041

Today was the first time since before graduation that I left my alma mater to drive home to Maryland without crying.  I know it's stupid and irrational, but after spending four years living somewhere and developing a separate identity from the one you know at your parents' home--an identity in which you have friends instead of just coworkers, and you meet new people instead of greet customers--it's hard to leave.

Probably the most significant revelation of my trip was the reconsideration of applying for grad school.  During my senior year, as graduation approached, I considered graduate school as a means of staying in school to avoid the real world.  Now, after getting a taste of life outside of formal education, I realize that I would like to further my skills as a writer, and maybe even get a jump-start on a novel.  So, this evening--though the night is still young--has marked the beginning of what is sure to be a long search to find universities that offer a Master of Fine Arts programs for Creative Writing.  My choices are undoubtedly more limited because I would like to earn my MFA instead of MA, but I also realize that as my undergraduate major was geared toward the writing end of English, I would be more comfortable in a program that will allow me to so exactly what I've always wanted to do.  I think a Master of Arts would lean to much toward the literary end of the spectrum, which wasn't really my greatest passion, to say the least.

I'm sure I'll have more to talk about after I do more research--and after my mother attempts to talk me out of it for financial reasons.

040

Brainstorm 10 titles to your autobiography or memoir.

1. 12:34

2.  Heart on a Chain

3.  One Time

4.  Tiffany and Daisy

5.  Then the Fire Cools

6.  The Box

7.  Chasing Apologies

8.  5.2.4

9.  Diamonds, Gold, and Silver Hearts

10.  One Chapter

Let me know which one you would be most likely to read in the comments!

039

Around midnight last night I started to feel a cold coming on.  I could feel the scratchy throat and the difficulty to swallow, and I just knew it was coming and there was very little I could do to stop it.  I took some Nyquil before I went to sleep, in hopes that my symptoms would subside, and I would be set for work in the morning.  This morning I woke up around nine.  I don't usually wake up this early (due to my usual late nights), but because I took Nyquil, I was ready to go.  Unfortunately, my throat felt worse than it did last night.  So, after a couple hours of deliberating with Mom, I decided to call out sick.  Luckily I talked to my favorite manager, who was very understanding.  After that, at around 12:45, I made myself a breakfast bowl, a glass of raspberry lemonade, and two Dayquil tablets.  I then proceeded to sleep until five in the afternoon.

Doctors and parents have always told me that sleep will surely cure any sickness.  Sleep and fluids--those are the regimen.  Sleep and fluids haven't done shit for me today.  I had Cream of Mushroom soup for dinner (the only soup I could find in the house); I've been drinking water and juice; I've been sleeping insane hours.  I feel worse than I did this morning.  My post-nasal drip is ridiculous; I'm sneezing more; my head feels clouded...

So, the conclusion I have come to is that sleep and fluids doesn't help a damn thing.  Next time I'm sick I'll go into work and be a raving lunatic to customers and risk being fired, because at least then I will be making money for being sick, instead of spending my day becoming even more sick.

038

Today I listened to a CD.  I usually listen to my iPod, but on the way to work my battery, which typically lasts only three twenty-minute rides to and from work (approximately two hours total), died in the middle of Justin Bieber singing "One Time."  I believe it to be a work of God, trying to smite me for my terrible taste in music.  Putting that aside, on the way home after a surprisingly pleasant eight-hour shift, I shuffled through the stations on my presets--twelve of them ranging from Top 40's to hard rock to hip-hop to country.  On twelve stations there were either consistent commercials or what I would consider to be crappy music.  So, while poking along behind an incredibly idiotic driver trying to merge out of my lane, I peeked up at my CD wallet attached to my visor.

I don't have a lot of CDs in my car: about four mixes I've made for myself, all my Linkin Park, a couple 90s boy bands, all of my Carrie Underwood, and a miscellaneous artist who was giving out free CDs at Baltimore Pride a year ago.  At the front are my mixes, but just before them are three white CDs with the words "Just Listen" written in messy print across the front in permanent marker.  The CDs had gone untouched for over a year.  A Christmas gift from my ex-girlfriend, they were a sort of taboo--the only thing from her that wasn't stuffed in a box in my basement.

Now, it's not like I haven't listened to the songs on these CDs since we broke up a year and a half ago; they're all on my iPod, in various playlists, played whenever I feel like it.  But there's something different about putting in the CD and listening to the compilation she composed.  What the hell, I figured.  Either I'd bawl my eyes out in reliving the past from our first kiss to our last, or I'd enjoy the music because they were actually pretty awesome CDs.  So, I pulled the top one out of the sleeve.  "Just Listen 2" was sucked into my car's CD player.  This was my favorite CD of the three, particularly for Josh Gracin's "Brass Bed," because his voice makes me melt, but also because of Nickelback's "Far Away."

I just heard every single one of you groan at the word Nickelback, but the song was very significant to our relationship, so just let it go.

I didn't cry a single teardrop on the way home.  In fact, apart from moronic drivers, it was a great drive.  But all of these lovey-dovey songs got me to thinking about my past relationships and the possibility of future ones.

People always talk about love at first sight; every Nicholas Sparks book is triggered by a love at first sight moment; Romeo and Juliet is a love at first sight story.  Love at first sight is the ultimate test of true love.  Wasn't love at first sight?  It wasn't real love then.

This is my "Fuck You" to the love at first sight notion.  Have I experienced love at first sight?  No.  Have I experienced attraction at first sight?  Yes.  I was attracted to my first boyfriend from the first look on what would become our college campus--in a classroom in Schewel.  Then, again, with my first girlfriend, when she friended me on Facebook on a whim and we began talking.  However, those are my shortest relationships, and also ones in which I was the least emotionally invested.

The relationships that mattered more were ones in which the attraction wasn't there at first.  I first met my second boyfriend at a young age.  We're talking when I was in diapers.  He wasn't.  He was in elementary school when I was born, probably about third or fourth grade.  Before you get your panties in a twist about my pedophilia; I was eighteen, and with him I thought I experienced love.  It was the closest to love I had ever felt at the time anyway.  I obviously didn't have that initial attraction to him--not for a long time, in fact.  It took us eighteen years for us to find that chemistry.

My last relationship was by far the most interesting turn of events.  I hated my second girlfriend before we dated.  At the time she was dating one of my friends, and not treating her very well.  My friend now admits that the chemistry wasn't quite as right as she thought at the time.  However, up until the moment we first kissed, we were fighting.  Hell, even after we kissed we fought all the time.  That's a story for another day--like when I write my memoir.  The fact is, I hated her for how she was treating my friend, but I fell so deeply in love with her.  Deep enough that I feared listening to those mixed CDs might tear me apart.

So, this love at first sight business just isn't for me, and maybe that's a good thing.  How would you like to look at someone and realize, I'm in love with you, and then come to find out that person's a douchebag?  Better to get to know them first and find out you really could come to love those douchebag qualities.

037

I should be doing a book review, because it is in fact Friday; but quite frankly I don't feel like it.  And--let's face it--this is Amurrica, so I can do what I want.  I've been doing a lot of writing lately--not here, obviously, but on paper--and I just sort of need to reflect on what it's like to start writing a novel.

Though it's only a young adult, escapist fiction work--something one of my college professors would refer to as "crap"--I've spent so much time in the planning stages.  First, you start with a rough idea, like an explanation of the plot in a sentence.  That sentence turns into a series of lists: lists of characters, lists of conversations, lists of characteristics of your characters, lists of quotes, lists of lists that you still need to make, etc.  The planning stages are the purest form of Hell on Earth.  You sketch drawings of your characters on a plane flying home from vacation, knowing that it's completely unnecessary because you're not an artist and your potential novel won't have pictures.  You have a folder full of sheets of loose-leaf paper--the kind you used in high school that came in bulk--filled with notes scribbled in the margins describing the idiosyncrasies of a single character and their importance in the grand scheme of the story.  You begin to write aspects of your character that won't even matter to the story, like their favorite song (his is "In This Diary" by the Ataris), even though it's doubtful it will be featured in the novel.  You write it down because even though you haven't started writing the novel, your character is already telling you who he is.

Finally, you start to write long paragraphs.  Starting is the hardest part.  Do I start mid-scene?  Do I start with dialogue?  Do I describe my character right away?  How do I do that by showing instead of telling?  Sometimes you just have to write a word--any word--and see where it takes you.  Don't choose a word like "Watermelon;" it'll take you nowhere unless you're in BFE.  Once you've got a good rhythm going, you can't put down your pen.  People will talk to you, and their words will hang in the air around you, never penetrating your consciousness.  You'll really piss people off, but it won't matter.  Who needs friends?  You have characters!

After several days of writing--or hours, or minutes sometimes--you'll hit a brick wall.  The train of thought has run out of coal, or perhaps there are sheep on the tracks.  And I know what you're thinking--just run over them!  But you can't just run over sheep.  Their intestines get caught in the tracks, and there's nothing worse than wasted haggis.  So, you wait.  You can see what's next, just a few chapters or pages away, but you've got to find a way around these sheep.  You could back up--fuck that; do you see all the writing you just did?  You're back to the "write any word" struggle.  If you just write some word that can convince these sheep that it's time to get off your track and move to green pastures...  You'll find that word, and you're moving again.  This will happen over and over again, and every time it's another stupid animal you just can't get around. 

I love writing with all of my heart; it's the reason I'm alive.  But these animals are going to be the end of me.