Good day? Maybe? I didn't do much of anything. I started making my wings. I finished Cold Days. The ending was fairly satisfactory. I started reading Homeland, which is the sequel to Little Brother, and excellent. It's about a kid my age who's at loose ends, which is excellent and I just what I want, except that he has all kinds of tangible skills is part of a revolution, which makes me feel inadequate. Still, good book. Tomorrow we're going to a play about Tesla, which should be fun, or at least it will get me out of the house with the people I like, and that's great.

I had a nice weekend. I saw Clair a lot. I went to see the Hobbit, and it was surprisingly great. Knowing who is going to die makes that movie hurt so much. I didn't have high expectations for it, mostly because I was super burnt out on Lord of the Rings, but it was delightful. I especially enjoyed how the 7th doctor decided to hang out on Middle Earth and pretend to be a wizard.

Operation: Human Statue should start this week, rain permitting. I was going to go downtown and scope things out tonight, but instead I slept in. I've been keeping crazy summer unemployed student hours, where I've been up til three or four, and sleeping til around noon, which is kind of horrible, but fun too.

I'm reading the latest Dresden Files book, and it's actually quite good. It's amazing how he's using all the mythology he built up to create something epic. I'm curious if this was the plan since the beginning or if he was just able to recognize patterns/themes and put them together. Anyway, exciting!

I am not a terrible person, but right now I am a kind of shitty friend who cancels plans, and doesn't answer emails, or facebook messages. But, like, I'm trying. Kind of. I want to try. I know that I'm doing poorly, and I want to be doing better. But wanting something and being able to accomplish something and actually doing it are three different things. So I'm sorry world, I appologize for my failures, but I also don't care that much because caring would just make me unhappy and I don't want to be unhappy. Sometimes not communicating makes me happy, or no, it makes me less unhappy, so sometimes that's what I have to do. Not sorry, not really. Goodnight.

this is not a good blog, but it's one I want to write right now, while it's quarter to three in the morning. There's this thing I'm aware of, that cancelling plans is really nice for social anxiety, because then there's something you don't have to do. I'm really introverted at the best of times, but right now I'm dreading interacting with anyone who isn't parents/em/clair. Which, that's good, because those are the four most important people, but it would be nice to get along with the rest of the world, but it's kind of not happening. I have plans with another friend tomorrow, but they mean going to his house, which I have never been to, and just going somewhere, and being somewhere, and I hate all of that so much, and canceling this plan would make my life so much better, but not really, because I would enjoy hanging out with him before he heads out of town. But it would cause me anxiety. It is causing me anxiety. fuck.

3

The day itself was kind of a wash. It was rainy again and I didn't go anywhere. I read some, but not much. I ate cereal, and sandwiches, which is good. I wrote a little story. It wasn't anything I planned on writing, but the rain was an inspiration. I think it's going to turn into something, but I'm not sure yet. I spent too much time on tumblr.

The awesome part happened when Clair came over, because she is my girlfriend and my favorite and we hung out, and it was super super great. We told stories and laughed a lot, and poked at each other, and it was the best, like actually, the best. Hanging out with Clair makes the day a win.

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday, and it is supposed to be sunny, and I need to go to the library on campus. That can happen in the afternoon, and then we are going to have a nice family dinner. That should be nice. Probably.

people are not my jam

Day Two. It's the second day of summer, and I did very little, and am not that proud of myself. I actually managed to get a fair amount of writing done, but it was adding little bits to very many storys, nothing substantial that feels like an accomplishment.

I went to the dinner party. It wasn't enjoyable. I don't like people. Dead cats are bad. Other people's grandparents are uninteresting. Trying to be polite is dull. Not making jokes about birds that are called Boobies is hard and unfair, and I was so mature, I didn't say anything, it suck. BOOBIES. I only want to see my people and no one else. Ugh.

I still haven't done any of the communicating with people things from yesterday's list. I fucking hate communicating, even with people I like. It causes me anxiety, and not doing it causes me anxiety, and nothing about this is good.

I've been listening to The Specials self titled album, and Searching for the Young Soul Rebels by Dexy's Midnight Runners, and I am enjoying them both a lot. It's interesting because they're from a similar era, and have similar vibes, but are still awfully different. The Specials remind me of being a freshman in high school, where I knew some people in this not-ska-Hold-Steady-loving band. I saw them play a handful of times that spring, and it was kind of fantastic. It was one of my formative listening to music experiences. There's this one dance move, an up-down step thing, and whenever I do it I'm reminded of being fourteen in an all ages show held in coffee shop in Hopkins, dancing, and feeling not quite cool enough to be there. Weirdly, that's all good associations. I am never not awkward, but sometimes I can enjoy my awkwardness.

I finished reading Canada's Game: Hockey and Identity. I thought this book was interesting because it takes an academic approach to hockey and Canada, which are both things I think about a lot, but my thoughts mostly involve exclamation points, CAPSLOCK, and curse words, not jargon. (Although I overuse the word problematic in my everyday life, which is the bane of all feminist students.) It wasn't a great book, but it did open up some new ways of looking at things. It's essays, so it's not surprising that it was a little bit scattershot. I wish it had been more direct/better, but oh well.

My next nonfiction book to start is John Dillinger Slept Here, which is about prohabition era Saint Paul, and I am super excited to start it!

I read a bit more of The Sirens of Titan today, but not much. Hopefully I will read some more before I go to bed, but no promises.

We went to Half-Price books after dinner, and I found two things. Bi any other name: bisexual people speak out, should be interesting. Plus, the name is a pun, and I'm a sucker for puns. The other is Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South During the American Civil War. It is a present for Emma, but I might read it.

I watched "Journey to the Center of the Tardis," and was disappointed that it was a real action adventure story instead of an episode where the Doctor and Clara decided to not go explore a planet, but instead explored the Tardis, and tried on different clothes, and drank tea, and hung out by the swimming pool. I can't decide if I'm thrilled by the episodes since the Ponds departure. Clara herself is lovely, but I haven't been thrilled by a lot of the story lines? But it could all turn into something splendid by the end of the season; Doctor Who does that sometimes. RTD did that all the time, but I wouldn't put it past Moffat.

No significant cooking happened today. I have been eating poorly this week. I can't find the good noodle pot, which has stopped me from making pasta salad. We bought things to make sandwiches so tomorrow should be better.

Tomorrow will also be better because I am not going to stay up past three tonight, which I did last night. Also, I am going to see Clair tomorrow, which is great. I'm going to end on a positive note.

Day One

It's the first day of my summer break and I am full to the bursting with good intentions. Last night I made a list of things to do and stuck it on the window above my desk. It feel down after less than an hour, with an even number of items crossed off as left untouched, but that should change. Two of the tasks left involve electronic communication, and I should get to those tonight. Responding to an email from a new friend should not need to be on a to do list, it should be autimatic, I should have done it days ago. True fact: I'm bad at communicating. Truer fact: I'm bad at peopling, whatever that means.

My goal is to use this summer in a productive and enjoyable manner. I'm not entirely sure what that means yet. It would be nice to make more money than I spend. It would be nice to connect with the great outdoors instead of hiding away in the air conditioning day after day. I know I don't want to get rained on. I want to spend time with my girls, I want to read a lot of books, I want to write a lot of things. (This here is part of that last desire. I'm going to be a better blogger this summer, for real this time, I'm not just saying this. I'm going to update regularly and coherently. Really!)

My plans and hopes for the summer don't include a lot of people so far, and that's how I like it. People take energy, and I want to use my energy in ways that don't make me miserable. People don't make me miserable, not all the time, but they can, and right now thinking about people and having to be around people and having to interact with people, all of these people related things, they are causing me a fair amount of anxiety, more anxiety than I need.

Thinking about how little I like people has made me begin to start dreading the dinner party I have to attend tomorrow night. Before I had only been unenthusiastic, now I have active negative emotions about the event. I've spent tonight at home, mostly writing, reading, and hanging out with my cat. She's execellent company.

Oh god, I sound crazy. Like, a different kind of crazy than usual.

-The only thing I cooked today was sugar wax. I overboiled it twice, and gave up on the idea for now.

-I finished reading Kraken, by China Mieville. It was awesome. I read more of Canda's Game: Hockey and Identity, which is interesting. I started reading Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titans, and so far it's great, as expected. There was plenty of reading, it felt like an accomplishment.

-The wifi connection has been unreliable, which is sad.

-I finished the second season of Lost Girl, and it was good but not great.

dinosaurs bc why not

weird moment of the day: ran into the boy i went on dates with last year. only like three, so not a boyfriend, but the only boy i've ever gone on dates with. it took me three weeks to realize i really did not want to date him, like, at all, wanted actively not to date him. so i told him that i didn't want to date him, but didn't really explain myself very well, but it's kind of hard to say I DON'T THINK YOU'RE A VERY QUALITY PERSON without sounding mean, especially when you're as bad at talking about feelings as I am. but that's last year.
I was sitting in the saint paul student center, computing, tumblring, because this is my life goddamnit, and he walked up to me and said something about how it would be strange if I was living on the saint paul campus again, and i said yeah, it would be, which is why i'm not, i was just there bc of asl. then I looked back down into my computer. I never took my headphones out.
why the hell did he talk to me?
I made it pretty clear that I don't like him. is this a normal part of human interaction that I'm failing at? my sense is that you don't talk to people with contexts like this. i have seen him around and purposely not talked to him before. I have purposely gone out of my way to for sure not talk to him.
anyway. hopefully I will never have to talk to him again, but I thought that last december so...yeah. that was weird today.

paper

fuck I just can't write this paper tonight. or anything. fuck it all.

NO I SHOULD BE DOING POSITIVE THINKING, I CAN TOALLY WRITE THIS PAPER AND ALL THE THINGS, BUT THAT IS TOTALLY NEW AGE BULLSHIT.

ugh. faces.

theory

I think people have blogs so they can write something when they're supposed to be writing something else. Like, I should be writing the response I have due tomorrow, or the paper I have due the day after, but I'm not. I'm just writing this blog that nobody is going to read. Writing this blog feels productive in a way that reading fanfiction or thinking about what classes I want to take in the spring or looking for the perfect thing to buy my girlfriend for her birthday. Writing this blog means that in a few minutes there will be a written blog. In a few minutes I will be able to say "I wrote a blog" when somebody asks why I wasn't writing my paper. Blogs are tums to the churning nausea of procrastination.

hope

maybe if I throw all my words up here I'll be able to use them for something useful later on. I have things to say but can't commit them to paper or digital documents. I just feel unmotivated, only not really. I feel over motivated. the pressure to write things, to finish things, is driving expectations too high. It makes me want to bite my fingers. i need better coping strategies. i need better light sources. i need to write an english paper for wenesday, and a response for queering theory, and blogging for school is just the worst idea ever. seriously, they should ban that shit now, before it hurts my grades. ha ha ha no really, blogging is the worst.

insomnia diary november 2

that was terrible.
i don't have classes on fridays so theoretically i could stay up and sleep in as long as i want, even though that's a dumb idea. I had good intentions, I swear I did, but well...
It didn't work.
The last time I saw the clock it was quarter after four. I didn't want to be awake, i just couldn't make myself go to bed. it wasn't helped by mother waking up in the middle of the night, but if i had been asleep already that wouldn't have mattered.
I must have been asleep by around five because I didn't notice my dad leaving for work.
woken up before eleven by mother singing. not fun. sat up when my alarm went off, but didn't manage to get out of bed until around 2. total failure at having a day.
No dreams, but right before I feel asleep I did realize what was missing from my story so I can write that now, which is good. silver lining. doesn't feel like much.
I might stay up all night on saturday or sunday to kick myself into having better sleep pattern, but I don't know if that's possible.
The other idea is to try one of the weird pattern things a friend of mine was talking about during the summer, sleeping less throughout the day, instead of all at night. that might be interesting? or at least, if this doesn't work, it would be an exciting new kind of disaster. I'll have to ask him how his experiments went.

insomnia diary november 1, 2012

got home from the halloween party around 11, very tired. could have dazed off against C's shoulder if the conversation had stopped for long. got into bed/pjs/teeth brushed before midnight. didn't go to sleep. tired. but didn't turn of the lights / close the computer / act like a reasonable person.
last time I saw a clock it was about quarter to three. didn't sleep for a while after that.
woke up around seven thirty, but thought it was much latter. didn't look at my clock for a while. expected the alarm to go off any time so didn't try very hard to fall back to sleep. finally did get up, saw the time. my mom was still in bed. stole the cat from her. ivy didn't want to cuddle.
I went back to bed. don't know if I fell back asleep. really got up around ten ten. could have stayed in bed longer, but did the responsible thing and got to campus early for a lunch thing. cookie for breakfast, pizza for lunch. oh, college.
just did the math, got a minimum of four solid hours asleep. that is unacceptable.
argh.
no dreams i remember. no notable anxieties. but i do wish i had given C a kiss goodnight. yeah, there were people around, but they're were our friends, and it should be comfortable. ugh. feelings.
don't have to wake up for any time tomorrow, need to determine if it's better to let myself catch up on sleep, or continue to enforce some kind of alarm.

insomnia diary 10/31/12

didn't sleep well, no surprise. started feeling tired around two, but still had to take a bath. that was nice, hot water, stupid book. didn't open my computer up again.

tried to sleep. both curtains closed, eye mask on. didn't happen. got up a few times, but didn't reopen the computer. think i brushed my teeth twice?

last time I remember seeing a clock it was 3:15.

weird dreams. about friends and breasts and cheese. i don't know. are my dreams supposed to tell me things? i hope not.

woke up naturally just before ten, still tired. went back to bed for another forty five minutes. don't know if I slept. turned the alarm off, didn't get up right away, but I was brushing my teeth by 11:11, clapped for good luck. forgot to make a wish. all of my wishes should be about getting enough sleep.

woke up with an upset stomach. felt too ill to catch a bus to be on time for american lit discussion. probably feel good enough to leave now, only i haven't done the reading for shakespeare and i hate that class, so probably not going. is a legit life choice. plus, i might start feeling sick again. that seems likely/possible.

haven't eaten anything today except tums and toothpaste.

happy halloween.

25 september

oh god I don't even know what's happening with this day.  I have the start of a cold and most of my american lit lecture just passed straight through my brain without sticking, then I walked over here and my brain was much too loud, i didn't know what was happening, I kept on seeing things and making associations, all the other times i've walked around here, there was a boy with a blackhawks hoodie, there were too many people on bicycles, it was not good brain times. It was twitchy. But then I got to coffman and saw the picture of the replacements smoking in the elevator and then things were better. Now I'm in the basement computer lab listening to the 'mats on youtube, and spreading my feelings to the internet, and i feel a lot better about stuff. thanks internet, thanks indie rock, for being there for me.

information

let's tell stories

I wrote this as an email to C. before realizing that it made a damned fine blog post, so the conversations refereed to  are with her, though I will be happy to have these conversations with you mysterious internet non-people




so I don't know if you know who Frank Ocean is? He's a sort of r&b singer who's a part of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All who are this kind of nuts crew. The person from Odd Future I've heard the most about had been Tyler the Creator. I heard that he was pretty good, maybe something to check out, maybe, if I wanted to deal with some juvenile homophobic bullshit, which I didn't. I'd listened to a few Frank Ocean songs too, but mostly decided to ignore Odd Future's music and keep an eye on their antics.

Then Frank Ocean came out. Which was...woah. A big deal, because he's on the brink of being a big deal, and there hasn't been someone in that position before.

I think that this really connects to our ongoing discussion of gay rappers and what rap can be. (Did you know we've been having that discussion? because we sort of have, every time we've marveled at what strange new things our hometown has produced).

Also, he didn't just "come out." He didn't sit down with a journalist and say "I'm gay." He didn't say that at all. He released a paragraph he wrote about the first time he had been in love. And it's remarkable. You should read it and some really good commentary HERE.

The commentary there talks about him being a story teller, as a songwriter and a person, and how that relates to him outing himself. He's eschewing the conventional narrative and the role that's expected of him and telling his own story, which I find much more interesting.

I love this statement so much because it's eschewing conventional coming out narratives and simple identity categories and instead sharing human experience.

Here is Ocean's new single which I am enjoying quiete a bit:

the title of this post is really very very long just like the title of a Fiona Apple album, only not nearly as epic, not even close.

I have listened to Fiona Apple's new album so many times in the past weeks. A ridiculous number of times, in part because Spotify is going all spiny rainbow of death when I try to listen to anything else. I'm taking this as a sign that the universe really wants me to listen to this album repeatedly, which is fine,  because it's excellent.

this is probably my favorite track.

Positive Influences in Eyeliner

So I was looking at things on Tumblr earlier and it was giving me all of these positive feelings about Davey Havok, who isn't someone who comes across my radar very often anymore, but who is really great. He wears glitter and has great hair! I didn't have the same understanding of stuff in middle school that I do now but his whole persona is very queer and enticing. Also, it was this tiny little Q&A he did with Rolling Stone that a friend pointed out to me that introduced me to Straight Edge, for which I am incredibly greatful.
I think what my point is that we don't have to grow out of our heroes. It's true that I don't listen to AFI as much as I did when I was fourteen, but that doesn't mean they I don't care. We can carry our heroes with us. There's one impulse to leave behind "childish things" as we move on, but I think it makes more sense to keep them around. They may not mean the exact same thing, but they still mean something special to us.
So thanks, Davey Havok. When I was fourteen you were the best thing ever, and now that I'm older, you're still pretty great.

i am the worst at blogs

like really, I am. I have good intentions, but then I don't do anything, and then I feel bad about doing nothing so I do more nothing.

but i'm gonna do better this time, I swear. something here everyday, even if it's something dull. better than nothing, right?