Camp Nano 2012, Words 12,151-13,983

Camp Nano intro

Camp Nano 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 -- 6 -- 7

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I saw a sign today, a piece of paper printed on with comic sans in black ink. It said, “Having a rough morning?”
“Yes,” I said outloud. I stopped walking. I was outside walking down a street that wants to be Main Street but of course, isn’t, and no matter how uplifted the city makes it, it has the wrong name. It can never be Main Street. Therefore, no one goes there. No one is walking there but me. The shops nearly all have closed, and some of the buildings that weren’t renovated and glowing with fresh paint have been brought down. It’s like a face missing various teeth. This note that has stopped me is a page taped with electrical tape to a lamp post. I read the next line.
“Place your hand over your heart.” I did, like the pledge of allegiance.
“Feel that? That's called purpose. You're alive for a reason. Don't give up." I stood on this vacant polished street with my hand over my heart, feeling my heartbeat, crying at a sign. Just a sign like this points to the idea that someone out there loves me, even though they don't know me--that someone out there loves and respects everyone, and that's enough to keep living, if only to find that one someone.

It’s been a hellhole of a week. I’m somehow in the middle of someone else’s family/legal drama, and someone else is losing their house, and someone else is leaving their husband, and why do I know all these people and how did I get to be such a crutch? How did everyone expect me to be such a rock? No one knows what everyone else is going through; I’m a thread that junctions many threads running parallel in this spiderweb that is life. I’ve run interference for a conversation between people who won’t talk to each other but need to communicate because of the children. I’ve carried boxes of books up and down stairs. I’ve made dinner for friends who didn’t come over because of their...drama, and I’ve made multiple trips in the middle of the night to help a friend get from one end of town to another.

I’m not sleeping. I’m not eating well. I’ve been on the ugly end of a downsizing operation where I was working. I’m forgetting to make it to the bank before they close and had to use piles of dimes to pay for food for dinner. I’ve taken up leaving my shoes and keys and wallet around the house and being unable to find them when I need them. I started school on a grant and a loan because I can’t find anything else to do with myself, and I’m already not doing my homework. I can’t even afford to buy the books I need to do the homework. I stopped opening my mail.

I misplaced my mom’s wedding ring, and I have a pile of library books I don’t feel like taking to the library. I haven’t folded my laundry in forever. I need to take this television over to my brother-in-law because I said I would. I am barely remembering to water my neighbor’s plants while she’s out of town. If her house wasn’t next door and the watering can wasn’t on the front porch, I wouldn’t remember. I was just pulled over for being on a road with known drug trafficking. No ticket, but now I have to figure a new route to that part of town.  I have to write thank you notes for gifts from my birthday, three weeks ago.

I’m wearing a pair of tennis shoes without socks, a pair of slacks and a slinky tank top, since I just took off my blazer I wore over it for the interview. I was just told I didn’t have enough experience. I was walking home, and now, I was crying in front of a light post on a street that no one ever uses, in front of a closed mom-and-pop shop.

Who the heck--who on god’s green earth was looking for me there? Someone somehow knew I’d be there--that I’d see that. Someone was moved to make sure I saw that note because things are getting to be the worst they’ve ever been. I hadn’t slept in 52 hours, and I was headed back to my apartment where someone will have left me a message to help them out, or two messages, or two someones, or more, or some combination of the above.

Some one person’s anonymous note was talking to me. I don’t remember thinking I was going to give up before that thing, but I certainly feel like I must have been nearing that point. I sat on the bench in front of the closed shop, a functional art piece, and waited until I stopped crying.

Purpose. I’ve been doing things for other people because they needed me, and keeping quiet about my troubles because I am so much better off than any of the rest of them are. I’m just doing what any friend should do. And now, this sign is looking me in the face, telling me that this being a friend thing is a little more than one-sided.

I sat on that bench and thought about me from Laura’s point of view--the one getting divorced. She’s sitting on a couch in her mom’s house, watching television, trying not to think about her husband and what she would be doing if she hadn’t decided she had had enough. She’s watching crappy daytime food network shows to keep from thinking about her children she walked away from, and what they’re actually doing at that very moment, during the scene where the chef uses the blender yet again to pulverize every ingredient in sight, seeds, stems and all. She wants to take them out to the grocery store, the children, and bring them here and cook dinner together. She can’t talk to their dad. Not today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Not yet. She can’t just pick them up from school. He’d be there. She picks up the phone and she calls my number. She says a few words, not really coherently, not really all in the right order, but the meaning is there. She turns on a channel with a marathon of westerns. She hopes it will last as a distraction until I call her back. I will, and she’ll be able to make dinner with her kids. They’ll have a good time. The kids will remember that. They’ll remember that always.

I sat on that bench and thought of the kids. I’m not suffering my own painful things. I’m not struggling--without everyone else I’d have my own complaints, but with all the pain around me, I’m merely having a bit of trouble. Lots of people are having a bit of trouble. But I have more time, without my job, to help my friends when they need me. I have got to take better care of myself, eat and sleep and stuff, so I can be an even better friend.

I sat on the bench while I worked on my new plan. Job search or no job search? I can probably apply to be a tutor at the school or a teacher’s assistant or a student teacher, or I can work in the cafe or something. I should totally work for the school, maybe evening maintenance. I must be firm and ask for gas money for all that running around I do for other people. Just a buck a trip would make a difference. Ten dimes, four quarters. People can usually pull that off. Must remember to do. I must make a checklist, write all the things down. I must write the list every day, so I don’t overlook anything. My mom did that--she had a notebook and each page was a new day, and what wasn’t done on the previous day got rewritten on the next day. Nothing ever got put off forever, because she rewrote it every day, and eventually it would become priority. I’m not a notebook person, but I can write a list. I have a good magnet board for the list. I can do it in colored pencils--I like colored pencils. I’ll put the library books on the list and I’m pretty sure I can check a couple of places a day for my mom’s ring. She would be happy to have it back. What else? I have got to limit how much time a day I spend with each of the families in need, and I need to spend more time with the friends that aren’t having drama. I do have friends that don’t seem to be sharing their drama if they have any. I should make sure I schedule time with these friends.

I sat on the bench and looked at my watch. In two hours, I would be walking to class, my first writing class ever. When I get there, I’m going to be assigned to write every day. I sit in the class, second chair in the second row from the door. I’ll squint at the teacher. He does not look like one with a penchant for comic sans. He’s never met me, and doesn’t look like he knows that I like to walk on not-Main Street because no one is there. He probably did not post that bill on the lamp post.

Throughout the class period, I took notes, and after class, I noticed my notes had a theme. We’re writing about ourselves, and by writing about ourselves we’d discover ourselves. Yep. Journey of self discovery by journaling. Now isn’t that fortuitous, isn’t that great. I’m beginning to feel a little ganged up on. It’s as if the universe has aligned to have a backup just to make sure the message got across to me. Well, fine and all. I’m grateful I don’t have a therapist because I can’t think I could handle any more shove in the direction of self-appreciation.

So I got in my car after class, put two dollars in the gas tank, and I drove over to Laura’s house and drove her kids back home to her ex. I stopped by the grocery store and bought a whole, pre-roasted chicken, a pint of double chocolate fudge ice cream, and a yellow balloon, and drove the dinner over to my friends while they’re packing. I stopped by a third, happy, friend’s and gave her daughter the balloon after drawing a face on it with a sharpie, and after she went to bed, we watched a movie on Netflix and shared the ice cream. By the time I got home, it was nearly midnight. I realized I made many lives better this evening. I’m more broke, I spent my gas, I have a few hours of homework to do--including write everything down that I just wrote--, but I’m still winning.

Camp Nano 2012, Words 10,001 to 12,150

Camp Nano intro

Camp Nano 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5 -- 6

(I haven't finished a character since word 10,000 until now. Bear with me while I finish them and I'm hoping to get all 50,000 words published on the blog by the end of the month! Also, I stopped editing altogether. July is for editing.)

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It’s serendipitous that my first journal assignment corresponds with my first real date. This is great--because I’ll be able to look back at it and have some real things to remember.

So I’ll start with how I got asked out. It’s the fifth day of classes today, and I’ve seen this guy three of the five days. Yesterday was one of those days. He apparently noticed me during those days, too because yesterday he held me up before class in the hall. He came up behind me, knew my name, and used it to get my attention. Since I’ve been in this town a sum total of two weeks, there’s a very small number of people who I believe can identify me from behind, so I didn’t think anything of it when I turned around, and when i didn’t see anyone I recognized as one of those people, I must have had a comical perplexed look because I noticed him as he was laughing at me. He reached out the hand that wasn’t busy holding his laptop, palm down, and asked me if I would meet him for dinner tonight. I dont’ even remember his exact words, I don’t even remember saying yes, and I don’t even remember how we figured out which resturaunt we were going to eat at tonight. I do remember how his hand felt, because the way he offered it I put my hand in it automatically. Not quite a handshake, not quite holding hands. I believe I went into the classroom abouot three different shades of red.

So tonight I met him in front of the resturaunt, and I just chose some jeans and a t-shirt, I forced myself to just choose something I would normally wear. I had caught myself thinking about my wardrobe several times that afternoon. I determined I was not going to be that kind of girl, I was not going to panic about dates like that. I was going to walk into my closet after class, and dress as if for the next day. Just, clean clothes. Not obsessive clothes. Not too much thought. Not too much power in the wardrobe. So I managed to chase the nagging thoughts away with this decision I had settled on.

I got home from class, grabbed a red t-shirt and black jeans and pulled them on after my shower. The jeans are worn--I’m thinking I’m going to do this neat thing where I sew lace into the holes as a sort of pseudo-patch, and I’m thinking green lace. But theyr’e not quite holey enough for that yet. The t-shirt is from a concert I didn’t go to. I picked it up at the salvation army on a day where I went to get t-shirts to make into washcloths. I happened to like the design of this shirt ,so I kept it. It’s pretty worn, and form-fitting, and I think the band is now defunct. The cities are all major concert cities except this one in Iowa. I didn’t even know this city existed.

I pulled my hair into a ponytail--I also made hairties out of the sleeves of the t-shirts I cut into cloths--in a matching red color. Same shoes I came in the house with, and I went out. The resturant is close enough I can walk to it so I did. I met him in front and he seemed startled that yes, I did indeed walk from my house. He assured me he didn’t suggest this restarunt because it was close enough for me to walk to--that he had no idea where I lived and no, he hadn’t been stalking me. I thought it was funny that he got defensive about it and we talked about the people we had stalked in the past, or had stalk us, as we waited for our table. (He had actually called and made a reservation). I really like american food restuarants, I like the insane variety on the menu. He ordered a burger and I ordered a pizza and we shared a bowl of tortilla chips and salsa.

He’s a year older than me, a summer baby. Awesome for him because of the abundant opportunites for having free celebrations, which he has taken advantage of: he invites a hundred people to the park and they play volleyball. Or, he arranges a rock climbing expidetition with his friends, complete with birthday cake. Once, he even had a birthday on a lake, and all his friends brought their little fishing boats and row boats and they just hung out in the middle of the water and tossed waterballons and went swimming. I told him about the challenges I had always had having a winter birthday. As a kid, I always had my parties at home, or could only invite a couple people because we were at an establishment where people had to pay, or my parents had to pay, for their attendence. As a teen, I discovered that places that advertise they host birthday parties free are actually just fishing for the rest of your cash. Laser tag was fun one year, bowling, and my senior year we went to the LEGO store (most of my friends had jobs and could afford the$15 per person to hang out and make a creation of $15 worth of legos to take home). Now that I’m in college, I’m pretty sure there isn’t anything I want to be trying to do in the dead of winter with people I barely know. I’m thinking I’m changing my birthday. He thought that was a capital idea. I’d like to play volleyball for my birthday for once, without having to rent a gym or ship everyone three states southward. That would be nice.

I liked to watch him while we talked, i think it must have been a good date because I’d totally go out with him again. I can’t think of anythng that would make me not want to , at least for now. I think he’s going to school to be a musician, plays very large and low-pitched stringed instruments. And piano. And a couple of wind instruments. I don’t think he owns all the different things he can play. He did a lot of looking at his food while we talked. I learned in a pshychology class that I took for college credit in high school soemthing about epeopl that dont’ make a lot of eye contact druing conversation, but I don’t remember what it means. I’m a pretty eye-bally person, I have noticed in previous self-discovery studies that I am always making eye contact. More people smile that way, that was what the study for class was about, but I just noticed that I am nearly always looking at people’s faces. He was nearly always looking at his hands or utensils. I’ll have to look it up. Is it creepy to do encyclopedic analysis on pepopel?

After dinner we just talked over our ever-refilled glasses of water. When I write about dates in stories or read about them in books or see them on tv, all dinner dates include wine, or at least some semblence of alcolol. It struck me strange that we were underage and just had to settle for pop and water.

Things I remember about him besides his major and his past birthday parties:
He likes to eat vegetarian, but he’s not a vegetarian
He thought about going into political science, but music was more fun
He thinks that all people relly do make sense, you just have to listen to them without being jugemental
He grew up working on a farm but lived in a subdivision
He doesn’t like carpet
He ripped the drop ceiling out of his bedroom so he could paint the ceiling and hang planets in between
His bedroom walls were always white because they weren’t allowed to paint
He put the drop ceiling back so no one would know he’d painted the ceilng
He used to have dogs but adoped them out on craigslist when he went to college because of college pet policies (As in , no pets, period)
He has a fish anyway
He works at a place where they make parts for machines in big molding equipment things that need two people to run
He doesn’t know what kind of machines he’s making parts for, or what the parts do
He imagines he works for a factory that makes gigantic army robots like Transformers
He uses the word exceptional way too often
He doesn’t have any annoying habits like nose blowing or nervous giggles or hair flipping
He doesn’t like writing
He doesn’t like reading
He doesn’t like science fiction about space. Which is like, all of it.
He doesn’t like porcupines. I don’t remember how we ended up talking about porcupines.
He likes to take road trips.
He doesn’t like to fly.
He drinks as much water as I do
He doesn’t crunch on his ice--another annoying habit he doesn’t have.
He used to only eat bagles for breakfast.
He once built a castle out of cardboard boxes and lit it on fire and he and his friends hosed it down like they were practicing fire fighting like real fire fighters do.
He never saw a movie in a theater that he liked.
He doesn’t wear sweaters.
He thinks that popcorn is overrated, and thinks the world should try out peanuts in replacement.
He once had a piece of rebar clean through his arm, but never got an infection and was in and out of the hospital in two days. He thinks he might be Wolverine.
He has a bad habit of not clocking out at work.
He goes to bed early becasue he started getting up at five in the morning after he got to college. He said it was becasue he forgets to do his laundry until he is out, so he plans on doing laundry first thing in the morning every day, and if he doesn’t need to, he’ll go down to the music center and practice. And sometimes he’ll wear dirty socks an extra day to practice instead of laundry.
He doesn’t wear sandals.
He likes salvador dali, and doesn’t like impressionist paitners.
He likes modern composers and doesn’t like people I’m familiar with like mozart and beethoven.

I don’t remember him paying the bill, I dont’ even remember the bill coming to the table. I think I might see if he wants to hang out there every week, and see if we get a thing going, or if we get bored with each other. Or maybe we might do something else. I dont’ know, but as we were leaving he didn’t suggest another date, instead said he’d see me in class tomorrow. He wished me a good evening, or lovely evening--something on the more odd end of things.

Oh--something imporant about the date--we had agreed not to bring our phones. Actually, I brought mine but I put it on silent and kept it in the bottom of my purse. He may or may not have had his, but I didn’t feel comfortable without being able to call for help if he were creepy enough to stuff me in his trunk. I’m pretty sure I could get a cell signal in a trunk. But not being able to protect myself from the unknown was kind of weird. I saw a lot of people in the restaurant on their phones--even the hostess. I thought it was a great idea not to have all the people in the world at our fingertips as we were learning stuf about each other, and I also thought it was cool that we couldn’t just instantly answer questions if they came up, you know, the inevitable reach for the iphone when you start your sentence with, “what was the name of...”. We’ll either remember to look it up later or we’ll not, andit turns out, not knowing the answer does not either enhance nor detract from the meaning of the conversation. At least, I didn’t think so. I wonder what he thought.

So that was a date. A proper date where one invites another out to a common and public social occasion and conversation, shared experience, and brain-picking occurred. I think I asked about a million questions and I think he asked about half a million. I think I was nervous enough that I was worried about talking too much so I asked questions. I think he was nervous enough that he was worried he would ask an embarrasing question that he answered questions at length. We know a lot more about each other, I think, but it was stiff, awkward, and really more like an interview than conversation. Which is okay. Because next time--and god I hope there is a next time--we might get better at it.

Midsummer Night's Dream Dinner

The first celebration of each of Shakespeare's 32 plays was a night of breathlessness and comedy. After weeks of planning, crafting, yard saleing, and coordinating, the stage was set and the guests were suitably entertained.

The table was laid out, then surrounded by people, then filled with food, then submerged in wordplay.

• Entertainment: introductions, discussion of the film productions, identification of the speakers of lines, play-specific trivia, and Shakespeare trivia. Also set up was a station for building catapults of clothespins, popsicle sticks, and bottle caps, and crowns of willow branches, wire, beads, and silk flowers and ivy.
• Menu: cheese and bread, chicken and roast, plums and apples and cherries, wine and water with lemon.
• Seating: pillows and sleeping bags on the floor, and other fluffy floor coverings.
• Setting: book stand with complete works, all the bookcases draped with sheets and ivy, candlesticks and candles on the table, cloth napkins, glass table topper, wooden pedestals and serving dishes, clay and stone serving dishes, glass and stone and metal stemware. No plates or silverware, except for the children's table. 

The party moved out-of-doors to the theater, where guests were recruited to play the parts in Pyramus and Thisbe--the play within the play--or to read the court's interjections, or were not recruited and were left to sip their wine with their desserts in peace.

• Entertainment: The play within the play was scribed onto long pages of butcher paper, color coded by actor, and set up to be read during the performance, and each character was given a bit of signifying costume for their parts. A paper-mache ass' head was filled with candies and butterflies and little toys and suspended from a tree to be whacked at by guests. The children were given a scavenger hunt to build a fairy terrarium of their own in a small clear cup with a fabric lid. The final piece was a small smoldering of ashes in a planting pot for the summer solstice ritual of letting go by jotting down your burden and placing it on the coals to go up in smoke.
• Menu:  jello with fruit, chocolates and port wine, marshmallows in white chocolate and cotton candy
• Seating: old encyclopedias, dictionaries of major authors, dictionaries, and other outdated catalogs of information laid like bricks into benches; a couple of chairs, a couple of carpet squares, and of course, the cool grass were other offerings
• Setting: a fairy ring of mushrooms, fairy terrariums on the dessert table, small tents for the children, dangling ribbons behind the dessert table, and butterflies strung on fishing line draped from fence to tree. Between the dinner room and the outdoor area were small twigs standing on rocks with ribbons draped between and blue and green glass beads against the baseboards to lead guests up and down. Glow-in-the-dark signage was posted in the bathrooms to indicate the location of light switches.

 

Camp Nano 2012, Words 8,018 to 10,000

Camp Nano intro

Camp Nano 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 -- 5

(This reaches 10,000 exactly, the number for Day 6, and marks only the third time out of seven I have reached this milestone, and the first time I have reached it within 6 days of writing.)

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If I were a character in a book, I would be introduced in a situation and you could start to make judgments about me based on my behavior and my reaction to certain stimuli. I thought about starting my journal with this approach, but I ended up analyzing every action and reaction I had on the paradigm that I would search out in a fictional character. This frustrates me because that's not what this journal is supposed to be about. But how do you ever write the first journal entry? Especially one several pages long? I know this journal is less for my reader to get to know me as it is I am to get to know myself, but my struggle is that I already know myself pretty well, and I know I have an audience. These are the facts of the situation, and they're causing me no small bit of self-induced anguish. I'm going to have to make some decisions, and so far, the only decision I've made is to have a monologue discussing my discomfort with this piece of assignment.

To be forced to write. The dilemma is that I am being forced to write and I understand that this helps some people, but being forced to write only autobiographical stuff is going to be a huge challenge for me. At some point, I'm going to want to go off and make things up, create some fantastical universe and go walk around in it.

I'd like to rant on something, but I don't have a lot of opinion on things I can think of in the immediate. I like to read other people's rants because of the conversation it inspires and the creativity it implies in order to make a complete and valid argument, especially with attributed sources. Arguments should not be well preserved in time, but instead they should be developed, or fermented. They must reach fruition based on the evidences collected over a period of time, though there are studies I've read about (no attribution here) that suggests that we only remember or even pay attention to the things that we agree with, or that can fit in either support or defense of our argument.

I suppose I just made an argument on a good argument or rant. Great--self-referential writing.

I could try to remember things about my day that I don't usually think about, things like what the light looks like on the wall in the morning, but I actually think about that a lot. We had house once that through a small crack in the window shade, you could see the traffic drive by the front of the house, upside down, on the wall. Our bedroom was a pinhole camera, and we were inside. It was incredibly entertaining. We would sit and watch it for a half an hour if we didn't have to get up  in the morning. I think about that house and that experience often when I wake up in my current room and see the light go across the ceiling from the reflection of the cars--little blurs stretched across a blur of light. The color of the cars indiscernible, where in my past, they were so crystal clear you could tell the make and model of each car, and could have made out the numbers on the license plates, if only you could see that far. I watch the slimes the cars make on the ceiling and remember the other ceiling, and then I get out of bed.

So all that was true, autobiographical, non-fiction. It wasn't too hard to peg out, and I didn't feel like I had to introduce myself in it, because I already know me.

I am writing at the park by the light of lamps, the bugs are kind of ugly in the light, and the reflections off my screen of the cars driving by is kind of irritating. The boys come here sometimes, and some of those times I come with them. The climbing is more interesting in the dark, scrambling up the outsides of the jungle gyms, the rocket ship, not exactly knowing where everyone else is at any given time. They sit on the roof. I am here tonight because I knew there wouldn't be anyone here. It's quieter and I wasn't sure what writing this thing was going to require of me. I'm still not sure. Right now, it's requiring a lot of me making up stuff to write about. And I don't have wi-fi, which means all I really have to do is climb the jungle gym stuff by myself in the dark, or write this. The by-myself stuff does not seem that entertaining. Although, this is not very entertaining either, I'm just on the edge of having my attention pulled away by something else.

Typing in the vicinity of no one is kind of fun. You can look around, there are no people's words to interfere with your own thoughts, and I don't have to see what I'm typing. In fact, I think it would be interesting to turn off the backlight and see how that works out. Fair warning, I won't be editing it because I think the additional time to clean up my writing would be abhorrently tedious. the kind of tedium that leaves a bad taste in your mouth and you discover your brow has been furrowed for an indeterminate amount of time.

The backlight is now off. It's kind of eerie because before I was alone glowing in the darkness, I felt like I was in the woods at a campfire, a personal sized campfire. Perhaps as people who carried candles everywhere they went must have felt.  Personal sized fire. Personal sized computer screen, laptop. Though my computer screen is larger than many early televisions meant for sharing with the whole family. Technology is cool that way. I actually feel less secure, sitting here in the darns. I have less to say, too. The lamppost with the bugs is one of those on again off again varieties that is supposed to save electricity whole still looking like a streetlamp. Not sure why they need these at all, if it can spend any time with the light off, then it should be able to spend most of the time with the light off, and there fore all of the time with the light off, which goes to show that the light is unnecessary altogether. Why DO they have these lights. I'm back in view again, the light is on and I'm kind of in it's cast. My screen is completely useless and I haven't even tried to look at it for some time. That ors for me, I suppose, I am just sitting there, rambling silently in the dark, sensory deprived, visually sensorially deprived…

Does that mean I can sharpen my listening skills? I hear a lot of my tapping, and there is a little bit of traffic though when I hear it i see the headlights pass. I'm kind of getting paranoid, though because I can't see anything including if someone is walking through the park with me. Not with me, but this park that I'm in. I can't delete because I can't see, so I feel a bit awkward correcting my statements. Clarifying my statements.

I don't think I told anyone where I was going. I have autosave, so if I get abducted, at least there is a record of who I am and what I'm doing here. Though I think my computer would be more valuable to steal right off my lap than I would be as an individual. Which is why you should worry about sitting alone in parks at night.

When the light turns off, the bugs must dissipate a bit, because it is only in the complete darkness that I feel them on my hands, fluttering into my vicinity because of the heat generated by my computer.

I went home. I managed to talk myself into severe paranoia. Every time the wind blew, every time a car drove by, every time the light went on, or off, I was staring into the darkness dying to see affirmation that I was indeed in some sort of danger. I totally wasn’t. I think I totally wasn’t. I’m still a little paranoid.

The house is busy doing house things and the boys don’t notice me sitting in the rocker typing away again. I don’t think they notice me often; I find that the house atmosphere is that things happen and you join or you don’t join. Come to think of it, sometimes it is just Jason and me, and Landon is off doing something on his own. I never do anything with just Landon. Maybe I should, sometime. I think that’s how relationships go, though, the boys, or the girlfriend. That could get awkward if I just out of the blue started watching movies with Landon. Maybe I’ll come home early one day and start in on the XboxLive and he’ll join me when he gets home from work. That could work. But then, now that I have this plan to spend time with him, I wonder why I think I need to spend time with Landon at all? Maybe it’s a girlfriend thing where I have to make sure the boys know that the girlfriend doesn’t change everything even though she kind of changes everything. Lord knows the boyfriend changed everything with my girls. Though, I don’t know why I had the girls in the first place--they don’t like gaming, they don’t like cooking and they don’t like playgrounds. They don’t read the same books I read, they don’t shop at the same places I shop, we don’t spend money in the same places. This is not the first time I thought about why I ended up with those girls in the first place. I have explored the idea that they somehow felt sorry for me, or kind of “took me under their wing.” We’re used to each other enough now I don’t see any residual effects of this condescending option.

Being that I’m 300 words short, I’m tired, and I have just found myself rambling on more than one topic, I’m about ready to kill the professor for this assignment. I have to do this thing again tomorrow and I’m gonna start spouting Jack Nicholson’s idle rant All work and no play repeatedly across the page of my paper. I don’t get to crumple it up and throw it out, though, that would be so nice--the tactile experience of acknowledging the complete irrelevance of everything you just did. The digital world causes us to collect so much that we never would in a less technological atmosphere. The thing that people do with their digital photos--as in keep them all indiscriminately--is the same thing writers do with low quality writing. Letters that don’t get sent, half-composed emails, mysterious files with obscure names lost in a labyrinth of nested folders with equally obscure names (that--of course--made sense at the time). Digital era writers have abandoned blog accounts filled with stuff they thought someone might accidentally stumble upon and like, which of course, doesn’t happen in real life. There are internet rules for webcrawling. No one ever accidentally finds a blog. Especially not an amateur “writing” blog, even if it has good writing.

I have gotten very close to reaching my 2000 words for the night and I’m quitting after this paragraph because I’m goofy tired. I have GOT to start this 2000 word project in the morning and work on it throughout the day. I did no other homework.

Camp Nano 2012, Words 7,424 to 8,017

Camp Nano intro

Camp Nano 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4

(This post is two people I don't like enough to keep writing. Maybe these two drop out of class. Yeah, that's it.)

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I really don’t like people who manipulate their way into my psyche. Someone mentioned that I should watch the Big Bang Theory and because I tried once and hated it, determined I was less than they were--less open minded, less intelligent, less appreciative of geek humor.  Instead it is that I hate flat characters. So no matter how clever the writing is, if the characters are never going to develop, and they’re not going to challenge me with their own intelligence, then I am not likely to be entertained. But now I can’t stop occasionally thinking about how I should be watching Big Bang Theory just to prove I’m open-minded, intelligent, and find geeks funny.

I feel bad that I’m susceptible to someone else’s judgement of me because of what I do or don’t do. It’s not like they’re struggling with the thought that I’m finding their company less enjoyable because they have to reference Big Bang Theory every time we get together. They don’t even notice. They have the power in the relationship--the power to decide they are right in any case.

I dislike that people have that as part of their personalities. No one should feel intrinsically right. People should have self-recognized limitations. Though, not everyone claims that they can plumb the bathroom sink, but they have the attitude that this cannot be learned.

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My first journal was given to me when I was three, I think. Maybe four. I still have it--it’s been left in the rain, pages have been ripped out, and I can’t read my handwriting. The first few entries were poems my mom wrote down for me and dated. August 12, 1983. They’re pretty cute--pretty good, too for a little kid. Not particularly sweet, like little girls should write, but innocent, goofy. Then I have several drawings scattered throughout the book. You can watch me grow, but not linearly. Then, I got more journals, and you’ll have to jump from book to book, back and forward to go through time in a straight line.

I had a journal for all my sports and endeavors. I think my mom wanted me to chronicle my development through individual projects. It didn’t work very well, though. I ended up with chunks of blank pages and then I picked up all the same scattered habits, back and forth across, multiple days on the same pages, multiple pages with the same dates. Digital journaling has changed the problem--or oddity--of reading non-chronologically, because each of my files are time and date stamped.

I’ve written about all sorts of things, the first few were poems, then drawings, then bits and pieces of stories. A lot about dwarves and elves and trees and flowers.

I’ve written every day for years. This is kind of interesting because I’m introducing me and my journaling to someone who probably doesn’t see someone comfortable with writing a journal.

I like to tell stories. I like to present my life as if it were not my life, to step outside myself and my own opinions and recreate the events of my life from a more objective viewpoint. It helps me not take myself so seriously all the time.

Being that this journal is for a writing class, there is going to be some responsibility to make my journals relevant for my writing development. The difference the purpose of my journal is going to make in what I write in it is already evident. Or, maybe this is just an introduction. I’d prefer that. But I don’t know what to write after the introduction.