Blogger Can Suck Sometimes

I hate this. I'd just finished writing a rather lovely and motivational post about my newfound purpose to pick myself out of the slacking-off gutter and to finish this semester with a bang. Then I clicked "Publish Post," as usual. But did any of what I thoughtfully wrote out appear?

NO.

Instead, I got redirected to a page that said, "Please sign into Blogger." So I thought to myself that okay, this is no biggie. Just sign in and the post will show up because it's been auto-saved. But did this actually come to pass?

UGH.

So I'll be short and sweet -- Blogger fails!

A tip for future posts, and something that me as an idiot should have done after writing a post:

Always copy & save what you've written and put it onto Microsoft Word before pressing "Publish Post." Otherwise, if Blogger decides to have another trusty brain fart, you might lose your paragraphs of cleverly and poignantly written insights.

But Blogger's brain farts aside, I just wanted to say that I'm going to try hard to finish this semester with a bang -- which means I'm going to have to suck it up and finish all the homeworks and chapters I missed in my Stat Methods for Psych class (thank goodness my professor's letting us hand in homeworks late!). Where did this new sense of motivation come from?

Frankly, I'm getting tired of feeling burned out, induced to a catatonic stupor. I refuse to be a walking zombie. So consider me a zombie arising.

Most of this motivation came from registering for Fall 2010 classes today. I have to go to school on Saturday from 9AM to 4PM for Experimental Psych, but at least I get Mondays, Wednesdays, and a good portion of my Thursdays free. And I'm getting some General Education Requirements out of the way, so that's another plus. And I'm taking a couple of classes where I know at least one person, so it won't be that lonely. I just hope I'm motivated and inspired to learn next semester.

A Scrambled & Fried Brain

Hello again, blog. I'm sorry I've neglected you. I really did mean to write more posts... but I've been busy. How busy?

Good question.

One test after another can really fry your brains out. Don't even get me started on my utter lack of motivation to crack open my Statistical Methods in Psychology textbook and take a stab at my homework. I'm already three homeworks behind. I'm just grateful that my professor is a really understanding guy who'd rather be lenient than a hard-ass toward his utterfly confused students (which is to say, pretty much my entire stat class). I also sometimes feel stupid around my classmates who frequently participate in class discussions. It's like they have a weekly subscription to Psychology journals and read all the articles cover to cover. Is that something I should be doing? Am I showing enough interest, enough effort in my major?

Doesn't this remind you of Coraline? Yikes.

Is it really horrible that I'd rather write stories than read my psychology textbooks at this point in the semester? Or that I'd rather watch TV instead of write a review for my theatre class on a low-budget mediocre Hunter College Theatre performance of Brecht's Threepenny Opera?

I'd sooner sleep than study.

Don't get me wrong. Theatre is really a creative form of art -- in fact, it's the synthesis of the arts. But there are some plays that I have no interest in. Other times, I have nothing particularly interesting to say about a performance. Sometimes I'm just annoyed at the actors and grumpy at the director for an over-ambitious overarching metaphor for a play. Just tell the story without the hokey gimmicks, dammit! Give me something I can relate to, something I can really enjoy thinking about.

And okay, here's my ditty about my chosen major... Psychology and all its subfields are very intriguing -- really, it's an eye-opening subject to empirically explore the boundaries of people's thinking patterns, behaviors, emotions, and interactions with other people. But I can't see where my life is leading in terms of a career I want to get out of it. A clinician? A researcher? A guidance counselor? A therapist? Thus, the dilemma of having too many choices.

And the dilemma of not having much of a choice -- I wanted to be an English major. But there's not much of a career you can make out of a BA in English Literature, aside from teaching (which I don't think I have the patience for) and publishing (which I wanted to try, but the typical salary doesn't really pay well enough to cover rent in NYC).

So the compromise would be to become a psychologist and write novels on the side. But I really don't know how that'll turn out. I just told my dad the premise of my book this morning. He knew I was working on a manuscript, but I never told him what it was about until today. I know I should take his technical questions as a way to challenge myself and come up with innovative ideas to tell a story about mythical creatures that have become as cliche as Santa Claus in contemporary pop culture.

Suppose you combine the two salient pop culture images into one mega picture of human imagination:

Pretty darn frightening, no?

I seriously think I have something original going. Not the vampire Santa hybrid creature, but my story.

I know that my dad was really just trying to help me by offering different perspectives on some of the key details (like, what kind of human in his/her right mind would attack and pillage a group of dragons? or how exactly does a dragon shape-shift? or how will a dragon blend in with humans?). Really, they're good questions that I have to work through in order to get my story's details straight. But I have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that the novel I've been working on sounds completely ridiculous.

I felt so embarrassed talking about it with my dad. Probably because he's not the kind of person who would pick up a sci-fi or fantasy novel right off the bat at the bookstore. He's the kind of reader who enjoys reading books written by Sidney Sheldon, Sue Grafton, Tom Clancy, Isabel Allende, or Kahlil Gibran. He reads everything from religious perspectives and philosophies, to ghost-written James Bond adventures and Alexander McCall Smith's Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency.

Only occasionally will my dad voluntarily select a novel to read from my book shelf. I'd even gotten him to read Airhead and all the books from The Mediator series by Meg Cabot. He even read a few titles that I bought in middle school from the Scholastic bookfair, like Carolyn Meyer's Young Royals series about the Tudors (which, by the way, got me interested in learning about European history when I was 10 years old).

But he's never picked up In the Forests of the Night or Shattered Mirror by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. Nor did he even bother picking up any fantasy novels I happened to borrow from the public library (like the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr or the ). My dad enjoyed watching the Harry Potter films, but it wasn't something he would try reading. He didn't really understand the sweeping epic of Lord of the Rings. Ditto with Tim Burton's kooky, fantastical films like The Nightmare Before Christmas or Sweeney Todd.

I guess some people's suspension of disbelief can't stretch that far. Which I suppose is the reason why I felt embarrassed telling my dad about the premise of my book. He looked at me the entire time as though he had no idea what the excitement's all about.

"You need to make it sound really believable," Dad said, "otherwise an editor might not be willing to publish your story. Fantasy's okay, but you need to make the story relatable to your readers and have a very lovable main character so that your readers will keep buying your books."

Thanks, Dad. I already knew that. But he does have a point.

I'm hoping that my book comes out as a Young Adult novel, considering that my protagonist is a teenage girl who's only just realizing her heritage and her potential despite her angst and anxiety over fitting in with the rest of the world. Though there's some romance, but I wanted it to be more of a coming-of-age story, a kind of bildungsroman. I'm not sure my readers would love Danica right away -- she's whiny, angsty, pessimistic, and has a frequent tendency to overreact. But I hope that by writing her story, she'll grow into a strong, wise, independent woman.

Right now, though, I can't really think. I don't exactly have writer's block, but I'm stuck. I'm having some trouble writing a fight scene. Mostly because I can't really get into the mood of the moment. Sounds pretty flaky, but there are certain things you have to be in the right emotional state and mindset for, otherwise your work will end up sounding like crap. Lately I haven't been able to fully immerse in that creative mode. Blame it on school, on other responsibilities taking a toll on my mind. So I end up not feeling it, despite my efforts to find fast, aggressive, heart-pumping, adrenaline-rushing music to write to on Google.

Suffice it to say that a majority of my search yielded less than savory results. I hate power metal (sorry, metalheads) and rap really isn't the kind of vibe I'm looking for with this particular fight scene.

Take this scene from The Vampire Diaries, for instance:

How does a writer put the Salvatore brothers' (and their enemies') emotions and actions into suspenseful, words?

But I did manage to find some cool tunage to occupy my caffeine-induced neurons as I wrote. Like the theme music from Angel (YES, the vampire that David Boreanaz used to portray before becoming Agent Seeley Booth in Bones) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the ominous-sounding score from Batman: The Dark Knight. I also really like the dark, romantic mood of Michael Nyman's "The Heart Asks Pleasure First/Promise" from the movie The Piano (I think it goes by either title; not sure about that).

In no particular order, here's the music that gets me through writing the fight scene (or any scene in my story for that matter):

• Pony (It's OK) by Erin McCarley
• The Breakdown by Alexz Johnson
• Ruthless by Something Corporate
• Syndicate by The Fray
• Over My Head (Cable Car) by The Fray
• When You Were Young by The Killers
• Sick Cycle Carousel by Lifehouse
• Practice Makes Perfect by Cute Is What We Aim For
• Naive by The Kooks
• Sunrise by Yeasayer
• The Con by Tegan & Sara
• No One Sleeps When I'm Awake by The Sounds
• Disturbia by Rihanna
• Feel It In My Bones by Tiesto featuring Tegan & Sara
• Rooms On Fire by Stevie Nicks
• Fader by The Temper Trap
• Naked by The Goo Goo Dolls
• Reinventing Your Exit by UnderOath
• Howl by Florence + the Machine
• Drumming Song by Florence + the Machine
• Hemorrhage by Fuel
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme
• The Sanctuary (Extended Remix) by Darling Violetta [Angel theme]
• The Heart Asks Pleasure First by Michael Nyman
• Aggressive Expansion by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard

Of course, this list is still subject to change according to my mood and crazy as this might sound, my characters' moods. If you want to hear the playlist, check out the "Tunage" tab underneath "Turn the Pages." Hopefully you'll find some artful arias to inspire you as well.

In case you haven't noticed yet, I pretty much changed the layout of my blog again. ;)

So there you have it, friends -- another rambling from a girl who currently has addled brain cells from reality scrambling and frying her mind to anxiety-ridden putty. Still recovering, but coping well enough.

More later, lovelies.

Love, Save the Empty...

My friend Liliana wrote a very insightful entry examining the overemphasis we place on investing our time and devotion to someone who just won't reciprocate our feelings. Originally, I meant for the following information to be a comment on Lily's post. But seeing as I exceeded the limit on typed characters in the comment box, I decided not to let it go to waste. So here it goes...

Most of us live under the delusion that it's better to have loved than to not love at all. Or some variant of this statement.

Right now, I'm reading this book called Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I was both surprised and amazed at the fact that this woman has gone through much of what Liliana discussed in her blog entry (it's Gilbert's memoir). Liliana's post post reminded me of it, and I felt that I have to share this excerpt from the book with you, because I think it's terribly relevant (pages 65-66):

"I barely had an adolescence before I had my first boyfriend, and I have consistently had a boy or a man (or sometimes both) in my life ever since I was fifteen years old. That was -- oh, let's see -- about nineteen years ago, now. That's almost two solid decades I have been entwined in some kind of drama with some kind of guy. Each overlapping the next, with never so much as a week's breather in between. And I can't help but think that's been something of a liability on my path to maturity.

Moreover, I have boundary issues with men. Or maybe that's not fair to say. To have issues with boundaries, one must have boundaries in the first place, right? But I disappear into the person I love. I am the permeable membrane. If I love you, you can have everything. You can have my time, my devotion, my ass, my money, my family, my dog, my dog's money, my dog's time, -- everything... I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else.

I do not relay these facts about myself with pride, but this is how it's always been...

Dear God, I could use a little break from this cycle, to give myself some space to discover what I look like and talk like when I'm not trying to merge with someone... When I scan back on my romantic record, it doesn't look so good. It's been one catastrophe after another. How many more different types of men can I keep trying to love, and continue to fail? Think of it this way -- if you'd had ten serious traffic accidents in a row, wouldn't they eventually take your driver's license away? Wouldn't you kind of want them to?"


So there. We all want to believe that something as wonderful and as magical and as powerful as true love exists. We go out searching for it, trying to confirm this bias, trying to persuade ourselves that things will get better (even if they hardly ever do). Sometimes we just end up settling. Why?

Because it's better than considering the alternative -- the thought of being a single complete human being, independent of another person's heartbeat pulsing. In other words, we mistake being single for being alone. For being lonely and forlorn, for being utter romantic failures. And this hurts like a bitch.

Then comes the cycle of self-pity, of self-deprecation, of self-doubt in one's self-worth. But what, praytell, is the SELF?

Who is this "I," this "me," this "my," this "mine"? WHO?

I don't know if this is the case for most people, but I think that's the central problem here. Often, we lose our sense of self because we "disappear into the person [we] love." We're fools who can't see anything of consequence until the cracks break right in front of us.

So maybe, like Miss Gilbert has realized and implies in her book, we have to find ourselves first and come full circle before we give of ourselves completely to that person.

As far as I can tell, Love -- in its truest, sincerest form -- displays symptoms of dissociative identity disorder (or split-personality, if you will). Despite the flaws and the petty fights, Love will still cherish, adore, and care unconditionally for as long as Love is welcome to stay.

We just have to learn to let Love BREATHE for a change. Forcing it will only make Love bitter and declare war on us. Best not to aggravate it. Love's fatigued and overworked as it is. ;)

The Mini New Year -- Easter Greetings

There's something to be said about Easter. I don't mean the cute fuzzy chicadees or the cuddly bunnies surrounded by baskets of colorfully painted eggs, nor do I mean the holiday hubbub that the media and commercialized advertising talk about. I mean Easter, the day that Christ emerged from the tomb, totally alive and shining in all his divine glory. I think of it as a mini-new year. A new beginning. A fresh blank page on that book, that roadmap to the rest of your life.

I guess it's probably the sunshine that's been gracing NYC's pavements this past week, shining brightly and warmly through windows, begging us to venture outside and do something with our lives. Or at least, take a walk and breathe in all that is Spring. Dog-poop and garbage bags on the sidewalk aside.

But I'll let the sun drip its after-effects my brain, as long as I'm feeling as close to content and complete as possible for the moment. I've been worrying too much about deadlines. What an awful word, tinged with the sinking feeling of finality and certain doom. Just think about it. Go on...

Dead. Line.

Even better -- try out the plural form for size. Dead. Lines.

Try saying it again, just for good measure. Deadlines.

It's more than enough to make you want to shriek "ICK!" and shudder, perhaps even lock yourself in your room and cower in a corner so that painful pest called Panic and its best buddy Dread won't find you. What a wonderful way to murder one's good mood.

But you know what? That Deadline can just dig its own grave and crawl in it. Time's already wasted as it is.

So rather than get cranky and catankerous over the lack of time we have in our lives, maybe we should figure out how to better spend the time that we do have. No doubt, we should learn to become open-minded, open to new experiences, to novel ideas, to the unknown waiting to be unfurled. Should is the operative word. Here are a few pointers I've come up with to help you along, fellow seeker of inner peace:

Be patient -- even if that impacted tooth is taking advantage of its sweet time hiding in your gums and you have to continue wearing your braces for the next three years (or more) because of its stubbornness. Or you find yourself stuck for nearly an hour in the subway on a train that just won't budge, or wind up at the wrong stop because the conductor didn't have the decency to give you fair warning that the train will bypass your destination.

Take the time out to explore that which prods at your curiosity -- even if that means staying up all night to finish a really engrossing and magical novel that's at least 600 pages long, and your mother waking you up in her grouchy mode switched "on" because you neglected to turn off your bedroom light before your eyes drooped shut for the sweet surrender of sleep.

Try out something new -- even if that means potentially overcooking the pasta noodles you were planning to use with the new clam sauce recipe you wanted to try, only to find out that you're running low on the actual sauce... and clams. Just hope you can make a feast out of the food that you do have.

Do some Spring cleaning -- even if that means turning your bedroom (and perhaps your entire home) inside out as you donate your outdated and unwearable hand-me-downs, give yourself a paper cut as you rifle through the dusty stacks of papers that you've shoved into a forgotten corner of your desk/bookshelf. Or sweep and mop the floor, even if the dust and the overpowering scent of detergent trigger the worst of your allergies.

Watch a classic movie -- even if you might end up falling asleep through an old black-and-white film because you found it boring and kind of hokey. (Although, I have to say, watching TCM can get really addicting, but more on that in some other post...)

Read a challenging novel -- even if you wind up wanting to defenestrate that lengthy and wordy Tolstoy title because its so-called heroine was such a repressed and dreary character.

Go for a jog, go exercise -- even if you discover that you're wheezing after just a mere distance of 1/2 of a block when you thought that you were correctly pacing yourself.

Forgive my sarcasm. And I know that this phrase is spat out more times than the word cliche itself, but we should all think of life in this way: no pain, no gain. Take the good, the bad, and the ugly all in stride and just suck it up. Because maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you'll find something. Or maybe you won't. But at least by then you'll know. You'll know from experience what worked well and what didn't, so maybe you'll gain the insight to make things better.

That's really the only "hope" there is -- mending one small broken hope at a time so that everything else looks a little less hopeless. So that your world, and everyone else's world in general, can become a brighter place. A dim one, but nonetheless a slightly brighter place.

So as I said earlier, think of this time of year as a miniature new year celebration, your own little resurrection from the dimness of your daily complaints and catatonic complacency. Smile like you mean it, and maybe you'll infect someone.

Happy Easter season, everyone. :)