Things
I’ve figured out the scanner and did some work with the tablet, and uploaded a bunch of stuff to http://theavpsysnake.tumblr.com. I also uploaded some of my NaNo novel, and a bunch of flash fiction stuff to http://figment.com/users/97407-Junie-Durling so you can read those too. Now, I think I need to get what sleep I can before PE.
Goodnight, wordpress.

P.S. I’ll read this and fix any typos in the morning to make sure it makes sense. Thanks for listening to me rant.

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You Get What You Get.

“You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”

Words of wisdom from a five-year-old kid my sister and I used to babysit. Someone gave him strawberry yogurt because we didn’t have the flavor he wanted, and he gave us that in response, and proceeded to eat the yogurt without complaint. He was also obsessed with Iron Man and cornbread muffins, but that’s irrelevant.

 

The point is, it has come to my attention that I can be a bit of a pessimist. I am constantly going “Ugh I don’t have money, or a good word count, or whatever.” I am trying to be more thankful for things. Trying to count my blessings.

 

This month was not as good as I had hoped it would be, writing-wise. It was Camp NaNoWriMo month, and rather than the 50k I was going for, I ended up with 30k. But regardless of how that may seem when I compare it to my goal, that’s a pretty damn good word count. That’s thirty thousand more words than I had at the beginning of the month, and they aren’t half bad either. Usually after a month of writing nonstop to hit that 50k, I’m miserable, I never want to write again, and I shelve whatever I was working on for good. This month was different. On the last day of April, the novel’s fire is still going strong, despite a week long slump in the middle of the month where it was barely more than a single flame. I’m almost done with my first draft, something that never happens, and I’ve been posting it online here. I have 30k words so far, I still have enough plot to finish, and even some to fill up earlier chapters a bit more. It’s probably the best I’ve done on any novel to date.

Other blessings I have noticed this month, outside of writing: I still fit into jeans I bought a while ago, perhaps even better than before, as I discovered today. I can do 15+ (girl) pushups, when I could barely do five at the beginning of the semester. I have better strength all around, due to a PE class I’ve been taking, and I can run more than a quarter of the track at a time without dying. At the beginning of the semester, I could barely jog a quarter. That’s something I’m REALLY proud of.

I finished all my music homework, which resulted in probably over 3000 problems altogether, and turned them in last week. I also finished all my science homework since the beginning of the month, despite a rapidly dwindling attention span.

I uploaded lots of drawings to my Tumblr, which isn’t something I do often due to my general dislike for my drawings, and my previous inability to use the scanner.

I’ve finally suggested going to the thyroid doctor to my mom. She didn’t seem to take it very seriously, but it’s out there and will be easier to bring up again in the future, which is good, because my medicine is definitely off.

 

Despite not getting my original word count goal, this month has been…. surprisingly productive. I nearly had an emotional breakdown several times, between being forced to clean out the spider-filled alley and having my friend texting me while borderline depressed in addition to already being in existential crisis mode another day, but managed to keep it together properly until I could go hide upstairs to either think or distract myself.

But enough of that, positive thinking time. I’ve just rewarded myself for hitting 30k with gummy starbursts, and I’m quite pleased. Despite finding pieces of plastic and foil in my coffee a couple weeks ago, I ended up with two free drink cards from the coffee shop. Every cloud seems to have a silver lining, but it’s impossible to find it if I don’t want to.

I’m a bit babbly, since it’s almost 1am at this point, but I just thought I’d share how this month went, and my thoughts on some other things. I’ll shut up now and go to sleep.

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Wonderlight snippet — Looking Glass

Hatter looked to his left at something Alli couldn’t see. “Oh Gods… Alli, get out of there. I have to go.” Hatter’s image flickered, then disappeared.

“Hatter, wait, don’t leave me!” Alli stared at the place he had been standing in just moments ago. “Dammit, Hatter.” She crept forward, peering out at the scene in the ballroom. Wind was still whipping around the room, dragging helpless people into the swirling blackness as the clung to curtains and table legs, praying they could outlast the violent pull. Across the room, only one figure was standing still, watching them screaming with a bored expression. Rosie Clem folded her arms, her gaze travelling across the room slowly. A look of surprise crossed her face for a moment as she made eye contact with Alli.

Alli pulled back into the hall, wind whipping her hair around. She was going to take Hatter’s advice and get out of there, she decided. There was no reason for her to stick around if she couldn’t help anything. She took off running down the hall, turning the corner at the end quickly and found herself at the top of a staircase. After a moment’s hesitation, she hurried down them, praying there was some escape hidden below.

There wasn’t. The room was almost completely dark, the only light coming from a small window, shining silvery moonlight across the only object in the room. A full length mirror sat in the middle of the room. Alli stared at it for a moment. It was almost… mesmerizing to stare at. She took a stop forward unintentially, then another. *What am I doing?* the thought briefly crossed her mind, but was quickly drowned out by the beauty of the glass shimmering sweetly. It was like the mirror was drawing her in.

Alli looked into it, seeing not herself, but a prettier version of Alli. Her eyes widened at the image. She was gorgeous, in a strange, subtle way. Alli looked down at herself, knowing that wasn’t really her that she was seeing, but when she looked up, she saw it. A hint of a smile in her own eyes. Something that had been lacking for far too long. The one thing Alli wanted.

She reached a hand out, waiting for it to touch the cool glass, reminding herself it was just an illusion. Instead, Alli suddenly felt like the ground dropped out from beneath her. Everything went black, and Alli felt herself falling…

…falling…

…falling…

It took her a moment to notice that she wasn’t hitting the hard bottom with a bone breaking force. She slowly opened her eyes, only noticing then that she had them squeezed tightly shut. It was still dark, but every few seconds, a small, colored light would flash past. She tried to reach out and touch one, but they were always just out of her reach.

Alli had just resigned herself to that fact when she felt another sensation. She was slowing down, more floating than falling. Finally, with barely a thud, she hit the ground. Or rather, dropped gently to it.

—

Wonderlight is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland, the fifth book in a series of fairy tales I’m working on. I finally got myself to write something, and this was the first scene I actually wanted to write, Alli discovering “Wonderland” for the first time.

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Not productive.

I just realized there are three weeks until Easter. I’ve only written 8.2k since the beginning of Lent. I was supposed to write 40k. I now need to pull almost NaNo status numbers for the next three weeks so I can get it. So what am I doing?

……playing a game.

It’s a ridiculously addictive MMORPG I used to play forever ago. I just downloaded it a few days ago because I was just looking for something to distract me. It definitely worked. How about this: starting tomorrow, I don’t get to play the game at all until I hit 1.6k. Does that sound fair enough?

I’m gonna stick with it regardless and see where it goes.

Love you all.

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School sucks, weight loss goals, and other stuff happening.

I never liked school. I hate concentrating, have the worst memory, and the worst attention span. I’m taking three classes this semester, on five days of the week.

Monday:

Total Body Sculpting at 11-11:50am. I don’t like mornings, and this is the earliest class I’ve ever taken. Yet somehow, I really like it. There’s some weird thing about fitness that makes you hate it the first couple weeks, then suddenly enjoy it once you get through that. It’s bizarre, but I like it.

Scouts at 5:45-whenever we get back. My sister and I usually babysit or just chill in the nursery. It’s usually pretty fun, though it gets boring sometimes if my friend doesn’t come, but that’s okay. Sister bonding time can be fun too.

Tuesday:

Basic Music at 7-9:50pm. This is the most brainless class ever, considering I’ve been doing music since I was 5. (That’s ten– almost eleven– years) I basically (hah puns) just sit there and draw for 2.5-3 hours (We sometimes get out a bit early), except last week, when I didn’t have a pencil, and I don’t like drawing with pen. I ended up with three plot pages… I should do this more often.

Wednesday:

More PE. I’m taken home by my sister, so I have to wait at school an hour after class, but that’s not too bad considering last semester I had a three hour break.

Choir 2:30-whenever we get back (usually stupidly late). Okay, I thought I would love choir. I missed it so much last semester when I couldn’t do it, and it just all around sucked when I had to sit in the pews on Christmas. But really, I don’t like it anymore. We aren’t split up into age groups anymore, so we practice for two hours with a bunch of little kids who can’t keep still. In addition to that, we have to enunciate like crazy, but the choir director only hears the little kids in front of him, rather than the older kids who are (over)doing it. I always end up with a headache and it’s just not as fun as it used to be, which really sucks.

Thursday:

Physical Science at 3-6:50. I signed up for a four hour class this semester. I can’t figure out why I thought that long was a good idea, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. The teacher likes to go off on tangents, talking about Alaska, where he’s from, or just babbling in general. In addition, we have a 25-30min break and usually get out early. My only problem is: I AM NOT A SCIENCE PERSON. I’m horrible at it, but it’s a general ed course, so I have to take it. Ugh. At least it’s mildly entertaining. Also, I get really hungry in the middle of it and don’t usually have money. That’s also annoying. Whatever.

Friday:

PE. My sister takes me to and from school, so I don’t have to get my siblings ready. I actually really like Fridays. I have the rest of the day to just chill.

Sunday:

Church either 8:30- or 9:30-1:30ish. I love singing in the choir at our parish because we sight-read hard pieces (sometimes in other languages, usually Latin), rather than doing them a million times over with little kids, and it’s definitely improved my sight-reading skills.

So basically, I have way more stuff this semester than I thought before writing it all down here. But at the same time, I also have a lot of writing time. So why aren’t I writing much? As Dawn pointed out to me semi-recently, it’s because I have a lot of writing time. Too much. I think that’s why I work so well under NaNo stress, I have a deadline and it’s not too far off. I never feel like I have enough time for it, but I somehow manage it because of that sort of adrenaline rush I get. Hell, I finish Camp NaNo in June, getting 45k by the 20th and the last 5k past midnight at a summer camp (Thank you, leaders, for letting me use your laptop <3). It’s that looming deadline that makes me want to finish it.

I’ve decided to write 40k during Lent (get it, ’cause it’s 40 days and 40 nights and 40k words hah I’m so clever). I did this last year and it was great. This year… I started while I was in my “I can’t write ever” phase, so I only have… 6889 so far as I type this. Of course, I’m going to count this post, but that’s irrelevent. I’ve done a lot of plotting, kind of picked up my NaNo novel in the past couple days, and started on another novel. I feel like this should add up to more than that number, but I guess not. But that’s okay, I only have a month to do the last 33211 or so (head math. It sucks), so that should get my bum in gear.

Weight loss: I’ve been trying to lose weight for a while. It’s been going… eh. Today, I decided to start calorie counting again, via an app on my iPod. To lose 20lbs, at a rate of 1.5lb a week, I should finish right before my birthday, if all goes well. That would be a great birthday present to myself, so I’m going to go for it. Wish me luck. I’ll occasionally update all of you on my progress, maybe.

What else is happening in my life? Not much. I’ve become addicted to Youtube since I gave up Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, which probably isn’t a good thing. I’ve gone in TinyChat a lot lately, which is not necessarily helpful. I’ve started learning a bit of Spanish via Duolingo (if you have one, add me as TheCarpinator). I’m probably going to try my hand at German too, once I get a decent grasp of Spanish.

I think that’s about it for now. I’ll update later. <3 you all.

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I am a terrible human being.

“I am totes gonna update every week! It’ll be perfect!”
L. O. L, PAST SELF. L O FREAKING L.

Really. I apologize for never updating ever. I’ve been so bad about writing in general, it’s pathetic. I wrote MAYBE 5k during January, and 2.5k since the beginning of Lent, despite resolving to write 40k by Easter. And that’s being nice to me and counting what I wrote today. It wasn’t even 1k before that. Oy.

The thing is, school sucks and, even though I feel like I have a lot of free time, I don’t factor in all that time my mom is telling me to do something, or I have church or choir or something. I don’t actually have as much as I think I have.

BUT STARTING RIGHT NOW, I will update a ton. And do a hella ton of writing too. Oh look at me, I’m sounding like a NorCal person. ANYWAY. I started writing the other day and it felt SO GOOD. I missed it so much, and I didn’t even notice. And yet I’m not writing right now? I am a confused person. I promise I will write after this.

It’s funny, because when I gave up Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr for Lent, I didn’t actually imagine I’d become addicted to YOUTUBE of all things, but I am. In fact, I’m on it right now listening to a live version of a song. But I am getting off topic.

Wait, what was the topic in the first place? There really wasn’t one, besides pointing out how dumb I can be. Whatever, maybe I should do something smart and write.

I will leave you with the song I’m listening to right now. Starring my favorite celebrity crush right now. The quality sucks, but it’s the best one on youtube that I’ve found.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPnRz8ZfKiI

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I don’t know?

Despite all my resolutions about writing like crazy this year, I came to a stand-still in that general area. Here’s a bit of babbling, thanks to a photo prompt on tumblr provided by WriteWorld.

—

It happened again. It always happens. She should be used to it by now, but it still hurt. She pulled out a book after ten, twenty minutes went by. But she couldn’t concentrate on it. Her thoughts flew to him, who promised her he would come. She wouldn’t eat, not just yet, waiting on the slim hope that this one would be different. That there would be some silly and understandable excuse, as the minutes became an hour, and longer. The candles were flickering low when she finally gave up. She’d been stood up again. Maybe dating wasn’t her thing, because after so many different times, this was just too much.

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I was looking at average word counts I would need to get half a million words by the end of the year. I did account for both Camp NaNo sessions and NaNoWriMo, and I decided I would do 40,000 a month, excluding December, when I would do 30,000 and catch up on anything I didn’t write yet. So that ends up as:

January: 40k
February: 40k
March: 40k
April: 50k
May: 40k
June: 40k
July: 40k
August: 50k
September: 40k
October: 40k
November: 50k
December 30K

This will actually force me to write in the month after NaNo, which is not something I usually do because I’m a lazy bum and “recovering from NaNo” is a decent enough excuse. I didn’t write more than two lines all December, but now that I’m writing again, I’m mad I didn’t do it before. This, coupled with a tablet drawing a week, should be a very interesting experience.