How to be a person and why I suck at it

Today is just one of those days where I feel like crawling out of my skull. The world is cast over; things seem darker to me, like everything around me is under exposed. Positive, happy thoughts seem to take years to travel through me, and by the time they reach my lips, they've lost substance, hollow skeletons blowing in the wind. Basically, I'm in a terrible mood.

I despise school. I'm tired of it. I feel like I"ve been doing things because I feel like it's what I'm supposed to do. You're supposed to go to school and get a bachelors degree. You're supposed to just keep your head down, do your work, and shut the fuck up about it. Everyone goes through the same thing; what makes me so special? Nothing, really. Except for the fact that I just can't shut the fuck up about it. I can't keep my head down and obey. There is a part of me that always wonders 'why?' or 'what is the point?' And when I can't come up with a point, or when the effort involved doesn't balance out the reward, I get upset. I get discouraged. I get really frustrated.

I've chosen to do a music degree. Cello performance. I decided to do this when I was 16 years old, and so far I have not ever deviated from that goal. I went to college because everyone goes to college after they graduate from high school. I felt proud of myself that I KNEW what I wanted to do, as opposed to my peers who seemed to wander from subject to subject, unsure.

Maybe they had the right idea. Maybe it was a bad idea to be in school to begin with. So far all I've done is accrue debt. I don't feel any closer to my degree than I did six fucking years ago. To be more fair to myself, I transferred schools between states, and a lot of the credits I'd earned in WMU were not counted here at NIU. But still, dammit. I should have more to show for all this damn time in school. A degree. Some kind of tangible skill or knowledge that will serve me in the wide, scary world. Unless you count life experience as part of that, I'm kind of boned, because I'm pretty sure you can gain life experience without blowing 15k a year in a university. That just comes from being fucking alive.

So my problem is, I just . . . can't justify school to myself. I sit in class and feel like I'm waiting for the pistol to sound the start of the race. I can't shut that voice up in the back of my head; the one that is chanting 'why? why? why? how is this relevant? why are you wasting time?' I can't get the thought out of my head that I'm just getting this stupid degree because it's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to have a bachelors degree. It's practically the new high school degree; any decent job out there requires one.

Except, the economy is screwed so many times over that there is this over saturation of people with degrees who can't get jobs. So there's that. Why am I driving myself deeper into debt if I'm going to come to teh same end? College graduate with a useless degree, wandering around applying for jobs at fast food restaurants because nothing else is fucking available.

It's kind of like how people buy houses because that's what you're supposed to do. It's an 'asset'. It's valuable, and will only grow in value. I mean, maybe that was true a few years ago, but it sure as hell isn't true now. You buy a house, you're essentially buying a box for you to die in. You're buying a ball and chain that's going to keep you somewhere, and should you ever need to move, ha! Forget about it. You'll be sitting in that house for a long time, and IF you're lucky enough to sell, it's not going to be for as much as you bought it for, regardless of how much you sunk into it. The exact thing happened to my parents. They bought a gorgeous house, spent all this money in improving it, and then when they wanted to move, they managed to sell it, but at a substantial loss. So why the fuck is everyone still buying houses?

I don't know. I don't claim to be an expert on the situation. It just seems so weird to me that we're all doing the same things in life; college, marriage, babies, houses. We're all standing in the lunchline, getting the same slop slapped onto our trays, even though that slop might not be the best for us.

So you're probably saying 'Well, what do you want to do, Jillian? Aside from complain? ' I want to write books. That's that. I have a list of ideas I've been collecting, notes I take whenever something occurs to me. I daydream about my characters and the things they'll do and say to each other. I write little snippits of scenes when I have the focus. That's what I want to do. And I'm happy when I write. I know the publishing world is difficult (understatement, lol) and I know it takes monumental effort to write and edit a novel well enough for it to see the light of day. I don't care. Writing is just about the only thing I do these days that makes me happy.

And this is what frustrates me most. I'm in school, learning a bunch of stupid things that I won't strictly need in my life as an adult. I'm doing all of this INSTEAD of writing. INSTEAD. I guess we can boil all my bitching down to that one fact.

Well, go cry about it some more. This is what being an adult is like, you say. Well, maybe I don't want to be an adult. Maybe I don't want to be a person in that unending lunchline, getting all the requisite foods dumped on my plate.

I don't know. I can't really talk to anyone about this stupid bullshit, because everyone I know is going through stuff that is way worse than what I am. Wahh I can't write my books. I think if I knew myself, I would punch myself in the throat for being a whiny asshole. And yet, I can't help it. Telling myself that I'm being a fucking baby doesn't magically make me less frustrated with my life. It makes me frustrated and then mad at myself for being a fucking baby.

Suzi tells me I'm too much in my head. Yeah, I know that's true. That's the problem, isn't it? I can't do, say, or observe anything without going on some stupid mental pilgrimage over all the different things I think about it.

That breach

It's times like these where I wonder if there is seriously something wrong with me. It's a fair enough assumption. Most of the time I just wander along in life, forcefully oblivious to the fact that I am awkward and usually not on the same wavelength with my peers. It's a common enough occurrence that it can generally be ignored. But then there are days like today where I am nearly assaulted by the realization that I just don't mesh with people and the world and the trajectory expected of me.

Via the horrifying wonder that is facebook, I realized that I am just... not on the same page. Specifically, most of the people I went to high school with are settling down now; getting married, buying houses, having kids.

I hate this. I mean, I don't hate that they're doing this; it's the standard for a reason. It brings them a lot of joy and fulfillment, and I love that. What I hate is the expectation, the assumption that there might be something defective in me for not jumping at the chance to be a real adult. I don't WANT to be a real adult. The most I've been able to allow myself in that front is to get married, which is more of a formality than anything, considering I've been living with my fiance for two years.

I think what unnerves me the most is having children. I know it's expected of me. I mean, come on; it's the responsibility of the human race to procreate. But the thought of having children of my own terrifies me. I'm not talking about a vague sense of discomfort. I'm talking whenever I think about being pregnant and raising a child, my stomach curls in on itself, and I feel the urge to vomit. I'm talking a real, white-boned fear.

It's a few things. First of the all, pregnancy itself is horrifying. I'm vain enough to not want to gain weight at all, and some of the things I read about pregnancy just make my skin crawl. I'm not going to go into them, because like I said, they scare me. But at the core of this fear is something deeper. I'm terrified of actually raising a kid.

For one thing, I like being a giant kid myself. I stay up late, sometimes I have popcorn for dinner. I can spend a whole day writing if I want, or playing the cello. Fernando and I have the freedom to go on dates whenever we want, and we're more or less at liberty to spend whatever we want (I say more or less because Fernando is very frugal).

But beneath all that selfishness and vanity is the real crux of the issue; I am scared to death of ruining some kid. Of screwing up parenting. I mean, it's a fair assumption. I'm not a perfectionist, I'm clumsy, I'm awkward. I screw up things with the ease of breathing. It's just, when you think about it, every single thing you do and don't do will affect that child somehow. Extremes of either side result in dire repercussions for your child, and so you're required to perform this impossible balancing act. You're up there on that wire and pitching over on either side is dire.

THis is the fear I'm talking about. Even just speculating what it would be like to be a parent fills me with such fear that I don't know what to do with myself. I wouldn't call myself a cowardly person. I like adventures and exploring. I dislike conflict, but that doesn't have to do with bravery. But just mention becoming a parent and all that just vanishes in a snap.

So that's what I'm talking about. I have to assume that my peers don't feel this fear, and if they do it's not to this extent, because I can't imagine them going through with having kids if they felt the way I feel about it. And then, I realize that we're just encased in different spheres, different lives. They're adults, and I'm a random woman-child, running around taking part in foolish nonsense, scared of the important things.

Hope and Inspiration

Back from Puerto Rico. It was . . . well, it was interesting to be away for awhile. It was nice to see Fernando's family and hang out a bit. It got a bit tense at the end, and I'm not going to lie; toward the last few days, I started to go nuts. Here's why:

I missed home. I missed my cello, really missed my cello. I would kind of zone out every now and then, using my right arm as a kind of fingerboard to practice my fingerings. And, I missed writing. I brought my laptop with me in the hopes of writing in my spare time (of which there wasn't much), but that didn't work out. When I write, I have a kind of routine. I sit on my futon, I put my giant headphones on and listen to a very select number of albums. Or sometimes I sit at my desktop, depending on my mood. But once I'm situated, I go for hours. I've spent entire days doing nothing but writing, starting at 7am and only stopping when Fernando comes through the door. I couldn't get into that focus while in Puerto Rico.

And what's worse, once I got home, it took me a few days to get back into the swing of things. I'm only just starting to write again today, and we returned home last Friday. I need to work on my recovery time if I'm going to be a real writer.

Inspiration is a strange thing. I'm finding it kind of an adventure to map out the stimuli that inspires me to write, the things that get the juices flowing, so to speak. There is a kind of understanding there. Writers (good ones, anyway) need to observe and evaluate. A good writer needs a greater than average insight also. It's beyond me to try and quantify all the things necessary to become a good writer though.

I spent the last few days in an absorb phase; I read an obscene amount. Though is any amount of reading ever obscene? I've noticed that I tend to read with a much more critical eye now; I pay much greater attention to word choice, detail, flow, the percussive elements of structure, and what makes a sentence sound good as opposed to clumsy.

I'll be honest; when I first read Twilight, I really liked it. Very much. I was in a bad relationship, desperate for any scraps of romance that could be had in the world, but also it's an entertaining enough story that I enjoyed the way you enjoy a fast food meal; you know it's bad, but you like it. But I'd never realized how bad it was until just recently! I tried re-reading it just a few days ago, and I'm struck by how rudimentary the writing is. I don't think I'm an excellent writer, but I've written better things than Stephenie Meyer has. Fernando tells me my Scholar and the Flame story was phenomenal, and my Leto story was visceral and gripping.

I don't know whether to feel hopeful or discouraged. Does the quality of Twilight bode well or ill for my chances to be published?

Further Musing

I think one of the saddest things in the world is growing apart from someone. It's worse than breaking up, in my opinion. When you break up, there is an explosion, you yell at each other, you cry. There is a sense of finality to it though. After you stop being sad, you're able to move on. You're a little different than you were, but you're still whole, and you don't have questions and regrets. You don't look back and say 'what if?'

When you grow apart though, it's different. You wonder why you don't talk as much. You wonder why they don't respond to your messages. You wonder why they seem distant when you do actually get to talk. You wonder if it's because of something that you did or if it's just your lives are different now and you don't have as much in common. Perhaps too much has happened without the other there and it just takes too much energy trying to share it.

It's happened a few times for me. For each of them, I wonder if they're okay. I wonder if they think about me and feel a sense of sadness and regret. For a few of them, they're not even on any kind of social networking so I couldn't get in touch even if I wanted to. For others, they are; I see them online sometimes and kind of curse myself for being too much of a chicken to broach the issue.

Maybe it doesn't suck as much for some people, but for me it's really felt. I don't have many friends, so every time one drifts away, I feel it.

It could be an ideological thing. My beliefs are much different than they were five years ago. I mean, it kind of sucks when people distance themselves from you because of beliefs but it happens. I don't feel any sort of need to conform so they feel more comfortable. I'm happier and more content with my life than I've EVER been, in large part because of what I chose to keep and what I chose to let go. I don't feel particularly threatened by people with different beliefs, though I understand that is a common reaction.

I don't know. There could be many reasons.

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I think it's kind of odd that I enjoy writing and characters so much, considering how inept I am socially. I don't particularly enjoy interacting with strangers, but I really enjoy creating characters and having them interact on the page. Maybe writing gives me that degree of separation I need.
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At Peace

I think I spoke too soon. For the last few days I've been practicing cello more than I usually do. It's kind of like going on date with someone you had a huge fight with a few months ago. You patch things up, but things are tentative first. Then after awhile, you start to trust again. Is it weird that I have this kind of relationship with my cello? Probably. I never make any claims at normalcy.

Because that's boring, right? Yes.

Anyways, this year will be better though. I'm not doing quartet, I'm not doing any other ensemble aside from orchestra, which is required for music majors. I'm taking 5 classes, and my days all end around 3-4pm, which is perfect. That's enough time to practice for a few hours, come home and do homework. Do some work on my fanfics and my novel.

Fernando and I are going to Puerto Rico for a week. He hasn't seen his family in a year, and they all miss each other tons. I haven't seen them all in TWO years! It'll be nice to see them all sometime before the wedding next May.

Oh yeah! This year I have to plan our wedding. There's my part time job. Maybe I'll less of a girl or something, or maybe I'm lazy, but I'm not having as much fun planning the wedding as I think most women have.

Something Fernando likes to do is make lists. I'll find them all over the apartment when I'm cleaning. I'm a little less structured; kind of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of gal. When I go shopping, I just grab stuff I think we need and it works pretty well. But I might start making lists too, just to organize things in my brain. I might be getting older or some shit, but it feels like my brain doesn't expand with everything I take in anymore. which I kind of hate. I wish medical science would jump ahead another one hundred years and figure out how to make aging less awful. I'm fine with death; it's the whole process of slowly falling apart that I find repulsive.

Wow, anyways, my point is I'm going to start making lists.

STUFF TO ACCOMPLISH THIS YEAR
1. Don't be an asshole when it comes to practice. Do at least an hour a day, preferably 2 to 3.
2. Take notes during lessons with Cheng-Hou. He's a patient teacher, but I'm not going to do myself any favors forgetting half the things he talks about in lessons.
3. Go to class. Yes, for me this is a struggle. I hate class. I think it has to do with an ingrained hatred of classrooms. Finding a seat is always kind of a stressful activity, because I like to sit in the back by the door, which means I have to get there like a half hour early since most people like the back so they can goof off without getting in trouble. I don't like exposing my back to people and I like being by an easily accessible exit in case someone should go crazy and start shooting. I think it's weird that I think like this.
4. I don't really need to take notes, but I'm going to try and pay better attention in classes.
5. Get Bs. I'm not dumb, but I'm lazy. That needs to stop.
6. WIN THE CONCERTO COMPETITION. Pretty self explanatory
7. Don't procrastinate with homework. Easier said than done, honestly. Especially for me, since I work really well under pressure.
8. Have my spring recital repertoire under my fingers by Christmas. That way I can spend Jan-March just polishing.

I think that's about it. I do all that, I should have a pretty successful year.

Long Time No Rant? and meditations on writing

So I took a break from this blog because pretty much all I was going on it was ranting. While it's nice to rant, it's also kind of mean. And irritating. Part of the problem is I tend to keep a lot of that kind of stuff to myself, because I'd rather be miserable than yell at someone and make them feel bad. Making people feel bad makes ME feel bad. Anyways, so that's the deal.

Except, lately I haven't really had anything to rant about. I've been on summer vacation, I'm not leading a WoW guild anymore (NEVER AGAIN), I'm not in school dealing with jerks in a quartet who can't seem to understand I don't have as much time as them to rehearse (yes, this really happened). Instead of ranting, I've been writing.

And I think I've found another passion in life.

Since I was basically an infant, I've known I was going to be a musician. My dad started me on trumpet when I was . . . four I think? I'll have to ask him. Then I started piano at age five and cello at age six. Cello is my main instrument now; I play trumpet and piano for fun and stress relief. Since I come from a musical family, I'm talented. I'm honestly not bragging or anything; it's just a fact. (This isn't bragging when you realize talent doesn't equivocate success or skill).

So I've trained to be a musician all my life. I've taken private lessons, I've practiced, I'm going to college as a cello performance major. It's fulfilling. It brings me happiness.

But it's different than what writings is for me.

Since last November I've been writing fanfiction for Dragon Age, and the act of that alone has taught me so much about writing, composition and structure. Now when I read, I analyze how sentences are formed. Now when I go outside, I don't see things so much as describe them in my head.

It's really strange, and it's messed with my direction on life. I've been a musician since before I was bathroom trained, and yet never in my time as a musician have I been able to practice all day. I do that with writing. I wake up, sit down at my laptop, and just...write. NONSTOP. It's insane. Fernando will come home from work, and I'll still be at it. I've NEVER had that kind of mad passion for music.

This partly came about because I had an idea for an original work that I've been developing while also working on my fanfic. Now fanfic is not only about the joy of writing and telling stories but about practice. About getting my technique down so I can execute my idea the absolute best that I can.

Sigh. I'm not sure what my rambling point is in all this.

Ghostcrawler, you're a fucking moron

WoW, Dungeons are hard? The title of your little treatise alone successfully has convinced me to never spend money on a Blizzard product ever again.

GC, way to miss the point. Sure, some people are whining about difficulty, but most of the people I hear are complaining about the FUN factor. Who the hell wants to pay 15/month to get kicked in the face in the LFD?

I'm a healer. As an adult with half a brain, I understand the changes made to healing in this expansion. I am ABLE to heal the content. But you know what, GC? It's not fun.

It's not fun getting yelled at by assholes who blame me for wipes, even though they stand in the fire, don't interrupt, and generally play like idiots. It's not fun not being able to save a tank that is biting it in AOE. It's not fun managing MANA. It's not fun being the class that is nerfed in order to tune the difficulty of an encounter. Seriously, was that your idea? When Wow tanks and you get fired, I really hope you get a job in customer service and can never get your arrogant hands on mmo development again.

It is literally BOGGLING how you've bungled this. You teach your player base to play a certain way. You give them the tools, and it works. People have fun. Complaints are minimal, usually about small scale class buffs/nerfs. You decide, that's not what I WANT anymore, I want to completely change things around! You change it so that your players, and especially the healers, are punished for learning to play a certain way. Then you basically write a post saying 'Gtfo bads' and expect that to be kosher. It's NOT.

I don't play mmos to get my ass kicked. Not saying I want shiny lewts handed to me on a silver platter, but there is a threshold in a game where the payoff fails to make the work worth it. You've just crossed it. I'm having a hard time seeing WoW coming back from that threshold.

As I said, I have no interest in flushing my money down the toilet so developers can talk down to the people with legitimate concerns about the state of things. Before that little post, I was content to just let my time run out and maybe come back in a few months, see how things are going. But now, GC? You and your company will never see another dime of my money again. Any company that allows its developers to alienate an unhappy portion of the player base in such a way (regardless of how big or small that portion is) doesn't deserve its success.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.