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o16.

2009-07-20T23:26:00.000-04:00

I love to write.

I absolutely live for it.

My problem lately is that I've been stuck in this massive funk. I haven't been able to write something original in months. Nothing I'm happy with, anyway. I don't even have the motivation to go back and edit old things.

So what am I doing? Sitting here blogging about how all I've managed to write in the last four months is a Star Wars fanfiction. (I'm actually pretty happy with the way it turned out; there are probably a few things I would have changed, but it's just a fanfiction, and overall, I like it.)

I've tried rewriting Malignant Virtues, or at least editing it. I've tried rewriting A Gathering of Angels, but can't make it past the first chapter. I've tried going back and working on House on the Hill, but it just refuses to grab my attention and utterly consume me like or AGoA or MV did.

Today, while I was putting off my summer reading (Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe -- I can't stand the writing style -- and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver), I started writing a sort of alternate version of Malignant Virtues. I was writing it by hand, in a journal (a good journal -- less-than-college-ruled, leatherbound bliss); it was therapeutic for me, and I hope I can actually manage to get it to go somewhere.

Also, I was going through some of my assignments from my creative writing class my sophomore year and found "Recycled." It was an interesting piece, and fun as hell to write; I'd like to go back to it and work on it some more. (It was an Earth Day prompt, supposed to be about literal recycling; I wrote about recycling characters in writing because that's what I do. I use the same four characters in just about everything -- I just change their names or their circumstances.)

But, anyway. That's it for now.

o15.

2009-07-02T00:05:00.002-04:00

Random Fact Number One: I want to see a Jedi church.

No, really. They exist. I want to see one. I want to go to one, just to see what it'd be like. I've seen the outside of a Church of Scientology, so I figure a Jedi church is next on my list of "Random Buildings I'd Like to See."

I've been on a Star Wars kick lately. Since it's finally summer, maybe I'll get the chance to sit down and watch all six movies back-to-back. I watched Episodes IV and I today. Phantom Menace wasn't as bad as I remember it being, but it still doesn't have the oomph that the others do. (None of the prequel trilogy films do, really. Episode III isn't too bad, but it still isn't the original.)

Yeah, that's about it for now.

Random Fact Number Two: Any time someone in the Star Wars movies says "may the Force be with you," I automatically say "and also with you."

Sea World tomorrow, hopefully, if it doesn't rain.

Peace out.

o14.

2009-06-30T00:30:00.002-04:00

Let me begin by saying that I am not a Christian. I don't consider myself to be one, anyway, and not just because I've never been an avid church-goer. I don't proclaim myself as a non-Christian because I think it's cool or because I'm trying to go against the flow. I simply say I am not a Christian because I feel that I have never really accepted Christ as my Saviour.

But, to continue: Saturday, I left the incomparable Camp Ozark for the last time. Well, the last time as a camper, anyway. If I do go back, it'll be as an L.I.T. (Leader in Training), and then as a counselor after that. At this point in my life, though, I can't see that happening.

Camp Ozark has been a part of my life since I was ten years old. I've spent two weeks of every summer there for the past eight years, growing as a person, and always coming home on a huge religious high, always saying to myself, "Okay, this is the year you become a Christian. Learn more about Christ, and accept Him as your Saviour. You can do it."

Except just as quickly as the high comes, it wears away.

This year, it didn't come at all.

Maybe it was the changes in the atmosphere this year. A ton of traditions have changed, or simply aren't traditions any more. It's almost as though everything I ever loved about camp was gone. For whatever the reason, I just didn't come home on the big Jesus Kick that I usually do, and even came home feeling a little put-out with the whole Christianity idea.

But why?

Some of it seems so far-fetched, I guess -- but that could be said for any religion or set of beliefs, and that's where the whole concept of "faith" comes in, doesn't it -- believing in the unbelievable?

o13.

2009-05-27T15:16:00.002-04:00

The school year is slowly drawing to an end; the seniors have left -- a few are still at school for exams, but most have gone for good. The rest of us are stuck for another four days of classes, then three days of exams.

My crazy physics teacher has decided we have time to learn another chapter's worth of material; we had our test on current electricity yesterday, and we started static electricity today. My question is: is it really worth it?

No one's going to bother remembering it; most people didn't bother taking notes today. They're done for the year already; what do they care if they fail the test? But me, I took notes, like I always do. Will I do the homework? Probably not; I copied down the assignment, but my physics book has been lost for weeks. I only hope I can find it so I don't have to pay to replace it.

The rest of my classes are winding down. We've finished everything in statistics, including presenting our final projects -- what we'll do tomorrow and Monday is anybody's guess. My English class is finishing presenting our projects on John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, and then we're watching 10 Things I Hate About You. My history class hasn't learned any new material since the last week of April -- all that's left is presenting our film projects. My French class has been nothing but busy work for the last two weeks. Half of my band class is gone -- they were seniors; the rest of us have two more class periods to sit through, fumbling our way through "Pomp and Circumstance" to get it ready for graduation.

The end of the year, to me, is always the most awkward time of the school year; it's late enough that you can't start anything new (except, apparently, in the eyes of my physics teacher), and a lot of the material is the you-either-know-it-or-you-don't kind that there's no point in reviewing in class. Most of the students don't have to take their final exams, anyway.

So what alternative is there other than sitting around doing nothing for an hour and a half, or else working on nothing but worksheets to keep you occupied?

o12.

2009-05-20T20:08:00.001-04:00

Well, my step-brother has officially moved out of our house and into his new apartment that he finally found.

Of course, this doesn't mean he's spending any less time here.

He went over to the apartment Saturday with what he brought down here, and took one of our air mattresses to sleep on until his wife, son, and furniture get down here. He promptly came back over and spent the afternoon and evening here.

I spent the night with a friend that night, and when I came home earlier, lo and behold -- who should be here, but my brother? I saw the Mustang in the driveway and thought nothing of it at first; then I remembered my brother is borrowing it until his wife gets here with their car.

"We're getting ready to get into the pool," my step-dad told me while I was reheating some leftover macaroni.

My step-brother got off the couch and ambled into the office, then proceeding to park himself in front of my step-dad's computer.

Apparently, he did get in the pool eventually, but promptly got out after my step-dad snapped at him for acting like he knew everything that was going on with the company that "eliminated his position" two years ago. The company at which both my mom and step-dad are currently employed.

Also, my grandmother's here for the weekend.

I can't wait until the guilt trips start.

o11.

2009-05-10T19:28:00.003-04:00

So, I have one of those friends that likes to correct everybody on their views on everything. Well, their incorrect views. I'm all for advocating the truth over misconceptions, but there's a limit where you just have to shake your head and tell yourself it's not worth it.

Over the last few months or so, this friend has decided to become a Wiccan. I'm all for spirituality and everything, and I say each to his own as far as to which higher power(s) they choose or choose not to worship; but since she's decided to finally declare herself as belonging to a religion, she's set herself the arduous task of correcting everyone's misconceptions of any sort of Pagan religion.

I've never been a target to these corrections, as I was one of the people who pushed her along. I'm not Wiccan myself -- admittedly, I don't really associate myself with any religion -- but my mom and grandmother joke that we're a family of witches; my grandmother and I can see auras, the three of us read Tarot cards for each other, and we believe in healing through positive energy.

Anyway, about half an hour ago, my friend took a "which religion should you belong to" sort of quiz on Facebook, and her result was "Wicca."

The results said something about "You don't believe in Hell, you don't believe in Heaven, and you don't believe in consequences. You aren't much different than a Satanist or Atheist." Something to that effect, anyway, with plenty of typos and misspellings.

She, of course, had to post a rant in her status about misconceptions about Paganism that began with the phrase "OHMYFUCKINGGOD" and had various bouts of capital letters throughout. I told her to relax, that it was just a silly Facebook quiz, and people didn't want their views corrected with curse words being shouted at them.

She pointed out she only said "fuck" once. I told her that didn't change the fact people didn't like to be shouted at.

This friend of mine also likes to correct people when they mispronounce German words. Sometimes, I think she believes she's fluent in German -- yes, she took all the German classes my school offers, but that doesn't mean she's fluent in the language, and at any rate, she failed the last one, and didn't do much better in the class before that.

Now, as far as my opinion on correcting people's pronunciation of words in foreign languages, I say that if the person is honestly trying to learn the language, you should gently correct them if they mispronounce something.

But if they know how to say "I don't speak German" or "I don't speak Spanish" in that language and they mispronounce the phrase, that's hardly reason to get upset.

We went to Europe last summer, and three of our stops on the trip were in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, all of which have German as one of their official languages. So, a lot of people on the trip went to their friends who they knew had taken a German class or two and asked how to say "I don't speak German."

My friend would get frustrated with them and begin yelling at them, correcting them when they obviously didn't have any basic knowledge of the language.

But as I was pointing this out to her, that she corrects people when there's little use in doing so, or she tries to correct them in a way that most people will simply stop listening (i.e., when she's shouting at them), I think she realized I was right.

Her rant, as well as the quiz result, has been deleted from her profile.

o1o.

2009-05-06T14:53:00.002-04:00

Leadership interviews today without band director.

Hoo, boy.

Her questions weren't really difficult. They were just sort of general opinion questions about leadership this year and leadership next year. She told me not to stress out, so I relaxed, and then she asked me about jazz band.

Dear God, why.

My mom told me that would come back to bite me in the butt, and I knew she was right; our director assured me that my answer and my reason for quitting wouldn't have any effect on whether or not I was selected for leadership. So, I gave her an honest answer:

I was really in jazz band more because my family wanted me to be than out of desire to just be there, and so when a conflict came between jazz band and studying for my exams, the exams won out. Academics, for me at least, will always take precedent over a volunteer extra curricular activity.

She seemed content with that answer, and then she asked if I ever let the assistant director (who's in charge of jazz band) know that I wasn't coming back.

What else could I do but admit that I hadn't?

I did say that I knew I should have told her... but that doesn't change the fact that I didn't.

The worst part is, I had this whole speech planned out to give our assistant director about how I was quitting because of conflicts with my classes and everything... but I never gave it to her. I tried, but I stopped myself mid-sentence the day I was going to tell her (right after "I have a doctor's appointment today"). I was going to continue with, "and I won't be coming back because I have review sessions for AP Statistics on our other rehearsal days," but she gave me one of her looks that said "go ahead, finish the sentence; I dare you."

Then she got irritated because I hadn't gone to the jazz band rehearsal the Monday before (we had concert band rehearsal, which our assistant director told us always takes precedent over jazz band). I decided it wasn't worth it to argue, apologized, and walked out.

And I haven't been back to jazz band since.

I hope that admitting I never told our assistant director I wouldn't be back didn't make me any less of a good candidate for leadership; our director told me she respected me as a person because I had never done anything that, in her eyes, lessens my integrity or character.... Except this jazz band thing, I guess.

But honesty has to count for something, right?

oo9.

2009-05-04T20:38:00.002-04:00

Looking through deviantART's Daily Deviations, I notice that there's rarely any literature featured. When it is, it's poetry -- I can't recall ever seeing any prose.

While this is upsetting in itself -- as it reflects that the dA community is a lazy one, refusing to read prose in favour of shorter, "more meaningful" poetry -- what's more unsettling is that the poetry that is featured rarely has any sort of capitalization or punctuation to it.

Yes, a poet is generally more free to take liberties when it comes to grammar than someone who writes prose, but does removing any and all capitalization bring more meaning to the poetry?

Over the past week, only seven of the featured Deviations have been works of literature -- an average of one a day -- and only one was prose. The others were all poetry -- one, a collection of fifteen haiku; the others, all free verse. Three have no capitalization at all; one capitalizes only the pronoun I.

Understand that I am not discrediting these poets for their lack of capitalization; I understand poetry doesn't need to follow the conventions of grammar, and acknowledge that poetry without capitalization can be just as meaningful as poetry with it -- or even moreso.

What I am saying, though, is that a certain formatting of words should not entitle a piece of writing to be considered better than another; it should be the content of the words, not the look of them. On deviantART, apparently, poetry without capitalization reigns supreme; on online forums, those who post in smaller fonts are considered more "literate" than those who use large fonts with bright colours.

They say not to judge a book by its cover; so why should a writer by judged by his choice of style?

oo8.

2009-05-04T14:44:00.002-04:00

I just got a phone call from a friend apologizing for "getting on my nerves." She said that it seems that lately, everything she does seems to irritate me.

The thing is, it isn't her. It has nothing to do with anything she says or does. She recognizes that I've just been generally moody lately, but thinks that it's because of things she's doing.

I assured her it isn't, but that's not a very convincing argument when I can't pinpoint why I'm in a bad mood.

My friends talk about me when I'm in these moods, they talk about what's making me be like this, and, honestly, I don't have a problem with it. I can say some nasty things when I'm irritated, and I fully accept that they want to speculate what's making me be so bitchy.

If they come up with an answer better than "imbalanced hormones," I'd love to hear it.

They all assure me repeatedly that if I ever have a problem, I can always go to any of them or all of them to talk it out or get advice. The problem is, though, that there's nothing to talk out. At least, nothing I'm consciously aware of -- and that's a big gaping hole in the "let's find you a shrink to talk to" plan; what am I supposed to say if I can't figure out what's triggering these mood swings?

My mom and I both have been doing research over the past few weeks to try and figure out what might be the cause of my bad moods, or to see if I'm showing any signs of depression that are outside the typical teenage angst, and based on what we've read, it looks a bit like manic depression -- which, by the way, runs in my family. My great-uncle has it so badly that he literally can't function in his day-to-day life without medication to mellow out his mood.

But I know it irritates doctors to no end when patients self-diagnose, so I'll wait until I actually talk to a shrink before declaring that's what I have.

Still, though, whether it's manic depression, something else, or just teenage hormones, I'm ready for this to end. All I want is peace.

oo7.

2009-05-03T20:47:00.002-04:00

Well. My writers' block went away for a few days, but now it's back.

I managed to hack out three chapters of a Star Wars prequel-trilogy fanfiction, but I already feel like I've hit a dead end; I know what needs to happen, I just can't get it there. As far as anything original goes... every time I try to rewrite the first bit of "A Gathering of Angels," I get bored with it and too quickly become unmotivated to finish; maybe that's a sign I need to just throw out the introduction and start fresh. But the beginning relates to the rest of it, so I feel like it should stay, and anyway, the beginning is the least of my worries; there are other aspects of the story that are... well, they're pretty far out there.

Most of them get lost somewhere along the storyline, and never get picked up again. So I need to work out those kinks before I can really do anything.

I'm still sitting in a stalemate with "Malignant Virtues," although my friend did manage to give me back the first few pages. Unfortunately, she seems to be more concerned with fixing my grammatical "errors" than giving me any feedback on the story itself, which is what I was more concerned with. I'll admit there are a few places where the grammar isn't entirely conventional, and some of the narrative is colloquial, but I was going for a not-quite-stream-of-consciousness in the style -- sort of a limited omniscient third-person point of view that focuses on a particular character's train of thought for a given chapter.

With my vague time-traveling plot, which has never properly been written out into a narrative (I'm almost debating saving it for this year's NaNoWriMo, but know that if I do that, I'll lose interest before I even begin), I'm not sure how to start the thing off. Should I start with a sort of history about the events leading up to the creation of the time machine, or should I start with the antagonist going back in time to alter history to his own purposes?

I just don't know; everything seems to have lost its luster lately -- not only writing, but life in general. Everything just seems sort of... ho-hum, like I've done it a million times before -- which probably isn't a good mentality, going into exams this week.

I'm going into statistics knowing that it's well within my capability to earn a four out of five, I'm going into US history knowing that I probably won't get a passing mark, and I'm going into English language and composition knowing that I won't have to put much effort into it to get a decent score.

They say senioritis strikes in your junior year, but should it hit with this much of an impact? I used to be the good student that would spend an afternoon crying over anything less than a B; now I fully accept that I'll probably fail the history exam and won't get college credit for the class that's caused me so much grief this year. Not that I've put much effort into the course, but I've never had to put any effort into any of my classes; things have just always come easily for me, but now that I'm being challenged, I don't feel the need to put out that extra effort.

I feel like I've become an entirely different person over the past year. What happened to the girl I used to be?

oo6.

2009-04-30T14:49:00.003-04:00

Things are about to get tense around here. To explain:

My step-brother and his wife are moving back down to Florida with their baby boy because my brother can't find a job in Tennessee. My sister-in-law works from home, and gets to keep the same job she has right now -- but the house has to be quiet because she deals with a lot of phone calls and there can't be any background noise.

So, she's still in Tennessee with the baby while her husband is down here "looking for a house" and "job hunting." Which basically means he's freeloading at our house, mooching off my mom and step-dad because he knows his dad won't let him go homeless -- and what parent would?

The thing is, though, that my brother's a bum. He's lazy. My parents have found all these nice little rental places near us (so they're in a good school district for when my nephew gets older), but my brother doesn't want to look at any of them. He wants to go back to the apartments they used to live in which cost around $1300 a month.

Now, let's pause and do the math:

My step-brother doesn't have a job because he got laid off for not showing up to work. His wife makes roughly $26k a year, before taxes. They have a kid to feed, not to mention themselves.

Obviously, my step-dad isn't going to let his children or grandson go hungry; but, quite frankly, he's sick of my brother relying on his charity to pay the bills, and so is my mom. My parents have their own bills to pay; they have repairs to their own house they need to make; they have to keep food in their mouths and clothes on their backs; I'll be going to college soon, and those expenses will need to be paid; my parents have worked for what they have, and it's time for my brother to do the same.

My parents have no problem helping out my brother until he gets back on his feet -- but for the last year and a half, he's been sitting on his ass in Tennessee doing nothing; he can't find a job that pays what he wants because he never went to college. So, instead of settling for something less while he looks for something better, he sits and does nothing. Now, thanks to the economy, there aren't any jobs in their area of Tennessee -- so they decided to move to Ohio.

Except Daddy doesn't live in Ohio and can't take care of my brother; therefore, the logical solution, in his eyes, is back to Florida so he can mooch off his dad and my mom, living in our guest room.

So my step-dad is going to give him a talking-to -- and he isn't very excited about having to do so, as you can imagine. No parent wants to tell their kid to get out of the house, that it's time to leave the nest. But there's no arguing that my step-brother has played grown-up long enough; instead of going to college, he got married and got a job. He has a kid now, by choice; it's time to start acting like an adult.

Obviously, I'm not especially close to my step-brother; of course, a year ago, he wasn't my step-brother. Now, whether we like it or not, we're family -- not that that means either of us has made any attempt to make any kind of sibling bond with the other. I'll readily admit that I haven't made much of an effort; but I do at least try to say "hi" when I see him. He doesn't always return the favour.

Admittedly, I don't have much in common with my step-family. They're loud and outspoken; there's little question about what their opinion is on any and every subject. And that's not just my brother -- it's my sisters, my step-dad, my aunt, everyone. My family is traditionally the exact opposite; we're quiet and soft-spoken. We let people know how we feel about things less directly; we enjoy being in a quiet house from time to time.

Diversity, as my mom constantly reminds me, is a necessary part of life, and is typically a good thing. But to my brother and sisters, I'm just a weird, quiet kid; admittedly, that's my fault. I don't speak much when they're around -- not that it's an easy task to get a word in edgewise, and not that I care to be involved in their neverending discussions about microprocessors and hard drives, or their beloved Orlando Magic. God forbid they should ever discuss any form of art other than my step-sister's days at Dr. Phillips High School, where she was involved in the drama program. No; they prefer working with cars and computers to dealing with monologues and minor thirds.

But in another year and a half -- just a year and a half! -- I'll be in college, away from all this.

oo5.

2009-04-28T19:17:00.000-04:00

One of my friends has been reading Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind lately (a novel I've been meaning to sit down and finish for about a year now), and the two of us got to talking the other day about our ideas of the "perfect" man. Our standards, needless to say, are high -- perhaps unrealistically so.

Our men need to know how to kiss. They need to know when to be gentle and soft, and when to be more passionate.

Our men have to be strong. They have to be the providers, they have to take care of us. They have to be manly, manly men; they have to be the strong arms that will hold us when we cry, and they have to be the ones that will make sure we're never wronged.

Our men have to be sensitive. They have to be able to sympathize with us when things don't go our way; they have to care about us and how we're feeling, they have to be able to know when we need them to just hold onto us. They have to know when words aren't needed, and when they are.

Our men have to know when to give us our space. They can go do their manly things as long as we get to do our girly things. We want time to hang around with our friends -- our girl friends and our guy friends; our men have to be secure enough that even though we're hanging out with other guys, they're THE ONE; they can't be craving special attention all the time, but they need to be there for us to cuddle with when we get home.

Our men have to be manly. They need to like to do man stuff -- they need to know how to shoot a gun, how to hold their liquor, and be excellent horsemen. Sports are an optional interest, but if our men like sports, they can't constantly have the TV turned to ESPN or SunSports. We're not going to make them watch sappy chick-flicks all the time; we don't want to watch Sports Center all the time.

Our men need to be able to read our moods. They need to know when we want to joke around, when we need a shoulder to cry on, and when we just want some peace and quiet. They need to recognize that we are fragile; that our tempers are volatile and our moods can change as easily as the wind.

In short, our ideas of Mr. Right make him into more than Mr. Right -- he's Mr. Perfect; he's tough, but sensitive; he's dominant, but gentle. Where we plan on finding our respective Mr. Rights, we don't know. Maybe we'll just have to go to college in hopes of earning our MRS degrees.

oo4.

2009-04-26T20:03:00.000-04:00

My friends are such losers sometimes. And I'm not saying that as a term of endearment.

The Great American Pie Festival was in Celebration this weekend; if I were still in jazz band, I would have gone to perform. But because I'm fed up with jazz band and I'd rather go to a statistics review to try and help my grade in the class than go to rehearsal, I didn't perform. No big deal; it's not like I particularly enjoy playing jazz music, anyway.

One of my friends and I have been talking about going to the festival all week. We were going to drive down there, go through the pie buffet with our jazz band friends, and then go listen to them perform, get up and dance with them during Thriller and YMCA, and so on. Except today I ask him what time we're going to leave, and he says, "Oh, I don't think I'm going. I put off all my homework until today."

The GAPF isn't really something you go to by yourself; it's something you go to with friends, and have a good time hanging out and eating some really awesome pie at the all-you-can-eat buffet until you're absolutely ill.

One of my other friends said she couldn't go (but I wasn't quite as upset about this; I only talked to her yesterday about going), and a third said that she, too, had homework to do.

Because, you know, it takes all day to do homework.

We would have been back home by six, maybe, at the latest, leaving plenty of time to get home, do homework, eat dinner, shower, all of that. It's not like she won't stay up until two doing her work anyway -- and not because it's that much work, but because she procrastinates. So if she's going to procrastinate anyway, why not procrastinate with friends, doing something that you can only do once a year?

So instead of going to the GAPF, I went outlet shopping with my mom, then went to Barnes and Noble. I was a good girl and didn't get a new book (because I have so many others at home I still have to read), but I did pick up a new notebook.

Too bad I still have writers' block.

oo3.

2009-04-25T17:17:00.000-04:00

Writers' block is a bitch.

Maybe it's the stress of the end of the school year approaching, maybe it's the lack of vitality I've been feeling lately; who knows. Whatever it is, it's thrown me into a funk of creative frustration; I can't seem to force myself to write much of anything lately -- and the things I do write don't come out quite the way I had planned them, but I don't have the enthusiasm to go back and fix them. It's this big feeling of "I don't care."

Music often inspires me to write, so much so that I decided to undertake the daunting challenge of writing a short piece of fiction based on each of the 1,500 songs in my iTunes library. But as soon as I decided to do it, I couldn't. The songs that usually bring dramatic scenes and overwhelming feelings to me suddenly fail to do so. I decided to take the challenge, fully knowing that I would more than likely never finish it -- but not even to be able to begin something? It's unheard of for me; I can generally at least get a toe hold in whatever project I'm doing. So why now can I not even do that?

I listen to the songs several times over: listening to just the melodies, trying to get a feel of an emotion; reading the lyrics without listening to the song, trying to get a base for a scene or a story; listening to the lyrics along with the melody, trying to get something -- anything -- from it. And I can't. I try other songs -- short songs, long songs, classical songs, pop songs, techno, alternative; no matter what I try, I can't get anything from any of them.

I've tried forcing myself to write, thinking that maybe -- just maybe -- if I can force the first few, awkward lines, I can develop it into something greater, then go back and touch it up when all is said and done. I've tried using characters from older things I've written; I've tried creating characters specifically for each song. I've tried writing original work, I've tried writing fanfictions. Nothing.

It's maddening.

oo2.

2009-04-24T21:43:00.000-04:00

I'm so tired of my mood swings.

I'm one hundred percent aware of them, and I know when I'm being an absolute pain to my friends and family, but there's nothing I can do about it; try as I might, I can't pinpoint what's putting me in such a bad mood, and so I can't do anything to fix it.

There are days when I just snap, and I can't explain it. Take Wednesday, for example, I was on top of the world -- everything was great; I even had an endorphin rush from doing Tae Bo with one of my friends. And then, suddenly, everything came crashing down around me; I was in tears, and there was no reason for it.

Today, at least, I could blame my bad mood on being absolutely exhausted from spending all day yesterday on a bus. But I still feel like there's something deeper to it.

My mom suggested my bad moods this week have been a subconscious reaction to my dad getting remarried; maybe that's it, but at the same time, I doubt it. I can't remember my parents being married; they divorced before I was a year old. My dad remarried before I was three, and got divorced again a little more than a year ago. He lives a thousand miles away; I see him once a month; what happens in his life rarely directly affects what happens in mine -- so why should I have any reaction to him getting remarried again? Besides, I was never particularly close to my step-mother, so I doubt it's a subconscious lamentation that she might be stepping out of my life forever -- God knows she's made more of an effort to "get to know me" since she found out my dad was seeing someone else.

My mom's talked multiple times about sending me to a shrink; my family has a history of depression, so we haven't ruled out the possibility that I might need medication for that. After all, the last three generations of women in my family have shown signs of depression; who's to say that I'm any different?

The only problem is that I'm still a teenager, and prone to random mood swings for any and every reason -- or even no reason at all. But if that's the case and it's just typical teenage hormones, would I be aware of the sudden mood swings? Would I be conscious of the fact that I go from laughing and joking with my friends to yelling at them and sulking in a matter of minutes?

oo1.

2009-04-24T17:04:00.000-04:00

I've never been good at keeping up with a blog.

I've tried to do it before -- even if I just had it to mark my progress with my NaNoWriMo novel -- and I just can't. I lose interest, I forget, I don't have the time, the excuses can go on and on; this time, though, I'm going to make an effort.

I've been good at keeping a diary on and off for the past twelve years -- so why can't I keep a blog? Why not put myself out there and see what people say? Sure, I have a deviantART account with a journal -- but people don't browse through art websites to read what more or less passes for a blog; they go to look at the art -- but even in that regard, I fall by the wayside. Nobody wants to read a short story, or chapters of a would-be novel; if they read written work at all, it's poetry -- short, angsty, vague, generally with a rhyme to it. And God forbid they should ever give feedback on it -- anything more than "I love it" or "great job" would completely blow me out of the water. Is a little constructive criticism too much to ask?

I write because I love to do it; for years, I've had dreams of being a published author. I give my writing to my friends, hoping to get back something constructive on it, but rarely do I get responses beyond the general "I like it," or, "well, it's okay." Is it beyond my friends' capacities to say why they liked it? Can they not tell me if anything is strangely worded, or doesn't flow quite right? Can they not even be honest and tell me if they didn't like it? I'm a big girl -- I can take criticism for my work; sometimes, I think it would be refreshing to receive constructive feedback.

More than a month ago, I gave a friend a story I had been working on for the past few months; she promised me she would read it, make notes, edit it, give me feedback -- something everyone else had so far failed to do. Now, I'm still waiting on her to read it and give me her opinion; never mind actually edit it. Every weekend, it's the same -- "I promise, I'll read it this weekend. I'll edit it soon, I promise." And every weekend, she fails to deliver.

Yes, the end of the school year is approaching, along with AP tests and final exams, but those stresses weren't so pressing a month and a half ago. A month and a half ago, all we had to worry about was making through another week or two of school, and then we would have spring break; a whole week of school, with no work to worry about, just time to relax. She told me she would at the very least read the thing over spring break, if not actually edit it. Did she? No.

Perhaps I'm whining; no, I know that I am. But even if she just read a page or two at a time and gave them back with her notes and comments, that would be fine with me. I'm not asking her to read through the whole thing in one sitting; she promised me months ago she would do this for me, and still, she hasn't.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, lately, I've been feeling disappointed with some of my friends. That's worded badly, but I know that it's the bluntly-put truth. Maybe it was going back home and seeing the girls I grew up with -- the friends I've had since pre-school, and knowing they're still there for me to laugh through the good times, and to cry with me through the bad. Maybe seeing them again has reminded me of just how different our lives have become and has left me with a sense of awe -- through all our differences, we're still friends. We're still there for each other, and we're planning to apply to the same schools next fall.

The past few months have been tumultuous for me; I've grown closer to some friends, drifted from others, and I feel like I've lost some completely. I've come to realize that some of my "best friends" are shallower than I'd like to think; I've come to realize that others are more genuine, and I've come to wonder why I haven't spent as much time with them as I would like; I've come to wonder what my future will hold for not only me, but for the people around me, whose lives have, for better or worse, become intertwined with mine. For better or worse, we've affected each other in some way; I can see that, in some ways, I've become a stronger person, but I know that I still have much left to learn.

I can only hope that I come to find my niche sooner rather than later, and I can live my life the way it's meant to be lived -- to the fullest, without restraint, and surrounded by people for whom I truly care, and who truly care for me.