Crybaby or An Exercise in Emotional Hyperbole

I have become the biggest crybaby as I've gotten older. Well, that sounds a bit over the top; what I mean is I am a lot more willing to cry over fictional characters now than I was before. I don't know if it's hormones or what, but I like to think it's because I'm just a more ~*deep and caring person*~ who feels things more acutely. I cried as a kid, don't get me wrong, but within the last year or so it has gotten, by my standards, out of control.

The worst offender is the beginning of Pixar's movie Up. It is not my favorite Pixar movie, or movie period, but I swear to God, that five minute montage at the beginning kicks me in the heart and makes me cry involuntarily every single time. I genuinely dislike watching the beginning with other people because I know I will end up bawling and embarassing myself. And while we're talking about Pixar. oh God, Toy Story 3, oh God. I guess kid movies destroy me, I don't even know. Big Fish can sneak up on me too, if I'm not careful.

Books can be just as bad for my fragile psyche as movies, though. When my mom recommended The Book Thief , I thought Here we go, another Holocaust story, because I'm basically a terrible person. The story even starts out listing the people who die, since the narrator is freaking Death itself, so it shouldn't be a big shocker when it happens, but the ending just destroyed me. Just kicked my heart around the room as I heaved these ridiculous sobs that would be more appropriate at the funeral of a loved one because of this fictional couple that would never be.

Let the Great World Spin is, I think, a collection of short stories all set in pre-9/11 New York City. I just started it a week or so ago and have only finished the first story. It was a fantastic one, but I knew I was in for it when the main characters were Irish brothers. Nothing good can come of Irish brothers in books, they are the main characters in almost every tragedy. The end, which flashes back and forth between the tortured younger brother, who was in a fatal car accident, and the older brother, who was going about his business and unaware of the accident until just before the younger brother's death, made me hold my breath and then burst into tears at the younger brother's last words. Just astonishing.

Anyway, now that I've flaunted my emotional instability, what movies or books make you cry?

A jumbled post about writing

I have this bizarre love/hate relationship with writing that I'm not sure is entirely normal. I wonder if it would be the same if I didn't have an unfortunately strong penchant both for procrastination and perfectionism, at least when it comes to starting things, but as it is most writing I do is like freaking pulling rotten teeth. It's not all that fun or easy, but I have to or my head will explode. That's kind of a dramatic way of putting it, but really, evn my journal entries tend to be a bit sporadic because I don't have the patience to write all I want to write. In the end, it's my main outlet of expression, even if I don't care for it like I should.

The most difficult for me by far is creative writing. I suppose it's because I've kept a journal about my life since I was seven, but writing fiction is ridiculously challenging for me. I remember once in third grade, we had to write and illustrate our own fictional stories and enter them in a creative writing contest at the school. I spent weeks on that thing I think, storming around, frustrated that I couldn't think of where to send my guppy main character on his epic journey through the sea next. At one point I gave him a best friend who was an angelfish, and who was this big tough fighter guy; mainly I remember this because I was thrilled at thinking of this, creating a tough angelfish! Hahaha, what wit! I think it ended with the guppy and angelfish playing checkers? I don't know.

I read once that the mark of a really intelligent and creative person is if they created and imagined living in a little world of their own and I felt slightly bad for myself. Does it count if it was a half-assed world, cobbled together from books I'd read and TV I'd seen? I was too busy exploring other people's fictional worlds to create my own, I guess. I did, and still do, far more reading than writing.

My mom is teaching a creative writing class this next year, and I'm eyeing her cirriculum warily as I help her gather it together. She's gotten a bunch of writing prompt books off Amazon.com that maybe I could try out sometime, when I gather the courage. I think the key is habit? I know that's how exercise became less daunting for me, knowing that at a certain time in the evening I was going over there, because it was that time. Maybe this school year will be the year I become more comfortable with my compulsion.

Derrrrrrp OR Summer for Lazy Nerds

I was hanging out with one of my friends who's returned from working at summer camp since May, and she asked how my summer was. I thought for a bit and then replied that I'd watched the new Doctor Who season and read the Sherlock Holmes stories whilst watching various TV series adaptations of the same. After having told me all these stories about working in the cafeteria at camp and helping supervise the kids and having all these meaningful interactions with people, my friend was like, "Really? That's...all?"

And I said, "YUP."

SUMMERTIME YOU GUYS. IT IS NOT MY MOST PRODUCTIVE TIME PERIOD.

The Regular

I went to pick up Chinese at the local Chinese place, and as I was paying, the cashier lady asked me if I was working at the front desk for the dorm again this summer. I was astonished. I do get food from the place somewhat often, a couple of times every few weeks I guess, so I guess I would be considered a regular, but I had no idea she knew I worked at the dorm. It was kind of nice to think that she remembered me so well. I can't say whether I would be able to do the same if our roles were reversed.

I'm also a regular at a nearby car repair place, run by an old man. I don't know that we've had a conversation yet that wasn't about the weather, but he always seems to be pleased that I make an effort. He confessed to me once that few people even bother rolling down the window when they come through, then shook his head and frowned at the middle distance. It made me feel inordinately proud of myself, making awkward stabs at friendliness.

Being a regular is both nice and strange. It shouldn't surprise me, I guess, that frequent exposure to another person creates familiarization and friendship, but somehow I'm always pleasantly surprised when someone remembers me. It makes me want to try harder to remember people's names and faces instead of spending so much time daydreaming about nonsense like I usually do.

The Writer's Whiny Assurance

Guys, guys, it is so hot. And it makes me tired and lazy. That is basically my excuse for writing so little in this blog and elsewhere. This is what usually happens during the summer: I think I will get so much done during summer break, I do so for like, two weeks, and then I just devolve into this Reading Machine. I would watch more TV, but I feel guilty just lying around all day like I do, and at least when I'm reading I'm exercising my brain.

The whole process this summer has been further upset by how annoyingly busy last semester was, and then the air conditioner at my house breaking upstairs. I don't think I even went through my traditional two or three week period in May of "trying," I just collapsed. So I've just been sweating and limping (after spraining my ankle like, A WEEK OR MORE ago, it is still embarrassingly and irritatingly sore) around at home with my books. It has been pretty awesome in lots of ways, I'm not going to lie. I have always been a master at escapism, and reading is the one leisure type thing I rarely or never feel guilty about indulging in.

MY POINT, is that I've got loads of blog ideas half formed in Microsoft Word floating around that I SWEAR I'm going to get around to stitching together eventually. I've been reading lots of really intelligent blogs lately that update frequently with intelligent entries, and it would be nice to try build the habit for myself.

FUTURE BLOG SUBJECTS WILL LIKELY INCLUDE:
*The book series that's at least temporarily eaten my brain that everyone knows about because they've read it in middle school, but I didn't, I read it just now, and am now carefully and self-consciously adoring it, so you'll just have to sit through it with me.
*The TV series that I adore whole-heartedly, probably above all others, and against all odds.
*My history of taking writing Too Seriously.
*Music lessons and me
*Letters
*Cheeses I have loved

Yeah, maybe not that last one. I just thought it sounded funny.

My problem is that I take things too seriously and my sleep schedule is all weird right now because of work, so I need to figure out when I write best. This confession will be a considerable relief to my, what, three readers? But anyway, I thought those three would be interested in knowing.

This has basically been a post about whining, hasn't it? It totally has. Blergghhh, I promise there won't be many others.

(Lame) Summer Secrets

I'm a pretty open person, and don't really like to have important secrets, especially from people I'm close to. But I do like to have several insignificant ones. Ones that wouldn't really even matter to my parents or my sister or my friends, if they found out, because they're seriously not even that interesting. I tend to cultivate them during the summer, since I'm most often by myself at the house, especially during May when I'm out of school and my mom and sister aren't, so few people are at the house during the day, and my friends live far enough away that I have to make specific plans to hang out with them.

For example: I was determined to learn how to play the harmonica a few years ago. I read stuff about it on the Internet, and for a few months when nobody was at the house, I would practice. I was okay at it, but abandoned it because people were at the house more often later in the summer, and I didn't love it all that much anyway.

One summer I decided to try and learn how to cook some things, since the only thing that I'm confident in making well is spaghetti, and that mainly involves heating things up in pans. I did that for about two weeks, making smallish dishes and eating them by myself before cleaning up before anyone got home, then gave up in favor of finishing several novels I'd started. It was during these weeks that I also tried to make supper a few times, but they turned out weird. I think I chose overly involved recipes.

Another common secret, is when I become obsessed with some thing, like a book or whatever, and don't want anyone to know. I guess I don't want anyone to make fun of me, but I've always been uncomfortable being too enthusiastic about something, because I always end up talking nonsense. Basically just babbling happily.

I won't (hopefully) really ever be a person who has a hideous, unspeakable secret, because I will obsess over it far too much. It already takes probably too much energy to handle these little dumb ones.

~*~*~Secrets~*~*~

A Book Friend Revisited

A few days ago, I was digging around at home in the spare room/library for a few new books to read, when I saw my old copy of All Creatures Great and Small from across the room. I actually clapped my hands in nostalgic delight, and started extracting it from the messy bookcase, when a hardback fell out and onto my foot. I yelped and picked it up and it turned out to be a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes that I didn't even know I had.

JOHN IS THAT YOU.

(Man, I should just read the flipping stories already. BUT NOT BEFORE JAMES HERRIOT. BUT I WILL READ THEM THIS SUMMER, GOSH, I FEEL LIKE THEY'RE STALKING ME...)