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| Hi, folks, it's been a whole month and I still don't have a real life. I have a slightly higher quality fake life, though, if that counts. (Meaning, I've stopped reading fantasy and started reading great literature again. =P) My dad's been in Rhode Island at a conference for Catholic professors (he's coming home today) and he couldn't take along all the books they sent him, so he left a pile at home and I've been raiding them. I read Brideshead Revisited, which I'd started in high school but never finished -- and I'm glad I didn't, because I wouldn't have appreciated it quite as much without having read the Ion and the Symposium (my favorite Socratic dialogues). It is staggeringly good. Evelyn Waugh is so amazing -- every line is a gem. For example, at the part where Charles and Sebastian are hanging about in Venice, he says, "I was drowning in honey, stingless." Just six words, but so much meaning.
Other than that I've been working. Working, working, working. As Danielle says, "Life ends, but fee sheets go on forever." Yup.
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| I'm having daydream withdrawal, but I can't stop rehab. I need a real life... | | |
| Thanks for the advice, all. =) I know sometimes you post things on here just to blow off steam, and then the temptation is to be resentful when others comment with ideas or tips, but I'm not really interested in that approach any more. I AM looking for a solution, and I firmly believe there is one (or more than one), and that I can find it. Your ideas have helped me get on track with this.
So, I'm laying plans. They're vague, ambitious and scary, and I have no idea what form they'll end up in... but they're a start. | | |
| Right now, I spend about half my time working, a quarter of my time doing dishes, and the remainder watching Doctor Who, Columbo and random Dorothy Sayers mysteries on Netflix. Or rereading mediocre fantasy that I've been through a thousand times. I really have no life.
I suppose I could read some really good literature, for a change, but I'm getting a bit tired of living vicariously through fiction. And yet, I have no inspiration to do anything, no ideas for how to spend my time other than washing dishes, filing papers and writing the occasional piece of junk, which must then be tossed. I can't waste this summer, the last three months of freedom before I have to go back to Geek School for nine months and sit in sterile classrooms and listen to people squabble about technicalities just so they can get an A for effort without having to actually use their brains. But wasting it is what I'm doing, since nothing I've tried seems to make me happy.
I usually have a good time when I try to get out and do something. In fact, I had a blast when Aly, Alisan, Peter, James and I went to the Rubicon for a reading of Laignee's latest play, and I even enjoyed the end of the year dance for the first time since the tradition started. It's different now, though... last summer these sorts of things would make me excited to be alive, and fill me with a kind of trembling anticipation of what might be ahead. Something changed, and now I just don't care. Don't have any direction. Maybe it's because I don't have a goal any more -- I'm not used to that. My high school years were rather rotten in a lot of ways (although brightened by the Shakespeare group), and whenever the going got particularly tough, I would remind myself that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and when I came out of all this I would go to that haven where people were mature and actually cared about the truth. For many years I actually believed that, but even after I got wiser and realized that no place and no body is perfect, it was still the easiest way out to just push all those doubts into the back of the closet and set TAC up as the little paradise in the mountains where all my problems would be solved. I knew better, and that was why it kind of soured on me toward the end of August, when I had to keep telling myself over and over that it was simply not possible for this tiny little college of normal human beings here on planet earth (third rock from the sun) to be the answer to every unspoken longing of my heart, and yet knew all along that I would be horribly disappointed anyway when I got there and found I was right. And I was. Freshman year was disappointing. It wasn't pure torture, but it certainly wasn't paradise. There were a lot of things even my rational side hadn't prepared me for.
So now I'm here. In that golden period of life, the Undergraduate Age. And I have nothing to look forward to. It's paralyzing. I've ALWAYS lived my life with a view to the future. I thought I was living in the moment when I went to public high school, because moment-by-moment was sometimes the only way I felt I could stay alive, but really I was just comforting myself with thoughts of the future. Now I don't have that luxury, because there's nothing distinct ahead, and I'm tired of inventing idyllic lives for myself. None of them work, anyway, because they require me to be... somebody, instead of a black hole. I really don't understand why I'm the eldest, except maybe because I'm a trial run. I'm supposed to be blazing trails and setting standards, but I guess I got the shallow end of the gene pool. I'm even going to be the shortest. It's kind of ironic.
This all sounds very melodramatic, of course. Which is slightly frustrating, because, oddly enough, that's not how I feel at all. I just feel dull, and flat, and rather empty. World-weary at age eighteen -- that's quite an accomplishment. I'm not in pain. I'm just completely apathetic. I tried to get out and have a healthy, balanced life, but that didn't help, so then I just sort of gave up and now I'm lying around all day, staring out the window or at a TV/computer screen, and probably gaining weight. I'm not even sure why I'm writing this. I'm not really looking for sympathy; I'm not sure many people even read this blog any more. I never post anything interesting. Sometimes I just want to log on and vomit every single secret I own (of which there aren't many) into that little text box and throw it like a stone into the huge sea of the internet, more like going outside and screaming at the sky than out of any desire for my mundane little secrets to be read. It's a bit therapeutic, I suppose.
On the bright side, we have a new kitten, and in two weeks I can get a new phone (which is perfect timing, since my old one has just decided that it's done calling people, no matter how many bars of reception or battery it has). Of course, a peaches-and-cream cat and a new electronic device won't really solve my existential difficulties.
Next year has to be better. If it isn't, I'll just go get myself eaten by a mountain lion.
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| I've decided to ease myself back into writing by focusing on dialogue (which I categorically refuse to spell 'dialog', despite any amount of vicious red underlining from the spellcheck gods). So I've been imagining scenarios, as vividly as possible, and then just "listening" to what I naturally think the characters should say. I'm trying as much as possible not to edit. I've decided to post them here for critique from anyone who's interested -- so please, share. Tell me if something is awkward, inconsistent, or simply unrealistic -- and why. Also, it would be interesting to hear what you got out of the dialogue -- who you thought each character was, and how they appeared in the conversation.
take 1
"What are you doing here? -- Good Lord, what happened to your face?"
"I got hit by a bike on my lunch break. They sent me home."
"What kind of bike -- a harley? Honey, you have a black eye and a broken nose!"
"He was going pretty fast."
"And you didn't go to the ER? Geez, look at you!"
"I already have looked at myself, thanks. I just cut my face open a bit -- I'm fine. But apparently I'm too ugly to be seen at work, so here I am. I left you a message, but I guess you were out. Where's your coat? Aren't you cold?"
"Don't change the subject. Actually, I'm not cold at all. I'm nice and hot. Which reminds me -- Jayden's in the car back there. Do you want to know why?"
"Uh... why?"
"Your son just got himself expelled from the most expensive private school in town, that's why. Two weeks before final exams."
"What the Hell -- ? How?"
"Intoxication on the premises."
"Oh, Jayden..."
"I was just coming in to call you at the office."
"What an idiotic thing for him to do, and on top of everything else..."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh -- nothing, just my accident and everything."
"Yeah?"
"...well, and I lost my wallet. -- But it's OK, I already cancelled all my cards! It's just the cash that's gone. Uh... the whole thing must have fallen out of my pocket when that bike hit me."
"How exactly did you get a black eye from a bike accident, again?"
"The guy's elbow hit me in the face as I went down. -- But that's irrelevant right now, because I am going to talk to our sweet little boy and if he's only grounded for the rest of his life he'll be lucky."
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