pinqury

#7

Q: Why do I eat Kashi Cereal?

I mean, I’m one of those people who sees health food ads and will thereafter purposely snub the products being advertised. I don’t know what makes me more mad— people telling me that such-and-such product/food will Save My Life, or ads telling me the same thing.

But then my usual keep-my-body-running diet supplement of grapes (which I adore) and other fruit grew precarious and expensive to keep up, and I thought, okay, I love cereal too, and there’s got to be some out there that’s good for me that I’ll like.

Kashi cereal was definitely on that list. I can’t remember what else was on there, but I do remember pausing at the tiny Kashi section on Walmart’s cereal aisle and letting my eye land on the “Heart to Heart” box. “Looks like Cheerios,” I muttered, fingering the box.

They taste a bit like Cheerios too, but somehow more substantial. The best thing is alternating them with M&Ms— one day, I am going to make one of those gooey chocolate bars with this cereal, and fucking love it.

#6

Q: Why am I writing this blog?

Because sometimes, for all sorts of reasons, I clam up and stop writing. Fear stops me. Laziness stops me. Boredom stops me. Happiness stops me. All it takes sometimes is just thinking about the constant-seeming stream of problems I have to make me falter. And, sometimes, at night, that faltering becomes stumbling, and stumbling becomes falling down, and then suddenly I’v fallen into a sharp dip, and I’m rolling down, and bumping hard into things I can barely even make out, and jesus, I’m bleeding, and there is no fucking way I’m going to write just now, no way on earth.

This is here to reassure me. I wouldn’t go so far as to call this writing not ‘real’. Stringing words together is all that ever happens, for all I’d sometimes like to think that some unseen song is playing, and I am writing down the words, and aren’t I so clever, to keep that song at just the right note, except when I slip, and then I let it go, and I’m falling and rolling and fucked again.

This is a bad entry. But that’s okay. And that’s why I’m doing this. I’m human; sometimes, I will wade into such deep pools of distress that I feel like I’m at sea, and will stubbornly believe that I am completely lost. This is to ease that pressure, to remind myself what this looks like, even when it’s not going quite right.

#5

Q: Why do I like writing short shorts?

I’ve had this massive rash of them. Because, you see, I’m taking a short stories writing class at uni this semester. At first, I thought it was just going to be painful, because I know I like to write long arcs and stuff. And when the teacher told me we’d be doing “short short” stories first— i.e. stories at about the 1000-word length— I half-freaked, but also told myself, okay, honey, you’ve written 10,000 words before. A thousand is a scene. You do good scenes.

And boy, do I ever do good scenes. I can’t seem to stop writing them now. After I got past a misguided imitation of another short story we read in class, and started trying for shorts about random stuff that inspired me, and I can’t stop now.

NOTE: Knocking out another one of those is exactly why this post is late, too. *grumbles*

#4

Q: Why try to be happy?

Apparently, it’s not a good idea.

All I can say is, wtf, man, wtf.

Somewhere out there a pharmaceutical company “is working on a new drug to make you happier,” they warn. “There are even people who would like to give you special ozone enemas to make you happier.” Although some 85 percent of Americans say they’re pretty happy, the happiness industry sends the insistent message that moderate levels of well-being aren’t enough: not only can we all be happier, but we practically have a duty to be so. What was once considered normal sadness is something to be smothered, even shunned.

Okay, the latter part of the paragraph justifies the article just a bit.

But the rest of it goes on to say what should probably be common sense by now: that extreme, constant happiness is probably not beneficial for you. This is one of those articles that could be summed up by a picture and a smart caption: one pic of a stack of self-help books about happiness plus the annoyingly true saying “Everything in moderation” is all I need.

Maybe that’s how they’ll tell news in the future. With lots of pictures and captions— with slideshows. With quick quotes from studies and stuff, positioned beneath evocative images of people looking a little down. With a nicely-formatted list of citations at the end, and credits to follow.

Ah well, everyone is not me. And I doubt I’d enjoy reading all my news like that. I like words. They make me happy, y’know?

Ohnoes, maybe they are the new drug! To make me happier! *rolls her eyes so hard she hurts herself*

*blinks* OW.

#3

Q: Why am I unhappy this time?

Family. School. Hate them both. The latter feels more pointless every day, and the former are so laden with expectations that I want to scream. Worse, I can’t really do anything about either, so whatever happens just adds to that feeling, you know that one where something or two somethings are digging into your shoulder, hip or bum, and there’s no way to adjust them, and you have barely any idea what is doing the digging in anyway.

Currently, I am taking a bunch of fairly useless classes. As is just my luck, this week both of them have assignments coming due. The business class’s paper is due Wednesday, and the writing class’s short short story (which I’ve written, and know is crap) is due on Friday. And I knew I’d have time to do them this weekend if I was careful to actually do them. Instead of making some little headway on each, I buried myself on the internet and didn’t go out most of the weekend.

Part of the reason for that deliberate self-sabotage is that my mother called yesterday, and I picked up the phone. We talked. We were civil to each other. She didn’t ask me why I haven’t spoken to anyone except the family member I live with this year. I didn’t volunteer any apologies, any explanations. You see, just before this weekend began, I decided to stop feeling guilty about not calling my family, and to stop feeling guilty that I didn’t want to call them, and didn’t particularly want to mend fences with them. I was almost a month into my renewed dependency on them, and it wasn’t fun to not be making the financial decisions anymore because I didn’t have money.

I think I’m going to try to move out this summer. I don’t care if it fucks me in the arse to high heaven. I don’t care if it screws up my careful timetable. All I know is that I would like to be responsible for myself now, and remaining in contact with my family isn’t helping right now. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard if A (family member I live with) and I were actually speaking to each other, or, worse, friends. Maybe it would still be hard.

And I suppose there’s also S, current and future boyfriend. I am irrationally sure that we are not going to last, and it is digging in— spiking in in places like you would not believe. And I don’t want to talk about it with him, because I am sick of myself, sick of my uncertainty, heartily fucking sick of not trusting even myself.

This whole month has just been me not talking, mostly, and trying to curl up in a way that not everything jabs into me so hard. I have deadlines, and I still find that I don’t care.

And I think that’s about it.

#2

Q: Why do I hate school right now?

Because it is boring and pointless and expensive, and I need it to keep going. Because while my last workplace might hire me if I don’t finish college, I’ve less faith in the impropriety of other possible employers. And I need the best credentials I can squeeze from this situation, so I end up trying to do well at school as an end result. And that’s always been a thankless task for me.

Right now, what’s turning me off school is that I have a paper and short story due next week, and I feel empty and tired. I know I can probably do the paper on time so long as I make myself get started on the research I need to do for it, but something tells me the short short story is going to be a no harm, no foul, but you still don’t finish it like you want to kind of deal.

I hate writing when I don’t know if I’ll like the results. This is why all this non-genre short story bullshit amuses me. I like the idea I have for my longer (ha) short story; it is set in space, and will likely be clumsy-as-all-hell militaryish sci-fi, which I like for reasons that are beginning to erode now that I keep bumping into the same pattern over and over again. I’m starting to hate the word “civilian”, and be annoyed at how the “civilians” usually aren’t much good at anything but making dastardly plans and Screwing Shit Up. I happen to be the daughter of a very smart, enterprising “civilian”, and last time I looked, it was the goddamn military that got my country to the state it is in now. Human beings are human beings, and I think I want to write about them more, the non-scientists, non-military, non-on-a-random-spaceship, people.

Back to the question. Why I hate school? I need it. And it is boring me to death. And there isn’t much I can do to change the fact that it is boring me to death. I really just wish I’d started out in something more practical, like software engineering or something. Then again, there’s always the idea of going back to school for that eventually, or even teaching myself to actually use the languages I know. And maybe I’ll end up travelling the world like I want to, and writing more than I thought.

For now, though? I need to rest for an hour, and start my research. And halfway through today, I need to drop everything and try for a rewrite.

#1

Q: Why do I have a Kindle?

I don’t have much money; I’m not sure how I afforded it in the first place. I’m damn well unsure as to how I can afford it now. Left to myself, I would spend as little on feeding it as possible, but I’m not left to myself. I suppose I should be combing Project Gutenberg for stuff like I used to years ago, but I just can’t be bothered. Mostly, I fondle the Kindle when I feel in need of a read, and download something.

If I had enough money, I’d be addicted to it. Do you know how many books I can go through in just a day, if I have the time? As it is, I’m in no danger of seeing plaintive, papery complaints about how space is getting expensive on its internal memory. I suppose this is a win-win situation.

I would love to be addicted, though.