In which I am *frighteningly* epic.
Initially, this post was going to be a bunch of lists. It turned into something else entirely. Written completely for my own reference, because I just, hmmm, I need to get these words out of my head? They've all been circling around in there and sometimes it just gets too loud, like if I don't get it out, it'll keep crowding in there like mental static. Ever have a day where you just felt like talking and talking and talking? Yeah. Multiply that by, like, 500.
2008-01-30
Woke up at 5AM. Or maybe it was 6AM. Either way, it wasn't long after I went to sleep; maybe like 3 or 4hours. But I was freaking out about buying my Panic tickets, and, yeah, couldn't fall back asleep when I rolled over and looked at my clock and started thinking about how I would have to be up in a few hours to buy the tickets. Uuugh, and I was freaking out so much right before the actual ticket purchasing moment, thinking something was going to go wrong or the site was going to freeze.
And, OF COURSE, as soon as I had my ticket secured THEY PUT THE GODDAMN VIP TICKETS ON SALE AGAIN HAHAHAHAHAHA FUCKERS. So I bought one of those, too. And now I have one VIP ticket and one general admission ticket and I'm probably going to be an idiot and forget to sell my general admission ticket until like two days before the show. Then I just basically worked on emptying my inbox until David came over.
Went to San Francisco with Erica and David. Went and bought my Cobra ticket first, and then to Lark in the Morning, where I bought a drum for my mom. Don't know the name for them, Native American style handheld ones? Very nice sound. Enjoyed checking out the wooden djembe-type drums; they had an interesting hollowness/cleanness of sound to them. Some of the doumbeks were fantastic, too, with deep resounding basses and high, clear tones. There was one small djembe I liked, but it was out of my price range, sigh. It had a really amazing depth of sound for such a small drum, though. I really want a djembe I can play standing up; my legs get tired playing my big one even when I'm sitting in the correct positioning. (It's probably technically too big for me. Damn. But the basssss. I love the deep bass so much, ugh.) Erica got tiny, tiny harmonicas, so cute.
Then we headed to Goodwill. Tried on about five fucking billion shirts. On every single button-up shirt, the shoulders or chest were too tight for me. WOE. I WANT A BUTTON UP SHIRT. I, blah, I look at myself in the mirror lately and feel fat and gross and having 80% of the shirts I tried on be too tight was just, ugh, not helpful. I did find some cute longsleeve shirts despite the shoulder/breasts issues, and a very cute gray hoodie (which Erica found for me, yay) that, while not My Perfect Hoodie of Ultimate Awesomeness (which I don't believe actually exists anywhere, for any price), is pretty fantastic and fits very nicely.
The mirror where I was trying on shirts reeked of urine. Ick. I love Goodwill, but, damn. I do not love the smell of urine.
I was amazed when the total of my purchases came to $20. Buying jeans at non-second-hand stores I'd forgotten how reasonable and wonderful it is to shop second-hand. Love love love.
Then we were off for food, because Erica was getting hangry (hungry + angry). First stop was a sandwich shop, next stop was a grill place. I talked about feeling irritated over dinner, which, wow, still so nerve-wracking, but I'm feeling like my efforts towards greater honesty this year have been going really well. I haven't been regretting my decisions to open up more and show more vulnerability.
Then we went KARAOKAING. EEEEE. When we first got into the place, I was like, um? Weird? Because there were a bunch of older business people drunkenly singing and cheering each other on, and y'know, we were in the Castro; I'd been hoping for some young, hot lesbians. Or at least, like, one. But after I had like three pineapple/vodka cocktails I was totally feeling the karaoke dorkiness. I signed up to sing Panic At the Disco's "I Write Sins Not Tragedies."
Now, I find this interesting. When I was younger, I used to sing publicly all the time. In the past year-ish, I've been singing in semi-public environments--for my classmates, friends, etc.--and slowly been growing more confident in my voice. But, man, I was effing NERVOUS about going up on that dumb karaoke stage. I thought it was pretty stupid that I was nervous, because, whatever, it's not that I really *care* what these drunken business people think about my singing. But, well. The part of me that's really fearful of judgment does. I consciously thought about the worst case scenarios, imagined them laughing at me, imagined them having conversations later where they laughed about that girl at the karaoke place, the one who fucked up all her notes/forgot all the words/whatever. And breathed, and kept thinking about those things, picturing them. The breathing did alleviate the nervousness, and eventually my heartrate got down to a more normal rate. Also, the alcohol kicked in after awhile, and even though I think that's shitty way to gain self-confidence (and a completely unreal way of gaining self-confidence), it did help me loosen up a bit.
I forgot a bunch of words, especially at the beginning, but I think I did pretty well despite that. Pretty well for it being KARAOKE, and all. And people were nice to me afterwards! I got high fives! Partially probably due to the fact that the DJ announced that it was my first time karaokeing, but whatever, I'll take what I can get. I think it's funny that Erica and I are talking about having a band and I still have all these hangups about exposing myself in public. If I have time to practice, I'm usually okay, but, yeah. Doing stuff on the fly, I feel like these alarms go off in my head, blaring things like WHAT IF YOU FUCK THAT PART UP, WHAT IF YOU MESS UP? WHAT THEN? Probably why I like singing *along* with things better than I like singing them on my own, because my screw-ups aren't as obvious and when I forget words I can fall back on just letting the music play.
Then David and I did "Would You Light My Candle" from RENT, and yaaay, I was having a lot of fun by that point. I was even able to laugh at all the people in the crowd who SO OBVIOUSLY didn't know the song at all. I signed up to do Come On Eileen, too, but we left before my card came up because it was taking forever; the place started getting packed. I don't know why I didn't think to do Come On Eileen first, considering I know that song like the back of my hand. In fact, I think I need to put it on right now. Man, I do love that iTunes does keyword searches, because now I can just type in "Come On Eileen" and all three versions I have pop up.
After that we tried to go dancing. I put on the new wench-y shirt I'd bought at Goodwill and everything, but The Café was completely dead and the Badlands was completely overrun with penises. Blah. Then to Andy's for food. I tried to order a vegan sandwich, which wasn't on their menu at all--their Garden Burger had cheese in it, so I just asked if it was possible to have a sandwich with the veggie stuff and no pattie, basically--but, um, yeah. It came smothered in mayonnaise. And for some reason I was just SO SAD about that. This kind of shit happens a lot when I go out to eat--lately it's been nearly every other time I've gone out to eat--and I, just. I am getting so fucking sick of it. I tell people I'm ALLERGIC TO DAIRY, for fuck's sake. What if I had a really acute dairy allergy? What then? Because I keep getting fucking plates smothered in cheese and mayonnaise and eggs in my fried rice and JUST ARGH. This sort of just reinforced my notion that I really, really want to try going on a raw food diet for awhile. I'm getting sick of going out to eat and ending up paying for food I didn't even order, and I'm getting really sick of going to diners and eating shitty meat substitutes and overly hydrogenated french fries and feeling vaguely ill and really tired afterwards. I want the food I eat to rejuvenate me, not make me feel laden down with grease and fat and preservatives.
I did get to give away the leftovers of my sandwich to a woman as we were walking to the car, and I felt good about that. I wasn't too stoked on eating the other half of the sandwich and my instinct is that she would appreciate more than I could.
And then fiiiinally, we went home. I'd been up for waaay too many hours by this point and general grumpiness was setting in. My mom seemed to like the drum, but I don't think she loves it. Ah, well. I really like how it sounds, heh. I guess I'm just in a drum collecting phase right now. Apparently she wants a "deeper sounding" drum? I'll have to take her to Lark in the Morning sometime so she can scope them out for herself. Part of me disappointed that it's not the drum she wanted--I wonder if she would have told me not to buy if I'd gotten through to her on the phone?--but at the same time, I think it was the right choice to buy the drum, because the drum and I connected and I think there was a reason for that.
Despite my immense sleepiness, I was really feeling that some ritual would do me good at this point, so I lit some sage, smudged my room and burned some mugwort. I re-read bits of my VisionQuest journal by candle and breathed in the mugwort and remembered. I lay in bed and drummed with the drum I'd just bought, drumming trance-style, and drummed myself to sleep, basically.
2008-01-31
Hahah, I slept until like 5PM? That's almost all I remember about this day. I lost a whole day of my life, ALARMING. :O I had some really interesting dreams, I remember that.
Ooooh, wait. This was the day I had the amazing bedhead from going to sleep with my hair wet. And then Erica and my mom and I hung out and did stuff and talked about Naka-Ima principles and we did some drumming I think? Or at least I did. My mom was in the midst of her pillowcase sewing frenzy, I seem to recall. And it appears I did some del.icio.us obsessing here. Cleaned up the shitload of papers on my desk for reasons I now can't remember. Probably was looking for those Netflix movies I've had for like three weeks (or more?) and haven't watched. I think I watched Star Trek: TNG with Erica until we both passed out.
2008-02-01
Worked with Richard. Super-short job at the trailer park where I got to read Widening Circles by Joanna Macy and he gave me the bag of pot (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA). We skipped lunch because we couldn't think of anywhere that served good vegan food in Richmond, as neither of us knows the restaurants there very well. He proposed McDonald's. UM, NO THANKS. He got me a tank of gas since the job only paid $70 and helped me fill up my tires.
Randomly started assembling "how I got sucked into bandom" post because I've been meaning to write one since I found murklins' so hilarious. Wrote poetry. Watched more TNG with Erica stoned which was... interesting. I half-slept through the episode where Tasha was fighting to death with the alien "tribeswoman." The whole episode struck me as really racist; the "alien race," whatever their name was, just. They were so many awful stereotypes in the way they were presented. I really did not like it. So maybe it's better that I slept through some of it. Though I was VASTLY AMUSED at how, YET AGAIN, an alien race is stunned by Tasha's position of power and also TOTALLY WANTING TO TAP HER ASS.
I ate so much sugar while stoned. I think I was munching on a Newman's cookie literally moments before falling asleep. Not good! This is why when he handed me the gigantic bag of pot I went :O Because, really, I don't smoke that often, and when I do I generally get PRETTY MESSED UP. So his bag is going to last me for like ten years if I don't share it, and probably two years if I do share it. (Although the plum wine he gave me for my birthday didn't take long to disappear down my guzzle, ahahahaha. Me + sweet alcohol = OTP.)
2008-02-02, -03, -04
Ummmm. I remember this day being mostly a blur of bandom and bookmarking. Actually, all three of these days sort of were, hence the grouping together.
Saturday (02-02), I was trying to work on my bandombigbang and ended up going on a MISSION to learn more about Spencer Smith. Because, see, I had this idea where I would write an angsty Ryan/Spencer story. And in this story, Ryan would, well... he'd be me, basically. The friend who falls in love with his friends, in this case, Spencer. But I started struggling with this idea, because there are aspects of Ryan's personality that don't fit with the themes I was wanting to explore. I was wanting to write a story about someone who's perpetually falling in love with people they think they can save, full of lots of angstangstangst and awkward teenage years full of wanting and not knowing what to do about it and wanting to feel needed and blah blah blah. So since Ryan wasn't feeling like the right fit for this I thought, hey, maybe Spencer? And quickly realized that there is little to no information on Spencer out there. Like, almost virtually nothing in comparison to how much canon I can find on Ryan--I get browse his old LJ entries (AHAHAHA BANDOM HAS INCREASED MY STALKERAGE TO SUCH A FRIGHTENING DEGREE) and I can see lots of interviews with him and look at his song lyrics. Ryan may not be as "accessible" as Pete Wentz, but there's plenty to work with. I really didn't have that much luck with Spencer! And I got really, really sidetracked looking for more info on him. I think this was the day that I ended up organizing the dates on all my bandom bookmarks, actually, going back and re-watching footage and basically trying to make it so that all my Panic bookmarks had *some* kind of date associated with them, at the very least a year.
I looked through lots of early Ryan stuff and was endlessly amused at his LJ-addictedness. I also learned a lot about Spencer and his love of shoes. And I saw my first drumline clips! AAAAAAAH, HOW HAD I MISSED THEM BEFORE? SO SO AMAZING. SO AMAZING. NO WORDS FOR HOW AMAZING THE DRUM LINES ARE. Just, Jesus. Brendon and his sexualizing of his drumming, NNNNNGH, with his hip thrusting at the end. And Ryan concentrating *so hard* and wielding his sticks with such vehemence, and his LITTLE FLAILING ARMS I DON'T KNOW.
Sunday (02-03) was a lot more of the same. I started using my del.icio.us account as an archive, since I'd implemented the dating system. It was like, hey, if I have dates for all this stuff, I can use it like a really inefficient timeline! Of course, that wasn't good enough for me, so on an idiot whim I created panic_timeline, which I almost know for a fact I will do nothing with except fuck around privately for a few months and then delete it when I'm bored. WHATEVER, IT MADE PERFECT SENSE AT THE TIME. My one and only entry there thus far is the YouTube clips which I haven't even finished organizing, hahahaha. I really need to get over this compulsive urge to organize the entirety of bandom all on my own. Seriously. Not going to happen. (But I can't stop dreaming about a photo archive where all the pictures are tagged by person and pairing and year and month and nnnngh, man, all these uber-organized archives are SO PRETTY IN MY HEAD.)
And then it was sushi and pot cookie time and that was delicious. I ate way too many of those cookies and had a really sore throat by the end of the evening, and also was not as stoned as I expected to be. The last time I ate cookies was, God, how long ago? Back at the co-ops in Berkeley, so must have been two or three years since I'd had one. Ha, I remember the co-op party where I had my first pot cookie and thought I was going to go out of my mind with how stoned I was. Good times, good times. That co-op sure was good for a whole crapload of random drug experiences.
Um, wow, I'm getting totally off topic here. Whatever, this is my LJ post, I can get off topic if I want. It's not like anyone's reading this, anyway. I would have crapped out after the first paragraph, myself, and then skimmed down to the bottom to see if the important conclusionary note was down there. ANYWAY.
(Going back to edit this and insert stuff about Monday (02-04): worked at the Teen Center, met the new co-worker. Um. Dude got suspended from college for a semester for fighting. Not sure what I think of that. He's also a very dude-ish dude. And I still really, really dislike Annoying Co-Worker. Like, my dislike of him is intensifying every single time I work with him, and it's getting to the point where I feel like I should talk to my boss, because this guy is just, argh, I don't know. Leaves early all the time, and sucks up so awfully in front of our boss and just outright lies about stuff. Nothing major, exactly, but enough that I twitch whenever he tries to be friendly to me now, because I just do NOT trust him at all. Of course, I am completely scared to talk to my boss because I have this feeling that me trying to tell him another co-worker isn't performing up to snuff is just ridiculous, considering I'm ALWAYS late--generally about 10-15 minutes for each of my shifts--and not exactly the paragon of a teen center employee, or anything.
And then I think I bookmarked my fiction on del.icio.us for like six hours or something. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA. Seriously, it was amazing. I geeked out on incredibly specific wordcounts--I have tags for 100 words! 150 words! 300 words! eeeeee WORDCOUNT SPECIFICITY I LOVE YOU!--and bookmarking by person, tense, and date.)
I could get off into rambling about how Sunday (02-03) was also the day I was reading meta about LJ, like this and this and this. This is especially interesting to me in light of how I'm changing my LJ practices, and my changing LJ practices are very reflective of how I'm changing the way I relate to people in ALL aspects of my life. Like, as I open to people here more, I'm also opening up to people more at the Teen Center, my friends, and random people I encounter. I just find it so interesting how, at some points, I completely agreed with some of that stuff I was reading (especially re: not wanting personal information mixed with fannish at people's journals), and now I'm in such a different place. My inter-personal relationships are so different, and my way of relating to people has changed so drastically. I remember a time when I would skim past any entry someone wrote that contained unhappy/stressed out stuff, and now I'm much more able to read that without feeling uncomfortable. I feel a lot less stressed out by the lack of control I have over my content, and while, yeah, I'm still sad, sometimes about the fact that I can't go to a centralized discussion location for all the fandoms I'm interested in, I'm much more accepting of this. It's like, the inherent nature of LJ is finally staring to sink in a bit. My friendslist is a way of keeping up with fannish squee, yes, but it's also a method of seeing where my friends' interests are. It's a noticeboard for whatever's going on with them. And my journal, whichever journal I'm posting to, is just another place where I can express what's going on with me at that moment.
Hey, this segues perfectly into two stories I wanted to write down about:
2008-02-05
Working w/ Richard again. So, this was a day when the whole being open with people and being more interested in people and taking risks when I interact with people thing came up.
We were working in this government building and went to meet the boss fellow, errr, crap, what was his name? Jim? Jerry? I think it was Jerry. Anyway, generally when we go to jobs like this, I say a polite hello to whoever our contact is and leave it at that; I'm not all that open or social with strangers. I find interacting with strangers very weird, and feel pretty uncomfortable when people try to chat me up because I feel completely inadequate at the small talk thing. This is for a whole bunch of reasons--growing up in a household where American standards of politeness weren't our norm, and then some bad experiences with "false politeness" and a backlash effect where I'm withdrawn rather than trying to be "fake" with others, etc. Anyway.
So, I tried to just talk to Jerry, because we were waiting around and I was curious to see what would happen if I just said what was on my mind. I don't think the polite chit-chat will ever be my thing, but if there is one thing I can do, it's to just say what I'm thinking at any given moment, because God knows I'm always thinking about *something*. Anyway, I made a comment about this super cute picture of a puppy that he had up on his noticeboard. I usually would have just looked at the picture and thought AWWWWWWWW really loudly in my head but not said anything because, I don't know, I guess I have this assumption that the other person wouldn't normally care?
This led to us having a conversation about the puppy, him talking about his dogs, etc. And he got into telling the story of the puppy's mom, and how the puppy's mom was sort of aberrant in that she was a single birth; she had no siblings.
The story went like this:
Grandma doggie went into labor on a Sunday. Their regular vet was out of town, so they had the option of going to the emergency room or waiting for their doctor to drive down from somewhere relatively far away (something like forty five minutes). They opted to wait for their doctor.
The reason the doctor was out of town was because he was with his wife doing some wine-tasting, so when he came back he brought her. He helped grandma doggie give birth, but the birth was still born, and they worked on the puppy for about a half hour trying to get her to breathe to no avail. The doctor gave up. But the doctor's wife decided to keep at it, and after an hour and a half of trying to get the puppy to breathe, she finally came back to life.
I find this story really, really amazing. Because, as Jerry said, if it hadn't been for a number of special circumstances--if grandma hadn't gone into labor on a Sunday, if they hadn't opted to not go to the emergency room, if the doctor's wife hadn't been with him--that puppy wouldn't have lived. And I never would have seen the picture of the the now-grown puppy's baby. And if I hadn't made the off-hand comment to Jerry I never would have heard this story. I, just. I'm amazed at how serendipity works like that, sometimes. It was almost as if I were asking the universe for a miracle--"please, show me that the world isn't as scary as I think it is?"--and it instantly granted it to me. Especially in light of all the stuff I've been reading in Joanna's book, about the interconnectedness of life and all living beings and the way that, if we just *look*, we can see a truly endless abundance in life. That's really how I was feeling right then. In such awe of the wonder of life, of birth, of the kindness and compassion of a woman who would sit with a stillborn puppy and massage it back to life with gentle perseverance.
The other story wasn't really so grand as that one, but I went and got an orange julius drink at the mall when Richard and I were going out for our post-work dinner, and I asked the server what his name was. He's been working there ever since I've gone to that mall--um, since I was 7 or 8, I think?--and in all that time I haven't found out his name. I, just. I felt such an amazing degree of compassion for him, in a way that I don't generally feel with people I don't know. I looked at him and had this realization, God, he's a person, just like me, and he probably has lots of shitty days where he feels like no one cares about him or anything he does. And that day, *I* was the person who cared. I was the person who wanted to know his name.
This is again tying into all the things Joanna's book has me thinking about. There's a part where she talks about holding people's hands, and it got me imagining what it would be like to hold my enemy's hands. Not that I have enemies, per se, but, hmmm, to hold the hand of someone who I had a very strong aversion to, say, Jerry Falwell (or however you spell his name). Like, I imagined what it would be like to hold the hand of someone like him, just hold it in mine, and look at it, and realize that he was just like me. That he was just another person, that he had veins running along the backs of his hands, that he has knuckles and a palm and a wrist and that in so many ways we are the same. For all the separation I feel from huge segments of the world, when it comes down to those essential basics, there is that undeniable common ground, that place where I can start with every person.
So, yeah. I was feeling that sort of inclination with this guy, this urge to just see him as a person, instead of seeing him as the person preparing my smoothie or whatever. I guess I really just don't want to keep walking through the world like I'm in some kind of shell, like I'm behind this glass wall, inside, looking out. There are people all around me, people I can see and recognize and connect to and share with. And I think I've missed a lot of opportunities to do so because I've been scared--scared that people will think my attempts are stupid, that I'm stupid, that I'm not interesting, that I'm boring, that I'm pretentious or ill-informed or awkward or bumbling or weird or creepy or WHATEVER. Normally, I wouldn't have asked his name because it would have seemed so out of the blue, a question where I would have told myself I shouldn't annoy him when he's just trying to work or whatever.
But when I asked him his name we made eye contact, and I smiled at him--not out of some notion of politeness, just a spontaneous uprising of a smile. He seemed surprised, in a pleased sort of way, that I was curious. He asked my name in return. It was the simplest moment, really, but also anything but.
And, hmmm, let's see, after a dinner of lemon veggie chicken and Hong Kong style noodles with Richard, I went home, bookmarked some more of my fic, did a whole bunch of reading because I was getting sick of having a shitload of tabs open. My mom showed Erica a bunch of pictures of the German side of my family, including hiiiiii-larious pictures of my dad in his early childhood. He had the DORKIEST haircut, and his glasses, oh, God, THEY WERE HILARIOUS. We also saw the cutest pictures of my cousin Christina dressed up for the snow; she looked like a little red marshmallow, ahahaha. There is really nothing more entertaining to me than an adorable baby, honestly.
I was also very moved to see a picture of my paternal grandfather. I know I've seen the picture before, but it's been years. I never met him, and I really... I really sense that my dad is very, very sad about his death. He died when my dad was a teenager; I think it was a problem related to his diabetes. And, God, he just looks so much like my father; they have the exact same nose and shape of ears and brow. The resemblance is so striking, and it was almost surreal, holding this black and white picture of this man who has the essence of my father's face but with whom I have no physical recollection of ever meeting. I had this sudden urge to take pictures of all the family members I've never met and make a collage out of them, put them on my wall, and just look at them every now and then and remember them, remember all these people who are my blood that I've never had the opportunity to know except through these moments of history collected on celluloid.
The rest of the night wasn't too eventful; spent a lot of time organizing my early fic postings and bookmarking them. Erica was amused at my obsessive need to organize them. She showed me a sex blog. We talked about silly things like the wonder twins and discussed what kind of songs we should try to learn for our twincestuously-fabulous band.
2008-02-06
Ummmmm. Wednesday is another blur. I slept through selling tickets for work on accident and feel pretty fucking guilty about that. I was all prepared to 'fess up to my boss, too, but when he wasn't even in when I got into the Teen Center and he didn't even ask how ticket selling went when he called. I called him before school got out--I'd had this plan of going back to sell tickets when they got out at 2:10--but he didn't answer and I didn't want to go sell the tickets after school enough to just do it on my own. And he didn't ask how ticket selling went when he called and I didn't volunteer the information. :/ I think I'm a really bad employee. But I'm not planning on writing it on my timesheet, since I didn't do it, obviously, but still. Ack.
Mmmm, I posted more of the fic snippets that were rotting on my harddrive. I'm sort of on the fence about whether I should have posted them or just deleted them. I feel like this approach I have to fic-posting--posting anything, regardless of how shitty I think it is, as long as it's *finished*--might not really be the greatest. I mean, I have this theory that no matter what I think of something, there's probably someone out there who'll enjoy it. I also like to be a completist, so posting everything I write appeals to that side of me immensely. Buuuuut. It also means I post a lot stuff that is really more of a writer's workshop than a polished piece of fiction. And I'm not necessarily against that, precisely, but I'm starting to really wonder about the wiseness (fuck, is wiseness even a word?) of this approach. It's almost the equivalent of this post, actually, which is a great deal of verbal diarrhea. And it's not that I have a problem with verbal diarrhea. In fact, I find it wonderfully liberating and wish I indulged in it more often.
But I spew out the fiction in a lot of ways for the same reason I spewed out this post--this stuff just comes out of me, and I figure since fandom is the kind of place where, on more than one occasion, I've enjoyed reading other people's writing workshops, that perhaps I can treat my fiction posting the same way.
Hmmm. Don't know! No real conclusive thoughts on it one way or another. Probably just thinking about it because I'm bookmarking my stuff and some of it really doesn't seem worth the effort of bookmarking. On the one hand, I don't genuinely want to throw it away--well, except in the sense that it would be relief to throw it ALL away and start on a completely clean slate, because, Christ, wouldn't that be a completely different kind of liberating? To not have this whole body of previous work hanging over my shoulder. I wouldn't be able to think things like "well, can't use that ending, I used it for those three other stories in those three other fandoms, I've repeated this theme too many times." I'd just be able to write whatever I wanted. And, I mean, sometimes I do, but a lot of times I don't. There are a lot of stories I've stopped halfway through or killed before writing a word of them because I've already *done* it so many times that I can't in good conscience do it again. I do find it pretty hilarious that 90% of my stories end on very similar notes, though; that's something I just can't seem to help. My style, I guess?
Anyway, despite all my fantasizing about DELETING EVERYTHING EVER, it is nice to have a record, to have a stick to measure the current situation against, but I also don't know how smart it is to treat all my fiction equally. It's *not* all equal. The stuff I get five betas for and proofread extensively and actually have mutliple drafts for is going to be different than that commentfic I wrote for that one porn battle. That's just a fact. Now, whether one's better than the other's hard to say--there's a lot of value in stream-of-consciousness/workshop writing, I think. There's a genuineness to it that doesn't quite come through in a lot of my polished work, and there's a raw aspect to it that I really like. That self-editing I was talking about up above often doesn't come into play when I'm really just writing on the fly. So I guess they both have different kind of values. Probably just depends on how much of it I think is wise to share, at the end of the day. (I KNOW PEOPLE OUT THERE ARE JUDGING ME ON MY IMMENSE BODY OF WORK CONTAINING IDIOTIC TYPOS OMG NOT THINKING ABOUT IT LA LA LA. Hahaha, not true. I am thinking about it. But I judge people on formatting, so, y'know, what goes around comes around. I'm also feeling weirdly okay about people judging me. In a way I didn't really think was possible before now.)
Oh, right. Wednesday. Um. I don't remember the rest! The end. I think I tried to clear out my inbox some more and Erica fell asleep in my chair. Or something. (ETA to self: Dinnnnnner, duh. And then hanging out w/ Erica and her playing bass and me on djembe. Also, weren't there like two other drum meditations in here? The two in the papasan chair.)
2008-02-07
Hahaha, shortest entry of them all! I worked, and it was pretty fun; played a lot of pool and some more guitar hero and was amused at the kids' shenanigans. Came home; me and my mom called my brother, who turned 21 today.
God. My brother. Legal aged. This is just... weird. I FEEL SO OLD. He even invited me to go up and get smashed with him, which I was totally down to do, except that I have work tomorrow at 10AM and the ride he was offering wasn't coming back down to Novato soon enough for me. Damn, that would have been fun, though.
Then I drummed for awhile, one really simple rhythm, and tried to really work on my alternating handing (i.e. bass right bass left; tone right tone left tone right; bass left tone right; etc.). And my breathing, which I'm still struggling with big time. I really think I need a teacher or something to guide me through breathing, because I just can't seem to do it for more than few beats without getting lightheaded or losing my rhythm. So difficult!
Then I wrote LJ entries all night. I had to open like seven tabs to write all this, ahahaha. I referenced my profilactic, my del.icio.us, my LJ and my cell phone pictures to figure out all these dates. I knew there was a reason I signed up for all these services.
THE END, JESUS CHRIST, I'M GOING TO BED AND WILL PROBABLY WAKE UP AND LAUGH AT THE FACT THAT I POSTED THIS AT ALL.
Holy GOD. This post is 6,309 words. I, just. DAMN, SELF.
2008-01-30
Woke up at 5AM. Or maybe it was 6AM. Either way, it wasn't long after I went to sleep; maybe like 3 or 4hours. But I was freaking out about buying my Panic tickets, and, yeah, couldn't fall back asleep when I rolled over and looked at my clock and started thinking about how I would have to be up in a few hours to buy the tickets. Uuugh, and I was freaking out so much right before the actual ticket purchasing moment, thinking something was going to go wrong or the site was going to freeze.
And, OF COURSE, as soon as I had my ticket secured THEY PUT THE GODDAMN VIP TICKETS ON SALE AGAIN HAHAHAHAHAHA FUCKERS. So I bought one of those, too. And now I have one VIP ticket and one general admission ticket and I'm probably going to be an idiot and forget to sell my general admission ticket until like two days before the show. Then I just basically worked on emptying my inbox until David came over.
Went to San Francisco with Erica and David. Went and bought my Cobra ticket first, and then to Lark in the Morning, where I bought a drum for my mom. Don't know the name for them, Native American style handheld ones? Very nice sound. Enjoyed checking out the wooden djembe-type drums; they had an interesting hollowness/cleanness of sound to them. Some of the doumbeks were fantastic, too, with deep resounding basses and high, clear tones. There was one small djembe I liked, but it was out of my price range, sigh. It had a really amazing depth of sound for such a small drum, though. I really want a djembe I can play standing up; my legs get tired playing my big one even when I'm sitting in the correct positioning. (It's probably technically too big for me. Damn. But the basssss. I love the deep bass so much, ugh.) Erica got tiny, tiny harmonicas, so cute.
Then we headed to Goodwill. Tried on about five fucking billion shirts. On every single button-up shirt, the shoulders or chest were too tight for me. WOE. I WANT A BUTTON UP SHIRT. I, blah, I look at myself in the mirror lately and feel fat and gross and having 80% of the shirts I tried on be too tight was just, ugh, not helpful. I did find some cute longsleeve shirts despite the shoulder/breasts issues, and a very cute gray hoodie (which Erica found for me, yay) that, while not My Perfect Hoodie of Ultimate Awesomeness (which I don't believe actually exists anywhere, for any price), is pretty fantastic and fits very nicely.
The mirror where I was trying on shirts reeked of urine. Ick. I love Goodwill, but, damn. I do not love the smell of urine.
I was amazed when the total of my purchases came to $20. Buying jeans at non-second-hand stores I'd forgotten how reasonable and wonderful it is to shop second-hand. Love love love.
Then we were off for food, because Erica was getting hangry (hungry + angry). First stop was a sandwich shop, next stop was a grill place. I talked about feeling irritated over dinner, which, wow, still so nerve-wracking, but I'm feeling like my efforts towards greater honesty this year have been going really well. I haven't been regretting my decisions to open up more and show more vulnerability.
Then we went KARAOKAING. EEEEE. When we first got into the place, I was like, um? Weird? Because there were a bunch of older business people drunkenly singing and cheering each other on, and y'know, we were in the Castro; I'd been hoping for some young, hot lesbians. Or at least, like, one. But after I had like three pineapple/vodka cocktails I was totally feeling the karaoke dorkiness. I signed up to sing Panic At the Disco's "I Write Sins Not Tragedies."
Now, I find this interesting. When I was younger, I used to sing publicly all the time. In the past year-ish, I've been singing in semi-public environments--for my classmates, friends, etc.--and slowly been growing more confident in my voice. But, man, I was effing NERVOUS about going up on that dumb karaoke stage. I thought it was pretty stupid that I was nervous, because, whatever, it's not that I really *care* what these drunken business people think about my singing. But, well. The part of me that's really fearful of judgment does. I consciously thought about the worst case scenarios, imagined them laughing at me, imagined them having conversations later where they laughed about that girl at the karaoke place, the one who fucked up all her notes/forgot all the words/whatever. And breathed, and kept thinking about those things, picturing them. The breathing did alleviate the nervousness, and eventually my heartrate got down to a more normal rate. Also, the alcohol kicked in after awhile, and even though I think that's shitty way to gain self-confidence (and a completely unreal way of gaining self-confidence), it did help me loosen up a bit.
I forgot a bunch of words, especially at the beginning, but I think I did pretty well despite that. Pretty well for it being KARAOKE, and all. And people were nice to me afterwards! I got high fives! Partially probably due to the fact that the DJ announced that it was my first time karaokeing, but whatever, I'll take what I can get. I think it's funny that Erica and I are talking about having a band and I still have all these hangups about exposing myself in public. If I have time to practice, I'm usually okay, but, yeah. Doing stuff on the fly, I feel like these alarms go off in my head, blaring things like WHAT IF YOU FUCK THAT PART UP, WHAT IF YOU MESS UP? WHAT THEN? Probably why I like singing *along* with things better than I like singing them on my own, because my screw-ups aren't as obvious and when I forget words I can fall back on just letting the music play.
Then David and I did "Would You Light My Candle" from RENT, and yaaay, I was having a lot of fun by that point. I was even able to laugh at all the people in the crowd who SO OBVIOUSLY didn't know the song at all. I signed up to do Come On Eileen, too, but we left before my card came up because it was taking forever; the place started getting packed. I don't know why I didn't think to do Come On Eileen first, considering I know that song like the back of my hand. In fact, I think I need to put it on right now. Man, I do love that iTunes does keyword searches, because now I can just type in "Come On Eileen" and all three versions I have pop up.
After that we tried to go dancing. I put on the new wench-y shirt I'd bought at Goodwill and everything, but The Café was completely dead and the Badlands was completely overrun with penises. Blah. Then to Andy's for food. I tried to order a vegan sandwich, which wasn't on their menu at all--their Garden Burger had cheese in it, so I just asked if it was possible to have a sandwich with the veggie stuff and no pattie, basically--but, um, yeah. It came smothered in mayonnaise. And for some reason I was just SO SAD about that. This kind of shit happens a lot when I go out to eat--lately it's been nearly every other time I've gone out to eat--and I, just. I am getting so fucking sick of it. I tell people I'm ALLERGIC TO DAIRY, for fuck's sake. What if I had a really acute dairy allergy? What then? Because I keep getting fucking plates smothered in cheese and mayonnaise and eggs in my fried rice and JUST ARGH. This sort of just reinforced my notion that I really, really want to try going on a raw food diet for awhile. I'm getting sick of going out to eat and ending up paying for food I didn't even order, and I'm getting really sick of going to diners and eating shitty meat substitutes and overly hydrogenated french fries and feeling vaguely ill and really tired afterwards. I want the food I eat to rejuvenate me, not make me feel laden down with grease and fat and preservatives.
I did get to give away the leftovers of my sandwich to a woman as we were walking to the car, and I felt good about that. I wasn't too stoked on eating the other half of the sandwich and my instinct is that she would appreciate more than I could.
And then fiiiinally, we went home. I'd been up for waaay too many hours by this point and general grumpiness was setting in. My mom seemed to like the drum, but I don't think she loves it. Ah, well. I really like how it sounds, heh. I guess I'm just in a drum collecting phase right now. Apparently she wants a "deeper sounding" drum? I'll have to take her to Lark in the Morning sometime so she can scope them out for herself. Part of me disappointed that it's not the drum she wanted--I wonder if she would have told me not to buy if I'd gotten through to her on the phone?--but at the same time, I think it was the right choice to buy the drum, because the drum and I connected and I think there was a reason for that.
Despite my immense sleepiness, I was really feeling that some ritual would do me good at this point, so I lit some sage, smudged my room and burned some mugwort. I re-read bits of my VisionQuest journal by candle and breathed in the mugwort and remembered. I lay in bed and drummed with the drum I'd just bought, drumming trance-style, and drummed myself to sleep, basically.
2008-01-31
Hahah, I slept until like 5PM? That's almost all I remember about this day. I lost a whole day of my life, ALARMING. :O I had some really interesting dreams, I remember that.
Ooooh, wait. This was the day I had the amazing bedhead from going to sleep with my hair wet. And then Erica and my mom and I hung out and did stuff and talked about Naka-Ima principles and we did some drumming I think? Or at least I did. My mom was in the midst of her pillowcase sewing frenzy, I seem to recall. And it appears I did some del.icio.us obsessing here. Cleaned up the shitload of papers on my desk for reasons I now can't remember. Probably was looking for those Netflix movies I've had for like three weeks (or more?) and haven't watched. I think I watched Star Trek: TNG with Erica until we both passed out.
2008-02-01
Worked with Richard. Super-short job at the trailer park where I got to read Widening Circles by Joanna Macy and he gave me the bag of pot (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA). We skipped lunch because we couldn't think of anywhere that served good vegan food in Richmond, as neither of us knows the restaurants there very well. He proposed McDonald's. UM, NO THANKS. He got me a tank of gas since the job only paid $70 and helped me fill up my tires.
Randomly started assembling "how I got sucked into bandom" post because I've been meaning to write one since I found murklins' so hilarious. Wrote poetry. Watched more TNG with Erica stoned which was... interesting. I half-slept through the episode where Tasha was fighting to death with the alien "tribeswoman." The whole episode struck me as really racist; the "alien race," whatever their name was, just. They were so many awful stereotypes in the way they were presented. I really did not like it. So maybe it's better that I slept through some of it. Though I was VASTLY AMUSED at how, YET AGAIN, an alien race is stunned by Tasha's position of power and also TOTALLY WANTING TO TAP HER ASS.
I ate so much sugar while stoned. I think I was munching on a Newman's cookie literally moments before falling asleep. Not good! This is why when he handed me the gigantic bag of pot I went :O Because, really, I don't smoke that often, and when I do I generally get PRETTY MESSED UP. So his bag is going to last me for like ten years if I don't share it, and probably two years if I do share it. (Although the plum wine he gave me for my birthday didn't take long to disappear down my guzzle, ahahahaha. Me + sweet alcohol = OTP.)
2008-02-02, -03, -04
Ummmm. I remember this day being mostly a blur of bandom and bookmarking. Actually, all three of these days sort of were, hence the grouping together.
Saturday (02-02), I was trying to work on my bandombigbang and ended up going on a MISSION to learn more about Spencer Smith. Because, see, I had this idea where I would write an angsty Ryan/Spencer story. And in this story, Ryan would, well... he'd be me, basically. The friend who falls in love with his friends, in this case, Spencer. But I started struggling with this idea, because there are aspects of Ryan's personality that don't fit with the themes I was wanting to explore. I was wanting to write a story about someone who's perpetually falling in love with people they think they can save, full of lots of angstangstangst and awkward teenage years full of wanting and not knowing what to do about it and wanting to feel needed and blah blah blah. So since Ryan wasn't feeling like the right fit for this I thought, hey, maybe Spencer? And quickly realized that there is little to no information on Spencer out there. Like, almost virtually nothing in comparison to how much canon I can find on Ryan--I get browse his old LJ entries (AHAHAHA BANDOM HAS INCREASED MY STALKERAGE TO SUCH A FRIGHTENING DEGREE) and I can see lots of interviews with him and look at his song lyrics. Ryan may not be as "accessible" as Pete Wentz, but there's plenty to work with. I really didn't have that much luck with Spencer! And I got really, really sidetracked looking for more info on him. I think this was the day that I ended up organizing the dates on all my bandom bookmarks, actually, going back and re-watching footage and basically trying to make it so that all my Panic bookmarks had *some* kind of date associated with them, at the very least a year.
I looked through lots of early Ryan stuff and was endlessly amused at his LJ-addictedness. I also learned a lot about Spencer and his love of shoes. And I saw my first drumline clips! AAAAAAAH, HOW HAD I MISSED THEM BEFORE? SO SO AMAZING. SO AMAZING. NO WORDS FOR HOW AMAZING THE DRUM LINES ARE. Just, Jesus. Brendon and his sexualizing of his drumming, NNNNNGH, with his hip thrusting at the end. And Ryan concentrating *so hard* and wielding his sticks with such vehemence, and his LITTLE FLAILING ARMS I DON'T KNOW.
Sunday (02-03) was a lot more of the same. I started using my del.icio.us account as an archive, since I'd implemented the dating system. It was like, hey, if I have dates for all this stuff, I can use it like a really inefficient timeline! Of course, that wasn't good enough for me, so on an idiot whim I created panic_timeline, which I almost know for a fact I will do nothing with except fuck around privately for a few months and then delete it when I'm bored. WHATEVER, IT MADE PERFECT SENSE AT THE TIME. My one and only entry there thus far is the YouTube clips which I haven't even finished organizing, hahahaha. I really need to get over this compulsive urge to organize the entirety of bandom all on my own. Seriously. Not going to happen. (But I can't stop dreaming about a photo archive where all the pictures are tagged by person and pairing and year and month and nnnngh, man, all these uber-organized archives are SO PRETTY IN MY HEAD.)
And then it was sushi and pot cookie time and that was delicious. I ate way too many of those cookies and had a really sore throat by the end of the evening, and also was not as stoned as I expected to be. The last time I ate cookies was, God, how long ago? Back at the co-ops in Berkeley, so must have been two or three years since I'd had one. Ha, I remember the co-op party where I had my first pot cookie and thought I was going to go out of my mind with how stoned I was. Good times, good times. That co-op sure was good for a whole crapload of random drug experiences.
Um, wow, I'm getting totally off topic here. Whatever, this is my LJ post, I can get off topic if I want. It's not like anyone's reading this, anyway. I would have crapped out after the first paragraph, myself, and then skimmed down to the bottom to see if the important conclusionary note was down there. ANYWAY.
(Going back to edit this and insert stuff about Monday (02-04): worked at the Teen Center, met the new co-worker. Um. Dude got suspended from college for a semester for fighting. Not sure what I think of that. He's also a very dude-ish dude. And I still really, really dislike Annoying Co-Worker. Like, my dislike of him is intensifying every single time I work with him, and it's getting to the point where I feel like I should talk to my boss, because this guy is just, argh, I don't know. Leaves early all the time, and sucks up so awfully in front of our boss and just outright lies about stuff. Nothing major, exactly, but enough that I twitch whenever he tries to be friendly to me now, because I just do NOT trust him at all. Of course, I am completely scared to talk to my boss because I have this feeling that me trying to tell him another co-worker isn't performing up to snuff is just ridiculous, considering I'm ALWAYS late--generally about 10-15 minutes for each of my shifts--and not exactly the paragon of a teen center employee, or anything.
And then I think I bookmarked my fiction on del.icio.us for like six hours or something. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA. Seriously, it was amazing. I geeked out on incredibly specific wordcounts--I have tags for 100 words! 150 words! 300 words! eeeeee WORDCOUNT SPECIFICITY I LOVE YOU!--and bookmarking by person, tense, and date.)
I could get off into rambling about how Sunday (02-03) was also the day I was reading meta about LJ, like this and this and this. This is especially interesting to me in light of how I'm changing my LJ practices, and my changing LJ practices are very reflective of how I'm changing the way I relate to people in ALL aspects of my life. Like, as I open to people here more, I'm also opening up to people more at the Teen Center, my friends, and random people I encounter. I just find it so interesting how, at some points, I completely agreed with some of that stuff I was reading (especially re: not wanting personal information mixed with fannish at people's journals), and now I'm in such a different place. My inter-personal relationships are so different, and my way of relating to people has changed so drastically. I remember a time when I would skim past any entry someone wrote that contained unhappy/stressed out stuff, and now I'm much more able to read that without feeling uncomfortable. I feel a lot less stressed out by the lack of control I have over my content, and while, yeah, I'm still sad, sometimes about the fact that I can't go to a centralized discussion location for all the fandoms I'm interested in, I'm much more accepting of this. It's like, the inherent nature of LJ is finally staring to sink in a bit. My friendslist is a way of keeping up with fannish squee, yes, but it's also a method of seeing where my friends' interests are. It's a noticeboard for whatever's going on with them. And my journal, whichever journal I'm posting to, is just another place where I can express what's going on with me at that moment.
Hey, this segues perfectly into two stories I wanted to write down about:
2008-02-05
Working w/ Richard again. So, this was a day when the whole being open with people and being more interested in people and taking risks when I interact with people thing came up.
We were working in this government building and went to meet the boss fellow, errr, crap, what was his name? Jim? Jerry? I think it was Jerry. Anyway, generally when we go to jobs like this, I say a polite hello to whoever our contact is and leave it at that; I'm not all that open or social with strangers. I find interacting with strangers very weird, and feel pretty uncomfortable when people try to chat me up because I feel completely inadequate at the small talk thing. This is for a whole bunch of reasons--growing up in a household where American standards of politeness weren't our norm, and then some bad experiences with "false politeness" and a backlash effect where I'm withdrawn rather than trying to be "fake" with others, etc. Anyway.
So, I tried to just talk to Jerry, because we were waiting around and I was curious to see what would happen if I just said what was on my mind. I don't think the polite chit-chat will ever be my thing, but if there is one thing I can do, it's to just say what I'm thinking at any given moment, because God knows I'm always thinking about *something*. Anyway, I made a comment about this super cute picture of a puppy that he had up on his noticeboard. I usually would have just looked at the picture and thought AWWWWWWWW really loudly in my head but not said anything because, I don't know, I guess I have this assumption that the other person wouldn't normally care?
This led to us having a conversation about the puppy, him talking about his dogs, etc. And he got into telling the story of the puppy's mom, and how the puppy's mom was sort of aberrant in that she was a single birth; she had no siblings.
The story went like this:
Grandma doggie went into labor on a Sunday. Their regular vet was out of town, so they had the option of going to the emergency room or waiting for their doctor to drive down from somewhere relatively far away (something like forty five minutes). They opted to wait for their doctor.
The reason the doctor was out of town was because he was with his wife doing some wine-tasting, so when he came back he brought her. He helped grandma doggie give birth, but the birth was still born, and they worked on the puppy for about a half hour trying to get her to breathe to no avail. The doctor gave up. But the doctor's wife decided to keep at it, and after an hour and a half of trying to get the puppy to breathe, she finally came back to life.
I find this story really, really amazing. Because, as Jerry said, if it hadn't been for a number of special circumstances--if grandma hadn't gone into labor on a Sunday, if they hadn't opted to not go to the emergency room, if the doctor's wife hadn't been with him--that puppy wouldn't have lived. And I never would have seen the picture of the the now-grown puppy's baby. And if I hadn't made the off-hand comment to Jerry I never would have heard this story. I, just. I'm amazed at how serendipity works like that, sometimes. It was almost as if I were asking the universe for a miracle--"please, show me that the world isn't as scary as I think it is?"--and it instantly granted it to me. Especially in light of all the stuff I've been reading in Joanna's book, about the interconnectedness of life and all living beings and the way that, if we just *look*, we can see a truly endless abundance in life. That's really how I was feeling right then. In such awe of the wonder of life, of birth, of the kindness and compassion of a woman who would sit with a stillborn puppy and massage it back to life with gentle perseverance.
The other story wasn't really so grand as that one, but I went and got an orange julius drink at the mall when Richard and I were going out for our post-work dinner, and I asked the server what his name was. He's been working there ever since I've gone to that mall--um, since I was 7 or 8, I think?--and in all that time I haven't found out his name. I, just. I felt such an amazing degree of compassion for him, in a way that I don't generally feel with people I don't know. I looked at him and had this realization, God, he's a person, just like me, and he probably has lots of shitty days where he feels like no one cares about him or anything he does. And that day, *I* was the person who cared. I was the person who wanted to know his name.
This is again tying into all the things Joanna's book has me thinking about. There's a part where she talks about holding people's hands, and it got me imagining what it would be like to hold my enemy's hands. Not that I have enemies, per se, but, hmmm, to hold the hand of someone who I had a very strong aversion to, say, Jerry Falwell (or however you spell his name). Like, I imagined what it would be like to hold the hand of someone like him, just hold it in mine, and look at it, and realize that he was just like me. That he was just another person, that he had veins running along the backs of his hands, that he has knuckles and a palm and a wrist and that in so many ways we are the same. For all the separation I feel from huge segments of the world, when it comes down to those essential basics, there is that undeniable common ground, that place where I can start with every person.
So, yeah. I was feeling that sort of inclination with this guy, this urge to just see him as a person, instead of seeing him as the person preparing my smoothie or whatever. I guess I really just don't want to keep walking through the world like I'm in some kind of shell, like I'm behind this glass wall, inside, looking out. There are people all around me, people I can see and recognize and connect to and share with. And I think I've missed a lot of opportunities to do so because I've been scared--scared that people will think my attempts are stupid, that I'm stupid, that I'm not interesting, that I'm boring, that I'm pretentious or ill-informed or awkward or bumbling or weird or creepy or WHATEVER. Normally, I wouldn't have asked his name because it would have seemed so out of the blue, a question where I would have told myself I shouldn't annoy him when he's just trying to work or whatever.
But when I asked him his name we made eye contact, and I smiled at him--not out of some notion of politeness, just a spontaneous uprising of a smile. He seemed surprised, in a pleased sort of way, that I was curious. He asked my name in return. It was the simplest moment, really, but also anything but.
And, hmmm, let's see, after a dinner of lemon veggie chicken and Hong Kong style noodles with Richard, I went home, bookmarked some more of my fic, did a whole bunch of reading because I was getting sick of having a shitload of tabs open. My mom showed Erica a bunch of pictures of the German side of my family, including hiiiiii-larious pictures of my dad in his early childhood. He had the DORKIEST haircut, and his glasses, oh, God, THEY WERE HILARIOUS. We also saw the cutest pictures of my cousin Christina dressed up for the snow; she looked like a little red marshmallow, ahahaha. There is really nothing more entertaining to me than an adorable baby, honestly.
I was also very moved to see a picture of my paternal grandfather. I know I've seen the picture before, but it's been years. I never met him, and I really... I really sense that my dad is very, very sad about his death. He died when my dad was a teenager; I think it was a problem related to his diabetes. And, God, he just looks so much like my father; they have the exact same nose and shape of ears and brow. The resemblance is so striking, and it was almost surreal, holding this black and white picture of this man who has the essence of my father's face but with whom I have no physical recollection of ever meeting. I had this sudden urge to take pictures of all the family members I've never met and make a collage out of them, put them on my wall, and just look at them every now and then and remember them, remember all these people who are my blood that I've never had the opportunity to know except through these moments of history collected on celluloid.
The rest of the night wasn't too eventful; spent a lot of time organizing my early fic postings and bookmarking them. Erica was amused at my obsessive need to organize them. She showed me a sex blog. We talked about silly things like the wonder twins and discussed what kind of songs we should try to learn for our twincestuously-fabulous band.
2008-02-06
Ummmmm. Wednesday is another blur. I slept through selling tickets for work on accident and feel pretty fucking guilty about that. I was all prepared to 'fess up to my boss, too, but when he wasn't even in when I got into the Teen Center and he didn't even ask how ticket selling went when he called. I called him before school got out--I'd had this plan of going back to sell tickets when they got out at 2:10--but he didn't answer and I didn't want to go sell the tickets after school enough to just do it on my own. And he didn't ask how ticket selling went when he called and I didn't volunteer the information. :/ I think I'm a really bad employee. But I'm not planning on writing it on my timesheet, since I didn't do it, obviously, but still. Ack.
Mmmm, I posted more of the fic snippets that were rotting on my harddrive. I'm sort of on the fence about whether I should have posted them or just deleted them. I feel like this approach I have to fic-posting--posting anything, regardless of how shitty I think it is, as long as it's *finished*--might not really be the greatest. I mean, I have this theory that no matter what I think of something, there's probably someone out there who'll enjoy it. I also like to be a completist, so posting everything I write appeals to that side of me immensely. Buuuuut. It also means I post a lot stuff that is really more of a writer's workshop than a polished piece of fiction. And I'm not necessarily against that, precisely, but I'm starting to really wonder about the wiseness (fuck, is wiseness even a word?) of this approach. It's almost the equivalent of this post, actually, which is a great deal of verbal diarrhea. And it's not that I have a problem with verbal diarrhea. In fact, I find it wonderfully liberating and wish I indulged in it more often.
But I spew out the fiction in a lot of ways for the same reason I spewed out this post--this stuff just comes out of me, and I figure since fandom is the kind of place where, on more than one occasion, I've enjoyed reading other people's writing workshops, that perhaps I can treat my fiction posting the same way.
Hmmm. Don't know! No real conclusive thoughts on it one way or another. Probably just thinking about it because I'm bookmarking my stuff and some of it really doesn't seem worth the effort of bookmarking. On the one hand, I don't genuinely want to throw it away--well, except in the sense that it would be relief to throw it ALL away and start on a completely clean slate, because, Christ, wouldn't that be a completely different kind of liberating? To not have this whole body of previous work hanging over my shoulder. I wouldn't be able to think things like "well, can't use that ending, I used it for those three other stories in those three other fandoms, I've repeated this theme too many times." I'd just be able to write whatever I wanted. And, I mean, sometimes I do, but a lot of times I don't. There are a lot of stories I've stopped halfway through or killed before writing a word of them because I've already *done* it so many times that I can't in good conscience do it again. I do find it pretty hilarious that 90% of my stories end on very similar notes, though; that's something I just can't seem to help. My style, I guess?
Anyway, despite all my fantasizing about DELETING EVERYTHING EVER, it is nice to have a record, to have a stick to measure the current situation against, but I also don't know how smart it is to treat all my fiction equally. It's *not* all equal. The stuff I get five betas for and proofread extensively and actually have mutliple drafts for is going to be different than that commentfic I wrote for that one porn battle. That's just a fact. Now, whether one's better than the other's hard to say--there's a lot of value in stream-of-consciousness/workshop writing, I think. There's a genuineness to it that doesn't quite come through in a lot of my polished work, and there's a raw aspect to it that I really like. That self-editing I was talking about up above often doesn't come into play when I'm really just writing on the fly. So I guess they both have different kind of values. Probably just depends on how much of it I think is wise to share, at the end of the day. (I KNOW PEOPLE OUT THERE ARE JUDGING ME ON MY IMMENSE BODY OF WORK CONTAINING IDIOTIC TYPOS OMG NOT THINKING ABOUT IT LA LA LA. Hahaha, not true. I am thinking about it. But I judge people on formatting, so, y'know, what goes around comes around. I'm also feeling weirdly okay about people judging me. In a way I didn't really think was possible before now.)
Oh, right. Wednesday. Um. I don't remember the rest! The end. I think I tried to clear out my inbox some more and Erica fell asleep in my chair. Or something. (ETA to self: Dinnnnnner, duh. And then hanging out w/ Erica and her playing bass and me on djembe. Also, weren't there like two other drum meditations in here? The two in the papasan chair.)
2008-02-07
Hahaha, shortest entry of them all! I worked, and it was pretty fun; played a lot of pool and some more guitar hero and was amused at the kids' shenanigans. Came home; me and my mom called my brother, who turned 21 today.
God. My brother. Legal aged. This is just... weird. I FEEL SO OLD. He even invited me to go up and get smashed with him, which I was totally down to do, except that I have work tomorrow at 10AM and the ride he was offering wasn't coming back down to Novato soon enough for me. Damn, that would have been fun, though.
Then I drummed for awhile, one really simple rhythm, and tried to really work on my alternating handing (i.e. bass right bass left; tone right tone left tone right; bass left tone right; etc.). And my breathing, which I'm still struggling with big time. I really think I need a teacher or something to guide me through breathing, because I just can't seem to do it for more than few beats without getting lightheaded or losing my rhythm. So difficult!
Then I wrote LJ entries all night. I had to open like seven tabs to write all this, ahahaha. I referenced my profilactic, my del.icio.us, my LJ and my cell phone pictures to figure out all these dates. I knew there was a reason I signed up for all these services.
THE END, JESUS CHRIST, I'M GOING TO BED AND WILL PROBABLY WAKE UP AND LAUGH AT THE FACT THAT I POSTED THIS AT ALL.
Holy GOD. This post is 6,309 words. I, just. DAMN, SELF.