Everything is ending (except not really)

It has only just occurred to me, as I sat on the edge of a motel bed in Anaheim and tried not to cry as I finished reading aloud the book we started a long time ago and have been reading on this trip, that my road trip is ending. I've been so wrapped up in excitement at returning home that I have left myself little time to contemplate that I am leaving this group adventure and carving out my own solo. On Thursday night, I will sleep in a bed that is (mostly) permanently mine. I'm going to wake up, for the first time in two months, someplace incredibly familiar and walk down streets I've known for the last ten years of my life.
This weird pang of sadness has taken me by surprise even though it shouldn't have. I hugged Rachel, tightly, before she climbed into bed and felt my throat tighten. I didn't want to let go but she was tired and I had blogs to write and sleep to evade. I'm leaving. Even writing it, the words sink in slowly and they hurt a little.
When I left home in May, I felt like I had something conceivable to come back to and it's a little fractured now but I'm clinging to my resolve. I feel a little torn but I made my choices and I'm sticking to them. I'm pretty certain that, either way, I'm going to feel a pull towards the other option but I feel ready to go home so home I will go.
Not to the Grand Canyon or Lake Powell in Utah. Not to Yellowstone or Mount Rushmore. My adventures this month will be on a different scale than the last two. Let us hope I don't regret taking myself out of the road trip and that my actions are driven by something more than hopeless longing.
I feel like Tara Finke from The Piper's Son in that way, not wanting my life to be spent in a perpetual state of longing--either for home or travel--and yet I'm starting to see longing as inevitable. I will miss my mom and sisters. I'll miss reading to them and making them laugh and pissing them off and drinking tea in a different coffee shop every day. But I've missed home, too, missed my dad and my cat and my friends and reliable wifi and... you. I've missed you. Is this what my life will be from now on, with my family moving nine hours away? Missing someone or everyone at all times, no matter where I am or who I'm with?
I guess I'll have to get used to it. Either that or take up drug abuse but I'm leaning towards the former.

travelling thoughts

There's something completely unique about travelling and maybe that is a super obvious statement but I feel it needs to be stated nonetheless. I access places in a completely different way when I don't live there, and the foreign layouts and places are food for endless wonder and comparison.

I've been to quite a few different places in the past three and a half weeks and I have pretty much found something to love about all of them, whether it is a desolate piece of beach or a neat hispter-y coffeeshop. Libraries are usually my favourite spot; I love it when they have particular rooms just for the use of teens. (I also love the clicking keyboards of library computers that give me a soundtrack as I type.)

Travelling brings so much contrast to my life. I can't help but comparing these places to home and picturing myself living here. There are so many amazing little towns on this continent that are full of really cool people and it seems unfortuante that I won't get to see them all. In part, it makes me glad to be away from White Rock, exploring somewhere new. I want to say I miss it and I guess there's some parts that I do but mostly I'm happy to be immersed in these new places--not knowing every street and its name, not having any memories attached to the buildings before my eyes. Like a blank slate, starting fresh in every new city.

I'm getting used to it, the wanderlove, as Kirsten Hubbard put it. The more I see, the more I realize how much there is to fall in love with. Hopefully, I keep falling.

I don't feel 18

I know it's not like your birthday comes by and suddenly a switch is flipped and you're supposed to feel OLDER. I'm not sure what older feels like. For the last couple of years, older feels like having less of a clue about everything, being less sure--and not necessarily in a bad way. I'm not saying I even want to feel noticeably more mature, even though I'm now legally now responsible for myself.

It's just weird. I remember being younger and thinking I'd have it all together at 18. Well, 16, too. I just assumed I'd be grown up and together. Sorry, 9-year-old self, you must be a little disappointed.

Or maybe you're not. I'm not. I think.

birthday blitz

Today, April 15th, kicks off the birthday season in my house with my oldest sister turning twenty two. For the first time, I just realized that my sister's birthdays take place in chronological order throughout the year (my oldest sister having the first of the year in April and my youngest sister the last in September, with Rachel and I in between). WEIRD.

Anyway, because my mother was crafty, she planned for us all to be earth signs so that we would be compatible with and like her, zodiac-wise. And so we have the yearly string of spring birthdays, April 15th (she was born early and is an Ares, thus failing THE PLAN), April 20th, and culminating in my birthday, May 10th.

Fascinating, fascinating trivia, Alex. Thank you for sharing that with the internet.

No but seriously. Birthday season is here. When I think about my immediate friend group, it intrigues me to report that five out of eight of us are Tauruses. Five out of eight! Meaning that when I read my horoscope, I tend to think about it in relation to the majority of my friends. And I realize maybe that is a little weird.

But it's true. And now you know.

See, see? This right here is the downside of BEDA. Rambling pre-bed posts about my zodiac sign. What am I even?

I love metaphors like a love song, baby

I love metaphors. This love has been growing for a while now but it felt especially prominent after my first encounter with The Fault In Our Stars. Reading about Augustus Waters and his use of metaphorical resonance, I was ensconced in the magic of metaphors, the seemingly endless possibility that lies within them.

I started to use metaphors in my life as a way of talking about things without actually talking about them. It was easier that using the real words and maybe it was a bit cowardly but I still managed to access the same conversation, even if it was hidden behind a facade. It was even fun, finding the right analogy and trying to fit it into the situation, all the while avoiding the admission that this was my life I was discussing. It was easier for me to compare my life to a game of Clue than to openly say that I had no idea what was going on and I was stumbling around in the dark.

John Green first introduced me to the power of metaphor and I'm extremely grateful for that. He showed me how metaphors, particularly in literature, give us an easy entry point to asking the hard questions we have to ask if we're going to live examined lives. Metaphors are like the simple machines I learned about at Science World when I was ten; they make the heavy lifting a little more manageable.

I'll be continuing with my use of them to tackle the tricky stuff. When actually talking about stuff is too hard? METAPHOR!

Now, kids, go forth and conquer your challenges with metaphor clutched in your fist. I strongly recommend it.

sitting in a tree

Today I went on a walk with no real destination in mind and ended up sitting on a tree for a couple hours.

Life is nice. It's nice to go on a Sunday stroll and find yourself in a forest that isn't the park you were aiming for. It's nice when you have someone to do this with, someone to hold your hand and follow you down the ravine.

Just sayin'.

The Hunger Games

So I just returned from seeing The Hunger Games for the second time and I think I'm a little more scarred than I was the first time around. This may be because for this show, I managed to keep my eyes open for pretty much the entire movie. And there was some scary shit that I blocked out at midnight on the 23rd.

My first not midnight, not falling asleep observation is about the shaky camera. This may have been pointed out to me by several sources between my two screenings but I picked up on it tonight and it kind of bothered me. I appreciated the artistic use of it when they were actually in the arena and I felt like it portrayed the hectic, panicky theme quite well (also, the fact that I couldn't tell what kind of violence was going on was nice for me) but, earlier in the movie, it seemed unnecessary. Why, I ask, did we need the shaky cam vibe when Katniss was hunting in the woods with Gale? The woods is the place that Katniss is most comfortable and at ease. The shaky, uncertain footage seemed contradictory to what I know from reading the books--not to go all book elitist but, um, yeah, Katniss in the woods should have been calm and steady.

The other thing that really stood out for me was the violence and it might have been because I'm generally sensitive to that kind of thing or because of the blog post Maggie Stiefvater wrote about it (god, I love Maggie Stiefvater). In her blog post, she talked about how people expressed wishes that it would have been more violent and I was aghast, mostly because that's not what The Hunger Games is about to me. It's not supposed to be some graphically violent portrayal of kids murdering each other. It's about, well, a lot of things, on various levels but to me it's mostly about Katniss, trying to stay alive for her sister. And yes, there's Peeta's qualms about his humanity and that leads Katniss to want to show the Gamemaker's that they don't own her but this is a story about love* and war and the kids affected by it. It's not supposed to be some depiction of gratuitous violence for the sake of it. I thought there was more than enough violence. Maybe it could have been more personal but maybe the point is that it wasn't**.

I'm pleased with The Hunger Games movie. There's not much I would have changed and nothing is really worth mentioning. I'm pretty excited to see what Jennifer Lawrence does with Catching Fire. And now we wait.

p.s. Okay, the real thing on my mind is the cave scene. All I could think about was how dirty Peeta's face was and then after Katniss got him the medicine and they fell asleep together, he woke up and his face was practically clean. I bet the medicine took care of that for him, right? Because it's magical, sexy face medicine. I see what you did there, Gamemakers. I see that.

*coughcough of the sisterly variety. Keep your pants on.
**I've read reviews where people said each tribute death felt like a punch to the gut. I didn't feel that way.

why I like buses

Whenever I hear people complain about how much they hate buses, I can be found making myself invisible on the fringes, trying to keep my mouth shut. You see, it's not exactly easy to convince people of the merits of public transit.

But the merits exist.

Mostly what I like about buses is that for however long, all the passengers are going the same place. Ever since I was younger, whenever travelling in cars, I find myself staring at drivers in other cars, wondering where they're going, what their lives are like, if they're late or on any kind of schedule. On a bus, it's like that only amplified. Everyone is confined to a certain place and people get on and off as they please. You could argue that a temporary camaraderie is created, as everyone inhales the same scents of too strong perfume and body odor and tries to ignore the same crazy people.

Then you get off the bus and the sense of unity disappears quietly, like maybe it never existed at all. And hey, maybe it didn't.

adventures in fate*: meeting Vita

I'm going to admit what you may already be thinking: I'm not very good at this BEDA thing. Like... I have good intentions and all and then I get locked in a lab room with my mom and there are blood pressure machines on us and we're supposed to talk about feels and everything falls to chaos.

That's basically what happened.

I also went to Seattle to meet a girl who I can basically sum up as my soulmate. Platonically. Don't make it weird.

So that took up some time.

Crossing the border both times, the inspection guards asked me what I was doing in Seattle and when I replied that I was meeting a friend and her mom, they wanted to know how long I'd known my friend and how we met.

Both times I tried not to sound sheepish when I said we've known each other for three years and we met on the internet. But it's hard not to sound sheepish when you tell people you're going to visit someone you've never technically speaking met. In my defense, meeting people from the internet doesn't seem as sketchy today as it did to me when I was eleven years old.

In short, it was lovely. Am I allowed to say that Vita and I have great chemistry without crossing a line? I said it. For two people who have never been in the same physical space at the same time, I think it's fair to say we hit it off. We literally just walked around and talked for hours and it was beautiful and surreal. The weirdest thing about the whole experience was definitely how not weird it was. I imagined it would be a little more awkward so I was surprised when it just totally wasn't. At all. Period.

It's been a pretty nice two days, travelling on the bus included.

*for comedic purposes only. I don't actually believe in fate. My view on soulmates however has changed since my encounter with the ever-amazing Vita. How could it not?

cleaning my glasses

I cleaned my bedroom window today.
It's something that I've been meaning to do and thus procrastinating doing for a long time. I'm not sure what I was waiting for, exactly, because every time my mom volunteered to do it, I told her I'd get around to it. And, though I wish I hadn't waited, I'm kind of glad I did.

I find it so absurdly easy to look back at everything that's happened and wish certain things had happened earlier but, not surprising to you if you watch Doctor Who, time doesn't work that way. If I had gotten out the bleach and Windex and cleaned my stupid window a month ago, I might not have had the same, staring-through-the-clear-glass-at-the-blue-sky epiphany, type moment that I experienced today. I might have been listening to a different song on repeat which would have led me down a different train of thoughts. It might not have been so simply satisfying.

Sometimes, things are worth the wait.

And just like that, my list of things to remember for this year is constantly growing. It started with 'chill your pants' and grew to 'cheer up and chill your pants.' I'm happy to now add 'clean your glasses' to the list.
When you're looking through the same window for a year, it's so effortless to think everyone is looking through the same one and grow accustomed to its flaws. It's so ridiculously difficult to keep in mind that your window or your lenses can get smudgy and warped--that is, until you push a cloth across the surface and check out how much dust you picked up.

I'm always laughing about how sad it is when I put on my glasses and my sight is just as horrible as it was without them. I think we all need to be reminded to look through different, cleaner lenses sometimes.

the art of quitting

"It's so hard to leave--until you leave. Then it's the easiest thing in the goddamned world." - Paper Towns, John Green

Same goes for me and quitting. When we're told as children all those lies about how winners never quit and quitters never try or whatever the hell it was, they're really just that--lies. The less simple truth is that there aren't hard and fast rules about quitting and the people who do it. It's not always about surrender. Sometimes, quitting is an act of self respect.

small world syndrome

You know how when crazy coincidences happen and people attribute it to 'small world?' I disagree with that. It's a huge world, so huge I sometimes fail to grasp, and--population wise--constantly growing.

We're the small ones. There's this feeling I get from staring out at the ocean that I can best describe as a glorious insignificance. It's like this beautiful realization that in the bigger picture, my life is pretty tiny. In my lifetime, I'll try not to consume more than I need and I'll hopefully help people ad do some good ad maybe it'll even out. Maybe all my positive contributes will cancel out what I take away. But looking at the human race broadly, my impact will be pretty small.

Some people may fall into a depression of sorts upon realizing this, feel lost in a sea of purposelessness. Like in  a book called Nothing, where this group of seventh graders are faced with the idea that nothing matters and are not able to live with it. They go to incredible lengths to prove to themselves and each other that something in life has meaning.

What people fail to appreciate, in commenting that it's a small world, is how naturally interconnected we are I feel like one of the biggest failings of the human race is to put things in perspective. Like, if we just saw that throwing your toxic garbage in a landfill that leeches into the groundwater that goes to  the rivers where the fish we eat swim, would we be this thoughtless?

So, to me, it's not that strange when it turns out that my dad and my friend's dad went to the same highschool in a small town on the other side of the country and other weird connections reveal themselves.

It's not a small world; sometimes it just feels like it.

unapologetically consistent

I decided I was feeling bloggy today so I went to my url to see when I had last posted and it was October 22--the time before that, September 22. Weird, isn't it?

My last blog was about how I was doing nanowrimo. It seems somewhat fitting that this one should inform that I am not going to win nano. I'm glad I did it because I wrote 25,000 words that I wouldn't have otherwise but I decided that it would not suit me to write the other 25,000 words in the last 10 days. I'm not interested in the stress and, to be honest, it isn't fun anymore.

I like winning but it isn't worth it. Not that I'm going to stop writing; I'm not. I'm just not writing 2,500 words a day, that's all.

On another note, my head is swirling with a lot of half-formed thoughts. Someone's recently moon-walked into my life who is, in some indirect and not so indirect ways, shaking things up.

Gilmore Girls is calling. I will continue to be unapologetic for my amateur, yet consistent, blogging.

so this is going well...

I missed the second day of BEDA.

I was going to write it when I got home from being psychoanalyzed and having my blood taken for me for the purpose of pursuing greater truths but, like, it was 10 o'clock and I forgot.

This is after my mom and I were put in a room together with a video camera and told to talk about feels. Did I mention the blood pressure machines we had on? SCIENCE.

I'm now going to talk about signed things, of which I have no shortage.
When John announced that he would be signing the entire first printing of The Fault in Our Stars, I probably had a moment of excitement. There's a faint hope that I'll get a special one, a hanklerfish, a note, a purple Sharpie one, etc. But for the most part, it doesn't mean that much to me.
The thing that I've come to learn about signed things is that they're about as special as the story behind them. Witness the Cassie Clare and Holly Black books above. My friends and I waited in line, a line winding between bookshelves throughout half of Chapters, so that we could go up and get those signed. We got to chat with the authors while they did it. My dad got the parental unit award of the night for staying in the mall for at least five hours during the q&a and signing. Those lines on those books are almost symbolic of that night.
Then there's the Twilight book. Picture, if you will, my naive Twilight loving, 13-year-old self, so excited to be sitting in the very last row of Benaroya Hall in Seattle that I am bouncing in my seat. Then imagine later on, standing in a complex line in the lobby, clutching this piece of shit book and dancing with my sisters to Mr. Brightside by The Killers. That night was so much fun, I can't even describe. And when I look at that scribbled SM, it reminds me of how silly and happy I was.
Now, there's two John Green signatures on here. I have never met John Green. I've met Hank Green and I probably got him to sign something but I'm sure where, or even what, it is (oh, now that I think about it, it's the poster from his last album). The first signature was given to me by my sister. When John was in the UK last year, doing a show with The Sons of Admirals in London, I told her she had to go. And she did. When she came home for Christmas that year, she gave it to me and though I was blasé when she first mentioned it, when I saw my name in John's handwriting I kind of freaked out. So when I glance towards where it hangs in my room, I don't just think about the fact that John Green once told me not to forget to be awesome, I think about the fact that my lovely sister went to this random concert she knew nothing about and then probably stood in line so that I could have this piece of paper. And I think that's pretty cool.
The second J Scribble is a copy of Will Grayson, Will Grayson that my mom brought home from work one day. She called me when she saw it and asked if I wanted it and I said, "Sure." When she handed it to me, I opened it, closed it and put it on my shelf. And maybe my abundance of opportunity to get things signed has made me a signature snob but this book just doesn't mean any more than the unsigned copy it sits next to on my shelf. It's kind of cool that one time John Green and David Levithan held this book and maybe some of their skin cells flaked off on it but aside from that, it's just faded Sharpie scribbles on a piece of paper.
This lengthy case study has been an indulgence of mine to show you that having a signature that is 1 in 150,000 is not that important to me. I would buy the book the day it comes out, anyway. It sounds freaking amazing. I would rather John be healthy and carpal tunnel-less than have another J Scribble in my room.
But, I don't know, I appreciate the effort John is giving to Nerdfighteria and I'm grateful for all the energy the Green brothers but in to this community.

nanowrimo

I've hesitated to say that I won't be doing NaNoWriMo this year, at least not in the traditional sense. I don't know why, but blogging the words has a sense of finality and though I'm not unsure about it, I guess I haven' wanted to carve it into the interwebs just yet. It wasn't a hard decision, though the more I think about it, the more love I feel for Nano. New stories are great. There's a rush of excitement and bursts of energy and I enjoy it. But, as author Susan Juby said today in a workshop at the Surrey Writers Conference, if you have too many affairs with other stories, it becomes a habit you can't break.

I want to finish my current story. Every time I hear advice on how plots are supposed to work I think of my novel and smile at how it all vaguely fits into the right places at the right times. Sure, I need more conflict and tension and my protagonist needs more goals and it's not quite there yet but it's a draft and I'm just happy that I feel it has potential. It's so nice to feel this story could really go somewhere--if I put the effort in.

So while I love that rush of falling in love with a new story and creating new characters and scenes and starting fresh on November 1st, it's not going to work for me this year. I need to stick with what I've got and hopefully I'll figure out how to use the motivational push of NaNo to my advantage in some other way. I'm still figuring out the logistics.

To all those attempting the challenge, I wish you luck. For writers who are not embarking on this sacred journey, is there any particular reason why not?

stories

I have a love affair with--you guessed it--stories. We're getting more tangled up in each other, too, as I realize how radically different my life would be without them. If I was dating stories, I would probably advise myself to cool off because this relationship may be just a tad unhealthy.

Yet I don't think about these facts until it's 11:30 at night after five sixths of a Star Wars marathon and I'm gesticulating wildly, telling the most epic tale of babysitting that I've ever told, to my third (and hopefully last) audience. I'm smiling and laughing and cringing and feeling everything and everyone is looking at me and we're so in the moment and I get so hopeful because storytelling is such a beautiful thing about being human and being alive and can't it just be like this all the time? Why can't everyone keep smiling because I'm saying the right thing?

I love making people laugh. There are these constant moments of doubt that I'm not actually as funny as people tell me because most of the time I haven't half a clue what I'm saying or where it's coming from. And sometimes my humour is mean which is a rather unfortunate side effect. It's so hard to create jokes that laugh with rather than at.

But I'm trying. With every word that I say, I'm improving my craft of this incredibly human activity. Every story, every blog, every chapter of my neglected novels has gotten me a little better at the thing that I love the most.

I don't consider myself exceptional at lying like John Green but I think I'm good at telling stories. And even if I'm not, I won't be stopping any time soon. I don't even think I know how.

sick people should go to bed

I always forget how much I hate being ill. I mean, I remember the fact that it wasn't a good time, but it's not until my nose won't stop dripping and my eye is twitching and my throat aches that I realize how sucky it is to be sick.

This blog post has no point.

"and I'm only me when I'm with you"

Taylor Swift inspires the most thought provoking Saturday afternoon dish washing moments of all other songwriters. Honestly.

So I'm standing there scrubbing away at a cup measure this afternoon and reevaluating my distaste of the song "I'm Only Me When I'm With You." See My Relationship Progression With This Song:

1. Bobbing along. Oooh, this is kind of catchy.
2. Furrowed brow. Wait a second, this is a dependency song.
3. Slow nodding. Okay, she's talking about her best friend. That's cool, right?
4. Head scratching. Hold on, why is it okay to only be yourself around your best friend but not around a guy? 
5. Quizzical expression. Shame! I know EXACTLY what she's talking about. I'm dependent!
6. Squinty look. But then it is about a guy?
7. Head-desk. I'm so confused. What is my stance?

It recently occurred to me that I don't have to have a ideological "stance" to every song on my iPod but still, I think about these things. And I've made it clear in the past that I don't support the intricacies of Taylor Swift's tendency towards passivity and pining. But this song has shaken it all up by the mere fact that I associate with it so closely.

I know what it's like to feel so close to a person that your empathy transcends almost everything. I've felt like I couldn't be myself when I wasn't around this person/people. I've been a part of something that feels greater than myself, been half of a whole.

What does that say about me and does it even matter? And when you start to realize that a lot of what you thought was silly or wrong or cynical or close-minded, is that called maturity or just life? Seriously, what are the chances I'll look back on this point in time, everything I stand for and believe in, and think, "Wow, I can't believe I thought that. I was so... *insert adjective here*"

*gasp* Am I actually growing as a person?

BTAWIA

It's called a goal, people, just because my blogs have gone down to monthly since April does not mean I cannot handle a challenge.

So yes, I will be blogging thrice* a week in August. Let's do this.

With the preliminaries out of the way, I must say: I really want to get into Pottermore. At first, with the vagueness, I wasn't that into it. But I feel like the hype has caught up to me, along with a feverish desire to be a part of it.

The problem, of course, is that I'm working every day from 8:30-3:30 and the next clue get's dropped anytime from 6am-10pm PST, according to Mugglenet. Yes, that's a couple hours of possibility but I really don't want to get up at 6 and then have to leave/get ready before the clue is out.

And now I'm whining. Greeeeaaat. First day of BTAWIA and I've already resorted to self pity. I'm just going to stop myself. Right now.

*Twice at RP, once here.