A Loud Realization

It's been a few days since people across the country remained silent for a day to raise awareness for the millions that live without rights and without a voice. The challenging day was full of reflection and the following is a realization I made which I'm sure participants everywhere shared.

I think everyone who participated in Vow of Silence learned a very important lesson. Not being able to communicate verbally means not only no voice and the added strain and difficulty of communicating, it means not having an opinion, no being able to ask for help, and not being able to tell people how you feel and what you want. It means you can't get what you need and depending on other people to help you attain certain things. It means dependence--on paper, on your writing implement and on the people around you to be understanding.

On November 20th, I realized that the Vow of Silence is not just about challenging yourself to remain quiet for 24 hours. It's also about experiencing the frustration and the hopelessness that comes with understanding that you can't call out for help or express your feelings. It makes you realize that every child in the world who doesn't have the rights they deserve needs our help to get those rights. They can't do it on their own.

Silence sucks.

It's 5:18pm, where is the sun?

I feel like avoiding schoolwork and my novel for a while. What wins the competetion of what I'm going to do? If you guessed read Going Bovine and eat month old sweet & salty bars, you are WRONG. I'm going to write a blog, because I've been feeling neglectful and I actually do want to write at present. Just not NaNoWriMo. [I'm so used to the swiggly green line under so much of my work that I feel obligated to tell you that last bit there was a Fragment. Would you like to Ignore it?]

November seems to be moving along at an alarming pace. It is also sucking up my daylight hours and I'm not at all pleased about that. The notion that maybe if I got up earlier and went to bed earlier I'd have more daylight hours in my life just crossed my mind. And then it flitted out as soon as the teenage instinct to sleep all the time started threatening it. It started to say that I could still sleep just as much, just at a slightly different time, but there is absolutely no reckoning with those teenage instincts. They are violent and unruly.

I thought the whole point of daylight savings is that you have more sun, or something. It seems to be failing epically because it is 5:18pm and it is dark outside. I am not happy.

This is the point in the blog where I struggle with a new topic and wonder how I can string two random thoughts (like daylight savings and ... together). It might be easier if I could figure out what ... was.

Maybe I can write about the fact that I'm a neat-freak with not enough space for the stringent organization I would like to have in place and a rebellious sister who thinks that leaving her socks on the floor is acceptable.

Maybe I can write about the fact that I'm a terrible artist (at least at stuff like drawing and sketching stuff). To prove my point I will share an example in which I tried to draw a picture of my sister for my art course using pen and ink and it turned into a awful drawing of an Asian looking version of Harry Potter. Why do artist's make it look so easy to draw apples and pears when really it's all just a vicious lie. They trick you into attempting your own sketch of a banana and when it turns out to look like the moon they laugh at you for trying. Or at least, the little artist people in my head do. I'm sure real artists have more tact.