A List of Various Things on My Mind This Week
1) It's September already? When did that happen? This year is going by too fast. Of course, I think that about virtually every year I've lived through, so this should be nothing new. I did enjoy my Labor Day weekend, though, which was a nice benefit of it being September already. While other people went on exciting trips to exotic places, devoted the time to long-term projects, or otherwise made active use of the extra day off, Craig and I just caught up on sleep at home. It felt so refreshing. I think it was the first time that week that I felt so rested and alert, and I fear it might be the last time for quite a while. The study of law might be challenging and rewarding, but it doesn't allow the student, or those around said student, much time for sleep.
2) Speaking of students... Even though it's been two years since college, I still feel a little strange whenever September rolls around and school starts again. Students swarm the streets in backpacks, talking about class schedules, buying textbooks, and homework, and I have to remind myself that I'm not one of them. It still doesn't feel that long ago that I too was worrying about grades and exams, rather than working from nine to five and collecting a paycheck. When you've been in school for most of your life, it's very hard to get out of that mindset, especially if you actually liked being in school. To be sure, I don't miss the pressure to excel, the competitiveness, or that terrible sinking feeling of having done really, truly horrifically on a test or in class. I admit to large twinges of envy over the longer breaks, though, and I miss being mentally stimulated and challenged every day by class lectures, homework problems, and readings. I guess it doesn't help that a lot of people I know are still in school, so I still get to hear a lot about professors, classes, papers, and exams.
On the other hand, I've gotten very used to having my evenings free to do whatever I want, instead of having to devote them to homework or studying. Everyday chores like cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping take up enough time as it is. I have no idea how students living by themselves off-campus manage. No wonder the stereotypical student is supposed to eat nothing but ramen and cereal all day. Living in the dorms spared me that, but of course they had their own problems. If nothing else, I guess I definitely don't miss that part of being a student.
3) Whatever other good qualities I may have, I am, to my shame and guilt, not a very good daughter. It's not that my parents were ever mean or neglectful toward me, or emotionally distant; they are good parents, with their own quirks, faults, and strengths. They taught me so much about life, more than I can count or even remember, and still do. They are good people, and they mean well toward their one precious child, the only one they have. But throughout my life, they've always felt more like taskmasters than friends to me, pushing me to get good grades, get accepted into high-ranking colleges, and be just as good as all the other kids whose achievements they admired, so I don't feel comfortable talking to them about such things as feelings, struggles, or personal beliefs, let alone confiding in them. It doesn't help that all three of us suffer from severe cases of verbal inarticulacy. It's not so bad when we're face-to-face, but at a distance, communication and closeness just become extremely difficult.
I bring this up now only because I've recently been half-planning, half-balking over a possible trip home to visit my parents. One of the biggest ways I've been a bad daughter is that I haven't been very good about keeping in touch with them. Even in college, the first time I'd ever lived apart from them, what started out as daily phone calls turned into weekly phone calls within a few weeks, which then turned into monthly (or even less frequent) phone calls as my days became busier and more stressful. After that, the less I called them, the less I wanted to call them, because I'd have that much more to account for and apologize for when I did. In the last few phone calls and e-mails I've exchanged with my mom, though, she keeps mentioning that I haven't been back home since Christmas and I should really visit them. Finally, on a whim, I gave in and suggested visiting them over Columbus Day weekend. We've been negotiating over it since.
Honestly, I don't know what my problem is. My parents have the right to request the extremely dubious pleasure of my presence at least twice a year, considering how much they put into bringing me up and molding me into the person I am. I owe them so much more than just this. They've been so understanding through the long lapses between phone calls and e-mails, and they're always full of advice and help when I do call. I just...I don't know. Last year, I did my best to visit some friends I missed, as well as my parents. Usually, after visiting my friends, I actually felt sad coming back to Washington, DC, because my empty apartment felt so lonely in comparison to the camaraderie and good times we'd just shared. After every visit to my parents, though, I always felt relieved to come back and be on my own again. I just don't have much fun at home around my parents. I'm not sure if this makes me an undutiful daughter or just normal, but it does make me dread booking the flight back. Not that I won't do it, eventually, but I feel both guilty and reluctant about this visit all the same. And that's why I feel like I'm a bad daughter.
4) To my fellow readers of fantasy novels: Have you ever noticed that it's usually the male authors who write the large-scale, sweeping novels affecting the entire world and the fate of whole countries, armies, or races, while female authors tend to develop the stories and personalities of a handful of characters? The stories of female writers may well span the globe and feature cataclysmic events, but they usually tend to focus more intensely on a few favorite characters, instead of having huge casts of characters and titanic historical forces involved. Obviously, this doesn't describe the way every male and female fantasy author writes; Neil Gaiman and Jacqueline Carey, for example, not to mention my beloved Lord Dunsany, all belie this theory for their respective genders. Still, I'm thinking of male writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, George R.R. Martin, and David Eddings, as opposed to authoresses like Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, or Marion Bradley. For the most part, male writers seem to tend more toward penning epic, thousand-page behemoths, while female writers tend to be narrower but deeper in their writing.
This no doubt enormous over-generalization is brought to you by the hundredth or so revival of a fantasy story I've been writing off-and-on for about four years with an online friend. Well, I think of it as a story and he thinks of it as an "RP" or a game...which is one of the problems, actually. More relevantly, however, I'm having trouble even finding motivation to continue writing, because my fellow co-writer is male and very definitely falls into the wannabe-epic-storyteller category, while I just as definitely am a smaller-scale type. While I'm happy just coming up with adventures for our major characters, he's determined to escalate the current conflict into a massive world nuclear war pitting nation against nation and species against species. I...just can't. The very possibility of what is already a pretty large-scale story (at least in my eyes) expanding so far beyond my control leaves me aghast. When I asked myself, "Why? Why is he insisting on developing the story laterally when there's so much potential just going forward? Why does he want to make it bigger and bigger and bigger?", I decided it must be because that's how many male fantasy writers seem to work. They think big, even when maybe they should consider keeping their story smaller, and they stick with it until the multitudinous storylines they created get so tangled up that they themselves can no longer unravel them and keep writing.
Sometimes, the differences between men and women make me cheer, "Vive la difference!". Sometimes, like now, they just exhaust me. Especially when it comes down to a difference in methods, rather than content. In this case, it feels like trying to use a jeweler's tools to build a cathedral. I really don't want to get in the way of building something awesome like a cathedral, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the right person to do it, either.
5) This past week, Craig and I have been watching the US Open tennis championships, which I haven't done for quite a while. I like watching most sports, except baseball (and I have problems with hockey, because I have a hard time keeping up with where the puck is at any given moment), but I especially enjoy watching tennis because I used to play a little myself and I love watching what they can do when playing at a high level. Amusingly, Craig's and my personal favorites are the current #1- and #2-ranked male tennis players in the world, respectively, who have one of the most amazing rivalries I've ever seen. Granted, Rafael Nadal, the left-handed, fearsome-topspin-wielding, jaw-droppingly fast Spaniard who is Craig's favorite and the current world #1, tends to beat my favorite, the ever-graceful, nonchalantly masterful, and wonderfully versatile Roger Federer, who held the #1 spot for many years before Nadal usurped him. But when they inevitably meet each other in the finals ("inevitably" because the two of them are just that much better and more consistent than any other player in the world), they play such incredible tennis against each other that it's always worth watching, no matter who eventually wins.
Of all the magnificent shots, stunning upsets, and generally excellent play that's occurred over the past week, one of my favorite moments of the tournament happened during a match that I would never have thought I'd find memorable. Before I continue, I should mention that tennis, like all sports, is full of statistics. First serve speeds, second serve speeds, first serve percentages, number of aces, winners, unforced errors, break point chances, double faults, percentage of matches won when up or down any number of sets...the number of things you can keep track of while playing tennis go on and on. Like with all sports, the commentators love pulling up these statistics during a match and analyzing them. Now, we were watching a match between Venus Williams, the heavy favorite who elected to wear a very short, tight dress that day, and Shahar Peer, her sensibly clad and impressively mentally-competitive Israeli opponent. During the match, Venus kept tugging at her dress after each serve and point, because its tightness kept hindering her. Most female tennis players do tend to tug at their dresses as a sort of nervous or idle gesture on the court, not unlike bouncing balls or spinning their rackets in their hands, but she was doing it so often that even the commentators noticed and remarked on it. Eventually, through some statistical and observational magic that I will never for the life of me comprehend, the commentators pulled up what is now my favorite tennis statistic of all time: Dress Tugs, Venus Williams vs. Shahar Peer. Venus won overwhelmingly with 43 dress tugs to Peer's 4. How they managed to count them all, and for that matter why they were counting at all, is beyond me. I was very amused.
6) I take too long to write blog entries that don't even end up being very informative. I need to work on this.
2) Speaking of students... Even though it's been two years since college, I still feel a little strange whenever September rolls around and school starts again. Students swarm the streets in backpacks, talking about class schedules, buying textbooks, and homework, and I have to remind myself that I'm not one of them. It still doesn't feel that long ago that I too was worrying about grades and exams, rather than working from nine to five and collecting a paycheck. When you've been in school for most of your life, it's very hard to get out of that mindset, especially if you actually liked being in school. To be sure, I don't miss the pressure to excel, the competitiveness, or that terrible sinking feeling of having done really, truly horrifically on a test or in class. I admit to large twinges of envy over the longer breaks, though, and I miss being mentally stimulated and challenged every day by class lectures, homework problems, and readings. I guess it doesn't help that a lot of people I know are still in school, so I still get to hear a lot about professors, classes, papers, and exams.
On the other hand, I've gotten very used to having my evenings free to do whatever I want, instead of having to devote them to homework or studying. Everyday chores like cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping take up enough time as it is. I have no idea how students living by themselves off-campus manage. No wonder the stereotypical student is supposed to eat nothing but ramen and cereal all day. Living in the dorms spared me that, but of course they had their own problems. If nothing else, I guess I definitely don't miss that part of being a student.
3) Whatever other good qualities I may have, I am, to my shame and guilt, not a very good daughter. It's not that my parents were ever mean or neglectful toward me, or emotionally distant; they are good parents, with their own quirks, faults, and strengths. They taught me so much about life, more than I can count or even remember, and still do. They are good people, and they mean well toward their one precious child, the only one they have. But throughout my life, they've always felt more like taskmasters than friends to me, pushing me to get good grades, get accepted into high-ranking colleges, and be just as good as all the other kids whose achievements they admired, so I don't feel comfortable talking to them about such things as feelings, struggles, or personal beliefs, let alone confiding in them. It doesn't help that all three of us suffer from severe cases of verbal inarticulacy. It's not so bad when we're face-to-face, but at a distance, communication and closeness just become extremely difficult.
I bring this up now only because I've recently been half-planning, half-balking over a possible trip home to visit my parents. One of the biggest ways I've been a bad daughter is that I haven't been very good about keeping in touch with them. Even in college, the first time I'd ever lived apart from them, what started out as daily phone calls turned into weekly phone calls within a few weeks, which then turned into monthly (or even less frequent) phone calls as my days became busier and more stressful. After that, the less I called them, the less I wanted to call them, because I'd have that much more to account for and apologize for when I did. In the last few phone calls and e-mails I've exchanged with my mom, though, she keeps mentioning that I haven't been back home since Christmas and I should really visit them. Finally, on a whim, I gave in and suggested visiting them over Columbus Day weekend. We've been negotiating over it since.
Honestly, I don't know what my problem is. My parents have the right to request the extremely dubious pleasure of my presence at least twice a year, considering how much they put into bringing me up and molding me into the person I am. I owe them so much more than just this. They've been so understanding through the long lapses between phone calls and e-mails, and they're always full of advice and help when I do call. I just...I don't know. Last year, I did my best to visit some friends I missed, as well as my parents. Usually, after visiting my friends, I actually felt sad coming back to Washington, DC, because my empty apartment felt so lonely in comparison to the camaraderie and good times we'd just shared. After every visit to my parents, though, I always felt relieved to come back and be on my own again. I just don't have much fun at home around my parents. I'm not sure if this makes me an undutiful daughter or just normal, but it does make me dread booking the flight back. Not that I won't do it, eventually, but I feel both guilty and reluctant about this visit all the same. And that's why I feel like I'm a bad daughter.
4) To my fellow readers of fantasy novels: Have you ever noticed that it's usually the male authors who write the large-scale, sweeping novels affecting the entire world and the fate of whole countries, armies, or races, while female authors tend to develop the stories and personalities of a handful of characters? The stories of female writers may well span the globe and feature cataclysmic events, but they usually tend to focus more intensely on a few favorite characters, instead of having huge casts of characters and titanic historical forces involved. Obviously, this doesn't describe the way every male and female fantasy author writes; Neil Gaiman and Jacqueline Carey, for example, not to mention my beloved Lord Dunsany, all belie this theory for their respective genders. Still, I'm thinking of male writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind, George R.R. Martin, and David Eddings, as opposed to authoresses like Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, or Marion Bradley. For the most part, male writers seem to tend more toward penning epic, thousand-page behemoths, while female writers tend to be narrower but deeper in their writing.
This no doubt enormous over-generalization is brought to you by the hundredth or so revival of a fantasy story I've been writing off-and-on for about four years with an online friend. Well, I think of it as a story and he thinks of it as an "RP" or a game...which is one of the problems, actually. More relevantly, however, I'm having trouble even finding motivation to continue writing, because my fellow co-writer is male and very definitely falls into the wannabe-epic-storyteller category, while I just as definitely am a smaller-scale type. While I'm happy just coming up with adventures for our major characters, he's determined to escalate the current conflict into a massive world nuclear war pitting nation against nation and species against species. I...just can't. The very possibility of what is already a pretty large-scale story (at least in my eyes) expanding so far beyond my control leaves me aghast. When I asked myself, "Why? Why is he insisting on developing the story laterally when there's so much potential just going forward? Why does he want to make it bigger and bigger and bigger?", I decided it must be because that's how many male fantasy writers seem to work. They think big, even when maybe they should consider keeping their story smaller, and they stick with it until the multitudinous storylines they created get so tangled up that they themselves can no longer unravel them and keep writing.
Sometimes, the differences between men and women make me cheer, "Vive la difference!". Sometimes, like now, they just exhaust me. Especially when it comes down to a difference in methods, rather than content. In this case, it feels like trying to use a jeweler's tools to build a cathedral. I really don't want to get in the way of building something awesome like a cathedral, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the right person to do it, either.
5) This past week, Craig and I have been watching the US Open tennis championships, which I haven't done for quite a while. I like watching most sports, except baseball (and I have problems with hockey, because I have a hard time keeping up with where the puck is at any given moment), but I especially enjoy watching tennis because I used to play a little myself and I love watching what they can do when playing at a high level. Amusingly, Craig's and my personal favorites are the current #1- and #2-ranked male tennis players in the world, respectively, who have one of the most amazing rivalries I've ever seen. Granted, Rafael Nadal, the left-handed, fearsome-topspin-wielding, jaw-droppingly fast Spaniard who is Craig's favorite and the current world #1, tends to beat my favorite, the ever-graceful, nonchalantly masterful, and wonderfully versatile Roger Federer, who held the #1 spot for many years before Nadal usurped him. But when they inevitably meet each other in the finals ("inevitably" because the two of them are just that much better and more consistent than any other player in the world), they play such incredible tennis against each other that it's always worth watching, no matter who eventually wins.
Of all the magnificent shots, stunning upsets, and generally excellent play that's occurred over the past week, one of my favorite moments of the tournament happened during a match that I would never have thought I'd find memorable. Before I continue, I should mention that tennis, like all sports, is full of statistics. First serve speeds, second serve speeds, first serve percentages, number of aces, winners, unforced errors, break point chances, double faults, percentage of matches won when up or down any number of sets...the number of things you can keep track of while playing tennis go on and on. Like with all sports, the commentators love pulling up these statistics during a match and analyzing them. Now, we were watching a match between Venus Williams, the heavy favorite who elected to wear a very short, tight dress that day, and Shahar Peer, her sensibly clad and impressively mentally-competitive Israeli opponent. During the match, Venus kept tugging at her dress after each serve and point, because its tightness kept hindering her. Most female tennis players do tend to tug at their dresses as a sort of nervous or idle gesture on the court, not unlike bouncing balls or spinning their rackets in their hands, but she was doing it so often that even the commentators noticed and remarked on it. Eventually, through some statistical and observational magic that I will never for the life of me comprehend, the commentators pulled up what is now my favorite tennis statistic of all time: Dress Tugs, Venus Williams vs. Shahar Peer. Venus won overwhelmingly with 43 dress tugs to Peer's 4. How they managed to count them all, and for that matter why they were counting at all, is beyond me. I was very amused.
6) I take too long to write blog entries that don't even end up being very informative. I need to work on this.