I think I'm going to die

I'm writing a novel. This is a first since high school and those stupid attempts from back then obviously do not count. I should be working on said novel right now. Instead I'm doing this (what's new?) and working on my bio for the CalArts writing program web site. (Hi anyone who comes this way because of that, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I am rather disappointing.)

Holy Shit

I sent out "Chucks." Yeah that's right, I'm actually doing something to get published. Can you be sure it's actually me? That I'm not some horrible pod person. Or my good twin. No you can't. But let's just say I have to thank Alyssa for pointing me toward Duotrope. Very useful.

Oh and I have a lit mag picked out for the hipster story for when I finish the revision and have a few people look at it.

Argh!

I honestly have no idea how I did on my mid term. Though I did get a good amount of typing done. I think I'm going to have to watch Big Brother this year just because the one episode I watched today was ridiculous and the strange blood thirsty person in me just keeps hoping someone will end up murdered. Take for example the moment in the first episode when the lights went out, I was picturing a murder mystery moment, the lights come back up and "OH NO! Rachel and her huge boobs are dead!" ...or Hayden, he could go. I think he's HoH though >_>.

God damn it, I knew this would happen. The show also appears to play into my very judgmental nature.

I am a negligent blogger

I am. I've been reading comics. And studying for Spanish. And working, working, working like a dog. And wanting to punch things. And waiting in looooong lines. And wanting to yell and scream and kick things. And wanting to go to Six Flags and go on the Dare Devil Dive because there is nothing like a 150ft free fall to take all of the stress out of the world. It's like flying.


Listening to Led Zeppelin and procrastinating. I have a mid term tomorrow.

Dia dos

I got a good bit of writing done today. Wrote a research paper on Mexico. And even managed to read a few pages of The Road. Impressive considering how long ago I started reading the damn book.

But I have a Spanish quiz tomorrow. And my phone has stopped holding a charge. And I'm probably going to have to pay to get vaccines redone since I can't prove that I've had them. Also it is much too late at night now and I should go to bed.

Tomorrow, more revision.

Day One

Of summer school and my intensive all summer quest to write for an hour every day.

Today I was reminded of why I hate language classes. I hate talking to random people in my classes, I would greatly prefer if we were told to do all of our work in stony silence. But that is not the way things work in language classes. In language classes it's always, "Work in pairs." Fuck that shit.

That annoyance aside the writing went well. I'm revising a story I wrote for my thesis. Here's to hoping I can publish the damn thing. I plan to finish it tomorrow.

Tonight I have a fuck ton of homework for Spanish, and I should start in on my first composision. Luckily I got Mexico as my country for my report so it shouldn't be too awful.

Mother's Day and Productivity

Woke up at two. Called my mom. Call was dropped. Reminded John to call his mom. Mom called me back. Get reprimanded for calling so late. Admitted to being a lazy slob who can't be arsed to wake up earlier than one on a Sunday. Was admonished to call my grandmothers, something I was already planing on doing.

Head to my apartment. Call my grandma. Get voicemail. Leave a message. Sit down at my computer. Check email. Take a shower. Sit back down at computer. Check my webcomics of choice. Check Facebook. Read some blogs. Chastise myself for not getting work done and generally wasting my weekend. Start Spanish homework. Finish corrections for the midterm and the previous composition. Start on Spanish paper about La Navidad Pasada.

Write the longest first paragraph in Spanish ever...that I have written. Meander off to look at comics on Deviant Art. Check email. Talk to a friend on Facebook. Have a nervous break down over my financial situation as usual. Get Coldstone ice cream with John.

Spend an hour reading comics on the woes of being Luigi. As in Mario's brother. Discover a Star Wars comic that parodies the first ever Peanuts strip, a strip I have seen ten million times thanks to the power of Gluck.

Curse at myself for being such a lazy piece of shit. Finish Spanish paper. Dick around on the internet a bit. Put every Pearl Jam song I own on shuffle repeat and remove myself from my computer. Rewrite the first page of my hipster story to make it coherent. Get to the point where I stopped confusing the names of the two boys in the story and sit down to start typing.

Get a call from John asking if I want food. Answer yes. Food has been lacking after all. Type. Type. Type. John tells me food will be ready in eight minutes. Type. Type. Type. Food is ready. I will be over shortly. Type. Type. Save. Type. Run over to John's apartment. Eat while watching American Pickers. Play some Pokemon red.

Convince myself to play a "quick" game of League of Legends. "I'll run back home and type for an hour after. The game won't last more than forty minutes."

Game goes for an hour five. Fuck. John asks if he can play a ladder game of LoL in two hours time. I give my blessing and run back to my apartment to type like a fiend. Do this instead.

Open Mic

They got me with the promise of a free Disneyland pass. So I went up, read a couple poems, cracked a couple jokes and sat down. I lost the raffle for the Disneyland pass, which put a damper on things. I could have really used a free trip to Disneyland.

I did get a $15 iTunes gift card. This means I need to make decisions and pick an album that I want to buy. That's going to be fun. In the mean time I have a Spanish test tomorrow, and I need to finish my hipster story and write critiques.

Oh and I have my workshop to look forward to. That'll be great.

Pasadena

Well I guess it's best to be writing a non-fiction piece about LA wile in LA. I even drove past some of the places I mention in the story earlier today and late last night.

I told my sister I would pick her up from work last night at midnight over by USC. I insisted to myself that I would turn around and go straight home after I got her home, after all I had shit to do the next day. Lost of shit. But food and Target intervened and I ended up taking her to work and taking the 110 back to her house.

I've been sitting at her desk since I got back working diligently, mostly diligently on my story. On occasion Eddie Izzard causes problems with productivity, but that's okay he's an executive transvestite.

I have three more sections of my story to write and then I have the ADVENTURES OF ANNOYING FUCKING HIPSTERS to work on for Tuesday. I have two and a half hours to get this accomplished.

Oh and don't forget the critiques, gotta do that too.

MONEY

It's May 1st. You should have been able to ascertain that from the date in the heading, but that's not the point.

CalArts cashed my check which is good I guess. Still waiting on my Gluck money so that I can disperse it to the four winds. Paying John back, paying my cell phone bill, buying a new tire for my car, maybe paying down my credit card, and this is all assuming that it doesn't go straight into my student account and pay off some of my summer fees.

The State of Getting Shit Done

I should leave for Spanish instead I'm going to write this. Story with a shitty name, and an equally shitty ending is done. I need to write my non-fiction story and another story for my thesis by next Tuesday. This means I need to actually get work done this weekend and the rest of the week so I don't have a repeat of last Monday.

Oh and apparently now I have to write 40 pages instead of 30. That's like...a whole other story. Fuck. I also need to buy a back issue of Black Clock to read and write a critique of for this.

Because I Should Be Getting Shit Done

The last day has been filled with me wondering what in the fucking world makes me think I'm any good at this fucking shit. Really. The story that I am currently stalled on page eight of is not that great. I can't even finish the damn thing. And I can tell you right now that I am not looking forward to hearing what my professor has to say about it because more likely than not it will be soul killing.

I'm pretty certain suicide fantasies are not a good thing. In fact I'm pretty sure they are the opposite of a good thing. But they are what comes into my mind when I think about the possibility of bombing Spanish and not graduating on time. And well that's not on, nor is it conducive to getting any fucking writing done.

I've dropped the f-bomb three times in this fucking post.

En Espanol

Does writing in elementary Spanish count as writing every day? Because I did that today.

No...

Didn't think so.

This is unfortunate.

Well to counteract that I will write this pile of uselessness.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

I wrote a page of non-fiction today. Admittedly, a good chunk of it was a quote, but it counts. Ha. There.

Also I'll have you know, I taught a little girl how to subtract today. Though that little girl's older sister was a bit of bitch to her. This fact is unacceptable considering the little girl in question loves dinosaurs which makes her awesome unlike her hipster in training sister. (She wears Disney Digital 3D glasses with the lenses popped out, and does not appear to have brushed her hair in her life)

Well Would You Look At That

I finished typing a story that I've been typing since last quarter. Aren't you proud of me? I know I am. Fourteen whole pages.

This doesn't change the fact that I still need to finish this other story (which I still don't have a title for, well other than the one A. so helpfully suggested but I'm not sure if "Title of This Piece of Crap Story" will fly so well), and type it before Friday.

And after that, well after that I need to come up with one or two more stories and write them. Never mind the Spanish homework I need to do. Or all of the classes I need to not fail.

I signed up for summer school today though. That's something else to be proud of me for. The fact that I have to be in Riverside until August so I can take Spanish so that I can go to CalArts. Ha. You wouldn't happen to have $500 would you?

A Sordid Tale of Romance

Oh Live Journal, do you think that if you don't work I will have no choice but to not procrastinate? Well then despite the many years we have been together, you don't know me very well.

You see, I have others. That's right. Others. As in more than one. One, his name is Facebook, another, Blogspot, but they aren't the only ones. There are countless others. Hell, some times I just load a comic I've already read ten times just to see if anything is different, anything to get away from getting any actual work done. I don't need you because they satisfy me like you can't.

What's that? You're working again. Well, then maybe we can work this out.

Business as Usual

Well not quite, I have been getting some writing done. Every day for that matter. Some very embarrassing writing that I shall not share with you, and some work on my next short story which don't yet have a name for.

I can say this though, stopping work two pages into a story and not picking it back up until a month later is a very bad idea and you should never do it if you ever want to write a good story.

Might I also add, Spanish is perhaps one of the most soul draining classes I have ever taken. Just yesterday we had a quiz, and we have a major test scheduled for Monday.

I Never Said That

I remember once, I was in the grocery store with my mom. We were in the produce section and I asked if we could get pears. My mom turned toward me and said, "But you hate pears."

This came as a great surprise to me seeing as I love pears. In fact I love everything about them, the taste, the smell, the texture, the way you can keep sucking at the core and pull out more and more pear. So I asked her what gave her that idea and she told me that I had said it at some point in the past.

Baffling. Because I would never say such horrible things about pears and I know my mom understands sarcasm seeing as she's the source of my own sarcastic tendencies. There was no way she could have heard me saying something like, "Noooo, I HATE pears," and misconstrued it as seriousness.

More recently my boyfriend mentioned something similar, that I had at some point in the past said that I did not like something that I love. This was very confusing because I know I would never say that. There have been other instances of this over the years and recently I've gotten to thinking.

Is it possible to have a very mild form of DID? Can you have other personalities that come out just long enough to say that chocolate is shitty and then disappear without any recollection on your part. What if there are other things that I've done that were out of character? What if I'm missing huge swaths of time? What if people thinking I hate pears is the least of my worries?

Hopefully my mom is the crazy one and not me. Because, seriously, I love pears.

A Recent Realization

I don't want to figure out what I'm going to do with my life just yet.

This is why I'm devoting the next two years to getting yet another useless degree.

With Sunrise Still Hours Away

If I believed in the devil, right now I would say that Minesweeper came from him. That's right, the primitive point and click Windows game is gifted to us from the deepest abyss of the infernal pit.

Why do I say this? Because I have a ten page paper due in...seven hours and I have written two and a half pages of it thanks to that blasted game.

And look at me now, procrastinating even more. This is not healthy. And it is no why to get work done.

Concerning Music

When we are in my car, and I am listening to Painkiller by Judas Priest, if you take out your phone and proceed to make a call I will be displeased. And if I move my hand toward the volume knob it's not to turn it down so you can talk on the phone it's to turn it so that I can hear one of the best albums ever made over you yelling, pointlessly into the phone. So don't tell me it's okay when my hand moves toward the volume knob because that action is motivated purely by how much I hate you.


P.S. I am torn over weather I should stay at work an extra hour on Wednesday on your behalf. On the one hand I could use the extra $14. On the other, I have been invited out for drinks and board games and video games with friends.

P.P.S. I can not wait until next quarter, when I will no longer feel any obligation to give you a ride.

P.P.P.S. I hate you.

Yet Again...

I should be working on a research paper for women's studies.

And a paper for English.

And a paper for Non-fiction.

And typing up my poetry revisions.

I have it all written out very nicely on a piece of paper ad to do list, or T.D.L. as I've called them since high school when i would carry a small notebook with me everywhere I went. I've crossed quite a few things off the list already. But this damn research project is haunting me. And what am I doing instead of getting it done and over with? Playing really cute flash games on Kongregate. I recommend anything by Armor Games. Quality, free games.

Any way, I should probably get back to not writing that paper.

Inside a Mind

Other people watch Law and Order. Vanilla, SVU, CI. That is their production poison. Mine is Criminal Minds. They only play three episodes on A&E on week nights. But it puts a stop to all productivity. And I fear the day when some well meaning person fulfills my wishes and buys me the DVDs. I would never get anything done.

Not that I really accomplish anything right now.

And no that was not a thinly veiled plea for someone to buy me those DVDs.

Procrastination

Yet again I am not doing something that I should be doing. I feel like I should be done, like I've earned a rest. I don't want to write three more essays before I can take to laying around doing nothing. Not that I could just lay around and do nothing. I have far too much to do. Things that are for me. For me and the me that will meet you in several years.

For now I will keep watching Criminal Minds.

When I Don't Have the Time to Write

I'm the worst blogger ever. No fuck that. I'm the worst writer ever. Can I even say I'm a writer if I don't write everyday.

Thank you to Anne Patchett for planting that bit of...whatever it is in my head. I am never going to accomplish anything.

Oh wait. I got into grad school. Cool. Maybe I'll have time to write then.

The Most Important Person in History

Our mighty hero, Gary Reed, traveled to the year 2156 to fight Robot George Washington in insure the continued proliferation of mankind throughout the galaxy.

I'm not making this up. I conducted grueling research on this topic.

No, it's of vital importance that we learn of what the Great Gary Reed did in order to save us all.

Mrs. Scot if you fail me you will be helping the Robot Forefathers win. Mankind will be wiped from the face of the galaxy. Robot Tomas Jefferson will rule the Earth with a neo-titanium fist.

Of course it matters. The masses need to know. Why, for all we know Gary Reed could go to this school. He could be in this very class room.

Didn't you listen to my presentation at all? Gary Reed was not always known as Gary Reed he changed his name so that the Robot Forefathers could not send a roboassassin back in time to kill him.

That is why his true name has been lost to history.

Why I Don't Sleep Alone

Once I realized that if someone really wanted to get to me no number of deadbolts could really keep them from me the jig was up so to speak. After all, what is one bit of steel between you and someone who wishes to see you not so alive?

It doesn't matter if they have no idea where you are, or if they themselves are locked away behind walls and bars and armed guards. That thought will play on your mind. The image of them silhouetted in your window. The idea that every shadow is thicker, darker, than it should be.

Every sound in the night will be them, the escape artist. And every dream you have will be painted with their face. If you have someone, someone to sleep beside you, and keep watch this will still happen. It just won't be so paralyzing. You will still have nightmares, you will still cry out in your sleep, but there will be the chance that they will wake you. The chance that they will keep you from rolling out of bed or smashing your fists against the wall.

All of the locks in the world will never add up to the security of a warm, softly snoring body beside you.

From the Perspective of the Enemy

I will not listen to your lies. No, Jesus was not Jewish. No. No. No. Well it doesn't matter if he was, he loved America.

What?

Well it doesn't matter that America didn't exist. He knew it would. And right now, he knows about America and he loves it. He loves America and all of the real Americans. What do Indians have to do with anything? I shouldn't be surprised that you don't know anything, you obviously weren't raised right.

That's okay though because either you'll learn to know better or you won't and you'll get your due punishment. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm a Christian, I love everyone.

Something Philosophical

He is dying. Has been dying for a long time, many years in fact. But as of late, the thing that has been eating at him for so long has started to really win and now he lies in a stiff unfamiliar bed. He wishes he could go home. Not the home of song and hymn and bright, white light, but the home that doesn't smell of antiseptic and unemptied bed pans. The home where his wife sleeps every night, the home where his children can visit for as long as they please without a gruff over-stuffed nurse herding them out after an hour.

He lies alone most of the day. The television does not interest him. His room mates are sedated or sleeping. This means he spends most of the day with his thoughts, as one can only do so many crosswords in one day.

Outside his window the world rolls by. People still gloriously alive. He's as far from that as he's ever felt, and he tries to count the days, the hours, the heart beats, the breaths that he has left.

Sleep

Sleep. Sleep. I wish I could sleep. Sleep would be fine. I can't sleep though. This angle puts pressure on my spine. This one hurts my hip. His elbow is digging into my ribs. Where can I put this arm? Where ever I put it, it will be frightfully numb by morning. The fingers will be cold to the touch, I'll shake it and it will slowly start to hurt.

Now I'm thinking about zombies. This is definitely not the way to get to sleep. That thing I need to do drifts across my mind. Men lurking in bushes outside a house I don't own yet. A myoclonic jerk, no fair. I was almost there.

I stare at the lights drifting across the ceiling. I move my pillows. I picture my brain, my spine. I imagine how I will feel tomorrow. My back will be sore. I'll be dizzy. I'll feel like puking, but not quite.

Sleep would be so very good right now.

The Tyranny of Technology

My phone is trying to drive me insane. I'm hallucinating. There isn't anything over there that is that shade of green. The light isn't blinking at me. Why do I think I've missed a text message? No one is trying to get a hold of me.

My bluetooth isn't blinking either. I am not getting a call. No one wants to talk to me. My phone is just trying to drive me insane.

I'm not expecting a call. I'm not talking to anyone. The ring tone did not sound. I have not missed anything. It's all in my imagination. There must be something wrong with that corner of my eye.

There is again. I see it. I know I see it, but I turn and there's nothing. No light on the phone. I pick it up, turn on the screen. Nothing. No communication missed. I put it down, go back to procrastinating.

Again. I'll ignore it this time. If I ignore it, it won't be there and I can finish this game or this sentence. No one is trying to talk to me.

Why?

Riverside isn't the prettiest city in the world. I know there are people who probably think it's the most amazing place they've ever known. But those people grew up here. Those people didn't go to UCR. Those people got into grad school. Those people have jobs. Those people are better writers than I am.

Those people don't want to be as far away from this city as they can get. Those people aren't done with this city after only four years under its choking smog and it's bad drivers. Those people don't see a weekend in San Diego or LA as a great escape, a glimpse of freedom.

I am done with this place. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be done with me. At every turn there's something else trying to thwart my timely departure. But blaming the place, the school is childish. I know this. And if any thing I know there is more I could do to get my ass out of here in a more expedient fashion.

For one I could write. And so I will. Unfortunately, I'm a lazy bum. And I need to force myself. I need to buckle down and write on the chalk board, a mantra. I will write every day.