I'm Quitting My Day Job

Yes, I'm quitting my day job. I'm re-focusing on what I want to do, moving back to my passion, the thing that makes me happiest. I'll focus on school and my various responsibilities as I need to, but it's time to pay attention to me. I want to make myself happy and be satisfied in my own life.A lot of my motivation, it's true, likely stems from the fact that I'm twenty-three years old and at a stage in my life when I can, to a point, do what I want without serious repercussions so long as I maintain balance. Thankfully, I'm both logical enough to realize this and good at balance when I need to be.

What am I focusing on? Well, if you ask that question, you don't know me or are a new reader to my blog. (Realistically, these add up to about the same thing.) I believe Gloria Steinem said it best. "Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel like I should be doing something else." When I'm writing, I love what I'm doing. These days, the creative ideas have flowed easier than before and I intend to take advantage of that flow before the demands of academia dry up my oasis wellspring.

"Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer." ~Susan Sontag

Reading & Dancing

"Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world." -Voltaire

This may be one of the simplest and one of the most profound quotes I've come across in a while. Interesting may be a slightly better word than profound, but it's my blog. :-P This quote reads like one of life's basic truths, a bite-sized snack of a good saying that, once digested, makes you realize there was more meat to it than you thought. I wonder how much harm might be prevented by dancing and reading?

Reading certainly teaches us of the evils of human nature, things to avoid, ways others have failed. Dancing lets us cut loose, burn energy, and have fun. With energy burned and fun had, tempers drop. How much harm could be avoided with reading and dancing?

Irony: I found this quote in a book I've owned for years. Apparently, I've never really read it before.

Fables can come true

There was a traveler going on a journey, climbing a steep hill. It took him several hours to reach the summit; once there, he found a small snake, who slithered up to him. "Hello fellow traveler," the snake greeted with a smile. "I've just slithered up this hill and am far too tired to make it to the other side. Would you please carry me down? I'd be eternally grateful." The traveler, feeling this fair, offered his hand for the snake to slither onto to be carried. Once they reached the bottom of the hill, the snake slithered off the traveler's hand. Turning, he then bit the traveler on the ankle and dashed off into the tall grass. "How could you do that? Why did you bite me when I helped you," the traveler demanded. The snake's slim head poked out of the grass. "You knew the risks when you picked me up, friend. You knew I was a snake. Still, you chose to help me. The risk was yours," he replied before slithering off, flicking his tail as his poison moved through the traveler's system.

I first read this poorly paraphrased fable in a Bible. It teaches the lesson of thinking through your actions, of being careful who you offer help to. It's a lesson I feel my parents and I need to learn. We've helped people, out of the goodness of our hearts and because it's the decent thing to do. I'm sick and tired of getting bitten by the people we help, getting pulled into problems we shouldn't be involved with. Too many people seem so focused on themselves, not realizing that the world doesn't revolve around the spot where they stand, not realizing that we're trying to live our own lives around them. They don't know or don't care if we go out of our way to help - provided we're still helping. Then, we might as well blend into the woodwork for all the good we do in trying to help others from an outsider's perspective. Friends burn us or don't realize that what they do does come back to us and it's all completely stupid. What ever happened to paying it forward? Or laying in the bed you've made? Why is it everybody's looking for a handout these days? Work to better yourself by yourself!

Riddle Me This

Unable to come up with a really good blog idea, I decided to type up some riddles. Feel free to take a guess at what I'm describing here.

Riddle 1: I have a face but no mouth and my day starts with an energy drop. I don't speak, but I communicate effectively. I can go anywhere.

Riddle 2: I'm very small and see everything from my vantage point. You see from somewhere very close to me. You won't find me everywhere, though my home can be found on everyone. I like young people.

Riddle 3: I carry a lot and get very hot. Hold me close to your chest.

Riddle 4: Colors everywhere, see some living art.

Riddle 5: First coming from animals, I pierced darkness before Alva.

Riddle 6: Take a trip with me; you won't have to go anywhere. Just open your eyes and pick me up.

Books, books, books!

Well, I've met my personal goal. Yesterday and today, I worked on getting every book I own out of storage and sorting through them. Anything I've read a million and one times was put aside to be passed on for someone else to enjoy. Anything I know I won't read, but was holding on to for sheer sentimental reasons was also passed on. Counting the boxes that fell apart on me, I brought fifteen standard-size cardboard boxes into the house. One box went straight to the trash - the bugs had done too much damage, eating into the pages of the books. After that, the organizing started.

There was a lot of stacking, moving around, re-stacking, etc. last night. I flitted around the dining room table, sometimes like a butterfly searching for a specific stack or leafing through each stack. Other times, I was a woman on a mission. I knew exactly where whichever book was and knew it had been put in the wrong pile. Add in our new cat, Diana, who proved herself a feline Wishbone when she curled up and fell asleep on my books, knocking piles as she got comfortable, and it made for a very interesting night.

Today, I got all the books put away. Two boxes worth of books went into a plastic storage bin - something bugs can't get into - to be returned to storage. Five boxes were packed up to be passed on to whomever wants them. The topics vary wildly. Books about Lenin sat next to a collection of religious texts - everything from the Book of Mormon to the Bahagavad-Gita - and all that sat beside books from my childhood that are in need of new homes. Now, I'm sitting in my mildly rearranged bedroom with my bookshelves crammed full of the works I decided I wanted to keep and have accessible. If I did my math right, excluding the 6-7 dictionaries/encyclopedias sitting in a basket together, I currently have around 280 books in my bedroom. All this just so I could find my Harry Potter series - which was fully recovered, completely unharmed, and is currently sitting with my favorite Stephen King book of all time, It, on the fourth shelf of my small bookshelf.

Hm... I think I have some reading to do. :)

I must not tell lies

I've always loved writing and reading both. Lately, I've found myself hungering for a favorite fandom of the past. Rather than my recent obsession of Twilight, I've been wanting to delve into the Wizarding World. Yes, I've been missing the world of Harry Potter. In my opinion, it's better written than Twilight and has more "staying power." The seven books were truly the story of a generation. They hold themes that last forever: friendship, bravery, love, loyalty, and many more.

I started re-reading the books last semester and made it to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. However, those books belonged to my room-mate. Now that I'm home, I'll have to dig my own books out of storage. Haven't done it yet because storage is...well, pretty full and mostly books. I've been re-watching the movies - the ones I can find, anyway. Order of the Phoenix seems to have vanished, which is really irritating to me. Of course, my DVDs are getting a little worn out. They've developed scratches and the like, which makes movie watching difficult. I did some research this week and learned that James Potter's birthday is two days before mine. :)

Research has also told me how much I missed in the books, how much I forgot. I didn't remember the back story of the Ravenclaw diadem as detailed in Deathly Hallows. I lost so many details of Severus Snape's story-line - though I did remember the ending and most of the important facts. Yeah, I forgot a lot of little stuff and I genuinely want to get back into that world. Just need to make time to go dig through my boxes and locate my books.

Electronic Mishaps

Yeah, I'm doing a great job of blogging, I know. I've had my six year old niece and two year old nephew visiting this week as well as my three year old sister coming over for babysitting. This only reminds me that I am not ready to have kids. On top of this exhausting job of helping to keep track of kiddos and trying not to depend too much on the electronic babysitter for them, I've also spent most of the summer without my own power cord for my computer.

The problem started very simply: one power cord went out and the new one was shorter than my first. Because it was shorter, I pulled it too far, which caused some of the wires to be exposed. Well, that's easily fixed. That's one reason electrical tape was made, right? Okay, it's not a legitimate fix, but it held together for months. One day, a few weeks after I'd come home for the summer, I found out that one of the wires had totally been stripped. The fibers in it had disintegrated or something cause they were just gone! Well, damn. Now I've got to scrap the cord.

Thankfully, the battery pack is still good. Not that it does me any good when it can't plug into the wall, but it's better than nothing. We got online that day and ordered a new cord (thanks again mom!) and everything was gonna be fine, awesome even. I'd only have to wait a week or two and my new power cord would come in the mail.

Sadly, it has now been over a month and still no power cord. I've been borrowing compatible cords from my stepdad and neighbor, who both have laptops. However, since I don't want to put either of them out, I'm not going to just lay a claim and steal the power cord from their own computers. That's just plain rude and I don't honestly need my laptop that badly. I am getting impatient for that power cord, but a wait of longer than a month seems excessive for such a simple item. They were on back order when we placed the initial order, I get that, but come on!

As if this weren't enough electronic trouble for one summer, my laptop hinge has knocked itself out of whack so badly that there's a crack in it and screws are falling out. For all these irritating reasons, I'm typing this blog on mom's computer (thanks again, mom!) and will be picking up my lappy from the local repair store tomorrow. (thanks for the $ dad!) With any luck, I can get some smooth sailing on my side sometime soon.

Wordy Wednesday

Alright, I'm trying something a little different. Maybe a weekly feature will give me reason to write here. The new feature is called Wordy Wednesday, a spin-off of the ever-popular Wordless Wednesday. What is Wordy Wednesday, you ask? Well, other than an attempt to inspire this writer to get writing, it's also an attempt at bettering myself. I'm going to find a word and write about it. Hopefully, I can find some words that I don't already know. Nothing wrong with building vocabulary, after all.

Okay, explanation over! Time for today's word: diaeresis. The word has Greek roots and comes from the verb diairesis, which means "to divide." It indicates the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels in the same word, like cooperate. This is shown via a punctuation mark that looks like this: coöperate. A diaeresis is commonly used in the German language as well as Dutch and French.

Of course, diaeresis has a few other definitions, all of them stemming from the root. Free dictionary gives an added use in poetry, where a diaeresis is a break in a line of verse where the end of a word and the end of a metrical foot coincide. Dieresis, which has a slightly different spelling, is a medical term indicating surgical separation of two parts.

Hyperfocus - the key to my goals

Today was a hyperfocus day. That hyperfocus was what really brought me back to this blog. Hyperfocus is this amazingly awesome thing that comes part and parcel with attention deficit disorder, which I was finally diagnosed with my first year of college. (I'll save that story for more potential blog fodder.) My hyperfocus days are kind of rare, at least in my opinion. Others who know me might disagree, but hey, its my body and I know it best. Maybe I need to back-track and explain.

Hyperfocus, when it comes, allows me to narrow my normally wide focus down to just a few things. I never really know what I'm going to be focusing on until it happens; it's not something I can choose to do, though I've tried in the past. Sometimes, I'll get lucky and hyperfocus will kick in while I'm studying. It's not a side-effect of my medication either - which I actually didn't take today. Oops. Oh well. I managed fine without it. Today, fortunately, became a goal setting day.

Goal one: clean my bedroom. I've been wanting to do this for days. Today, I got it done. My closet got emptied and re-organized, my bed got fresh sheets put on it, and there are big empty spaces on my dresser and desks where piles of books, notebooks, and papers used to be. A few days ago, when this need to clean up my personal space started, I dug everything out of my closet and even got rid of a few things I never wore or had owned too long and wore too much. The rearranging was done carefully as well, deliberately designed to prevent me from pulling out the same dozen or so t-shirts that I wear all the time.

Goal two: blog again. Yes, yes, I know, my blog has been far too quiet for far too long. Real life caught up to me with a vengeance. That, too, I'll keep out of this particular entry. Things just got crazy during the semester. Today's entry is the first step on a new road of blogging.

Goal three: work out. I already walk daily - two miles a day average while walking the dogs. Today, I didn't take the dogs and man, oh, man did I kick up some dust! Using my iPod to keep my feet moving in rhythm, I kept up a steady pace, faster than a leisurely stroll, for the entire two miles! I felt so good as I was heading back home that I found myself looking around for a way to lengthen my route. I'm hoping to reach a point where walking can turn into jogging and, eventually, running. Only time will tell, I suppose.

Goal four: eat more. Tied in with goal three. By jogging, I can do twice the work and cover half the distance. Because I want to work out more and, in addition to my daily walk, will be taking a yoga class twice a week next semester, I know I've got to up my caloric intake. Every semester, school reaches a point where I don't have time to really eat as much as I need, never mind enjoying the meal. Then it hits the point where I simply don't enjoy the food because the options never change. Breakfast is the worst culprit, a meal I'm already not terribly fond of. Hopefully, this semester, I can figure out a balance.

Goal five: find next semester's class schedule. (So much for the room cleaning... I know it's in here somewhere...) I need to write down a schedule and include my classes, my meals, my work-out time, and a potential part-time job, along with study time, writing time, blogging time, down time, and time to do the work I need to do as part of a member of the theater department. Budgeting I'm not so hot on, but scheduling I think I can do.

I've read before that you're not supposed to share some goals with other people. Of course, that bit of advice was solely in reaction to writing and I have tried to keep a few of my story ideas under my hat. These goals, though, I'm sharing here so I can be held accountable.

Yeah, my blog on hyperfocus turned into me yammering about personal goals. Oh well. Welcome to the mind of an ADDer! What personal goals have you set? Which ones would you like to set? What holds you back from meeting your goals?

Freedom of speech protected only sometimes

Alright, I know I haven't blogged in ages, but man oh man do I ever have things to blog about right now! First, the stupid er, standard disclaimer to dissuade any comments that will end up deleted anyway. This is my blog. This is my opinion. This is my own little corner of the internet in which I can gripe and whine, bitch and moan, and throw all the text hissy-fits I want. This is my chance to tell the story as I see it, as I'm living it.

Everything started innocently enough. I'm on the cusp of my senior year in school, still a theater student, still happy as a clam spending my days in the classroom learning to do what I love and look forward to doing the rest of my life. This semester, I'm enrolled in Acting II and finally getting to do some acting. I snagged two roles in one of our one-acts and a small role in Major Barbara, the last main-stage play of the semester.

The one-act plays were intended to be a project for the advanced directing class. They were to be performed for free. The directors chose their own shows and paid royalties out of their own pockets to have these shows performed. Auditions were open to the community, as they always are, and we got a lot of interest which was excellent since the acting class only has a dozen students this semester. One of the plays selected is entitled Corpus Christi by Terrence Mcnally. The play in question, as I've understood, is set in 1950 Corpus Christi, Texas and follows the life and death of Joshua, a young gay man who passes on a message of love and acceptance for everyone. At the end of the play, he is crucified. Yes, his life parallels the life of Christ. His followers are all homosexual and all retain their Biblical names. Because I was not cast in the show and have not read the script, that is all I know.

Big shock - living in the Bible-belt, this show has been surrounded by controversy for the entire rehearsal process. I know the director. I know he is both a gay and a Christian. I know he had no agenda in choosing the first available production date (today) with it being so close to Easter. I know he is an intelligent man and I doubt he would've chosen Corpus Christi simply to rile people up. I genuinely believe his claim that he is passionate about the play and wanted to deliver the message of the work.

Some readers might notice I'm using the past tense a lot. Well, in the midst of the storm of controversy surrounding a single play, everybody continued rehearsing. In addition to Corpus Christi, the plays Road to Rome, Women of Lockerbie, and The Importance of Being Ernest were scheduled to perform. There was talk of protests from the community, which I recognize is their right. I'd also point out that 1. these plays were free admission and not at all a part of the theater department's regular season; they were only performing once 2. attendance to the plays was not required for anyone excluding, possibly, those in the directing class; as I am not enrolled in that class yet, I do not know. The audience size was severely restricted with only parents and spouses of cast members allowed. My guest list of eleven was narrowed down to four, then two as my grandparents would be unable to attend. The plays were moved to early morning instead of the afternoon, when they were originally scheduled. Then, last night at the technical/dress rehearsal, we were told our family members could only come to see the play we were in.

Five hours after leaving rehearsal, our last one, I was told by another cast member that the plays had been canceled completely. Ten or so hours before the first show was scheduled to go up, everything got canceled. Apparently, the call was made because of threats of violence against the actors, directors, and technicians, as well as against music students that had a jazz festival to perform. It too was canceled. With rumors of protest from groups that varied from local community Christians to the KKK and Black Panthers, I understand the concern. I understand the objections from people who have probably not read the play and can't seem to give any specific examples from the text of what it is that offends them against the play. Frankly. I'm not that small-minded. However, I do not understand why my school's newspaper would air their March 25 edition with the headline "The Show Must Go On," why the University President and Fine Arts department faculty would go on about protecting the students, allowing the play, protecting our own rights to free speech, for everything to be taken away from us. After a month long rehearsal process, which involved students from the community and the theater department, it was taken away...but there are still protesters in the parking lot outside the theater building. What are they objecting? The play got canceled. All the plays scheduled for today got canceled for good. They're protesting nothing!

In my mind, the fact that protesters are still allowed to gather while the theater students are not allowed to do what we're going to school for, what we're seeking careers in, what we love, speaks volumes about the school administration's view on the issue of "free speech."

The reason cited for the cancellation was safety and security for the students involved. So many threatening emails and calls were received by faculty members over a simple 45-minute play that there were worries over protecting the students. I can't, in all fairness, disagree with this, but those who caused the move to become necessary... Frankly, they sicken me. What ever happened to "judge not lest ye be judged," "love your neighbor as yourself," love the sinner hate the sin, etc.? Everyone involved in these shows, from Corpus Christi to The Importance of Being Ernest, is a human being who has lost their right to free speech so that the rights of protesters can be upheld. It's so refreshing to attend college and learn lessons like this. Free speech is only permitted so long as religion is untouched. Never knew it was that sacred. Thanks for setting me straight, Hicksville!

Had the shows not been canceled, I'd be taking my bow right about now.


UPDATE: Less than two dozen protesters turned up. To protest nothing. There were no signs or megaphones, no way to hear anything they were saying. Fifteen police cars were in the fine arts parking lot with barricades set up around the building. Inside of two hours, all of it was gone.