chryseis2089

How many failed first chapters does it take to get to the verge of insanity? Not enough, it seems.

I have a folder, with about 8 Word files, dedicated to this single, insufferable fic that for some reason I still want to write. Too many false starts and one would think I'd get a hint. But I have a feeling that I'm close to something good, that if I pull through it'll be worth it.

But the fic is an AU that takes place in a Hyrule with no king, no princess, and no Triforce. There's plenty of 19th century urban life, senators, dictators, Occupation-era intrigue, and spies. My Link and Zelda DON'T want to save the world, and my Ganondorf ISN'T a stupid conqueror-king, but a trickster capable of rallying people behind him.

[RANT] And this last point actually has RELEVANCE to the plot (as opposed to OOT, where Ganondorf's cunning ways are completely unnecessary once he has ReDeads humping people all over Castle Town).

Anyways. I have concretely realized why conventions are SO much easier to go along with than to go against.

I was looking to get my daily nap fix – I went to my room, turned on the fan, lied on my bed and almost immediately growled. This was not going to work. The fan was throwing a furnace-like heat in my direction.

I tried later, in the cooler afternoon, and still I woke up from my nap feeling that’d fallen asleep on top of a hot towel instead of a pillow. My face was completely pooled in sweat, my thighs stuck against one another. It’s not pleasant when you feel you have to run from bedroom to shower. Or from kitchen/living room/patio to shower, even if it’s 3 AM in the morning.

To add insult to injury, I had the most random dream ever during my nap. It ended in a bookstore, with with the shot of a blue and purple book that oozed blood. The subscript – under an imposing, one word title I can’t remember – said: “Little book, prepared to be filled with lies.” What?

I've been working on a Zelink fanfic while I leave my Abhorsen one out to cool, but the writing has been bumpier this time around. I didn't work in one, flowing set of days, which might have something to do with my trouble. I came back from my journalism conference a week ago to a draft that looked horribly forced when I skimmed it.

It was written in 1st person, so I opted to start anew from 3rd. But that was harder still. I hadn't remembered how long it took to condense my backstory to manageable morsels when I wrote the first draft - it didn't get any easier in the second. Today I finally cracked that puzzle, and went back to my first draft to remember some of the details I had planned to add in later chapters. And then I realized I liked the first draft again. Crud.

I don't know what instinct to trust at the moment, so I'm shying away for at least a day or two and catching up on all my e-mails, blogs, and readings instead. Among the catching up was also included my first re-read of 'Eirael,' my Abhorsen fic. Thankfully, it passed the 'I totally hate this crap' test!

I know exactly what I would need to do to make it read better - if I had the time, anyways. My original fiction/poetry needs to take priority soon, as quickly as I get this Zelink draft out of the way. So while I probably could have made 'Eirael' considerably better than it is now, I'm going to focus on making it passable. Worthy of betas, at least.

Basically all the games I've ever played in my life I have spoiled to one extent or another. Sometimes I held out for the first thirty hours, then went to Wikipedia and threw all suspense to ruin; sometimes I bought games knowing the endings beforehand. Kingdom Hearts was one of those games for which I resisted longest - I reached Hollow Bastion and *SPOILERS* Riku took my Keyblade and left me gaping from genuine, rush-filling shock.

It was a pretty cool sensation that I wish I was strong enough to repeat, but I'm not. Take Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance as an example. It's a good, entertaining game, but you get acquainted with the restart button far too much. So if the main story was supposed to take up 40 hours, in reality it takes up like 60.

Awesome, right? NO. Those were 20 hours in which I scrambled to get to the next plot point, the next mystery, without having my characters go poof.

How am I supposed to spend at least 5 hours a day in front of the computer screen - writing, reading news, whatever - and NOT go to Wikipedia and give myself the option of telling the Restart button to go to hell? Because maybe I'll read the plot summary and realize that I hate the ending and do not want to go through the trouble of seeing it on my TV screen. That would be a helpful timesaver, even if it is summer.

The situation's particularly annoying since this game has a sequel. It gives me an added sense of hype, even if I'm not going to play the second game. I bought it when it was released and then lost it, having played only 5 minutes of it. And, if you look at Amazon, Radiant Dawn is currenlty $39.99. USED. Whenever I'm not sizzling in heat, writing, reading, screaming at the Restart button, I am looking for that game in every nook, cranny, and empty DVD case lying around my house.

That's basically my life right now. Sad, huh? :)

Harper classroom editions make up about 80% of my library, but today I enjoyed the wonders of Mass Paperback for the very first time. It was a liberating experience after force-feeding myself so many 'classics,' and I can't understand how it didn't happen sooner. Okay, maybe I can.

Every time I saw the paperbacks in Borders I'd get dizzy. In the Romance section there was too much pink, red, and lilac, too many undressed humans and too much silk. In the Sci-fi, Fantasy section there was an excess of greens. I could hardly make out the titles of these books, let alone want to pick them up and scan them.

But yesterday I was poking around the website of historical romance writer Sherry Thomas, and I read an excerpt of one of her new novels. I thought it was pretty good, there was a 25% discount on a Borders purchase expiring today, and my parents were itching to go out somewhere, anywhere. The result is that I just finished reading half of Not Quite A Husband, and even now I feel the urge to stop writing and chew the rest of it up. Clever prose, great storytelling.

Screw hardcovers and their streamlined, spacious covers. Screw book longetivity. Screw my eyesight and the excess of pastels. Recession calls for good, $8 fiction, which I will be fishing for avidly from now on.

AND, in other news, I gave in. I'm writing the fic, a chapter per day. Why is fanfiction so fun?

I have this big, electric urge to start another Zelda fic, but my inner editor doesn't think that's a good idea.

A third of summer is already behind me, and I wanted to really get messy with my own storylines. I wanted to start [and finish] original fiction stories, rack up poems in English and Spanish, really squeeze out the kind of long-term writing material that might, in the far future, lead to a good novel/piece of literature. But, and I don't know how common this is, I can't start invest well on ideas if I have others that are just begging to get written. Like this Zelda fic. This fic that, at very best, will get a battalion of reviews on Fanfiction.net. But that will get me no money, no publisher exposure, and only a slight writing improvement, with me having to work with characters/places rather than create them myself. The only way I see this directly benefiting my aspirations as a freelancer is if I sell my ideas to Nintendo. Pff.

That's not to say I think fanfics are a burden. Actually, not thinking they're a burden is kind of the problem. I'm already 'writing' this story like I ought to be writing my original works. I'm working out scenarios in the shower, making chapter outlines, getting a feel for the mood and the key points of the story. When I - against the wishes of my inner editor - reserved a Word Document for the project, the act felt kind of cathartic and ...correct.

If only I weren't so faithful to my trains of thought. I can't be adulterous, work on many writings at the same time, and expect them to be good.

Extras:

On 1) my Old Kingdom Trilogy fanfic, whose first draft I completed and 2) on Paradise Lost, offering religious intrigue that's 50 times better than the Da Vinci Code.

1) 20,000+ words that morph from luminary to pathetic to downright disgusting between readings. If I skim it, I don't like it. If I read it, I see no problem. I still can't bring myself to have a beta suffer through it.

2) My version of Satan would be kind of hot in real life. I feel some part of me should consider this a problem.

I had four internship opportunities at the beginning of the summer - now I have one and a half. The first two I lost because of stupid technicalities, both of them rooted in me and my forgetfulness/laziness. It's something I really, really need to change if I want to become a journalist or a lawyer. Or anything in life, really. Who ever heard of a successful person that wasn't perseverant or got lost in the bureaucracy of things?

Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar thought the world was made up of three kinds of people - cronopios, fames, and hopes. Cronopios were his personal invention, "green and humid" beings, sensitive and disorganized. Fames were the opposite, rigid and structured to the very confines of success. Hopes apparently didn't matter much. Pink, meaningless fluff that hardly ever made it to JC's short stories.

I'm too much of a neurotic control freak to be a cronopio, and too absurdly happy at having a clear summer again to be a fame. I guess I'm a hope, a very flabby hope, and I also guess why hopes never featured very prominently in Cortázar's work. They never get anywhere.

Man, that's depressing. Better shift gears while life is young.

I cleaned this place up. By that I mean I erased 85% of my entries. For the past year I’ve taken shortcuts into my Friends page, and that’s all I could tolerate looking at. My old writing is so bad that whenever I’d see my journal I would think something like “Arrrgh, get me away from myself!” Not exactly healthy.

I’d never gotten around to finishing Twilight Princess, and my brother and I have been trodding through it for the past week. It’s such a pretty and entertaining game, probably the only purchase that has made the Wii feel like an investment at all. It’s nice that my TP playthrough coincided with the release of the Wii Zelda image, too, though I’m not really sure how I feel about what I saw. To me, it seems like Link looks overgrown rather than adult.

There’s a fine line between hot teenager in a green dress and pointy hat and Will Ferrel’s Elf. It’s the kind of line the Zelda franchise plays a lot, which I admire, after taking a look at Zant’s clothes and the kind of things people in TP’s Castle Town wear, and just how much it could verge on the ridiculous but it kinda doesn’t.

In FF X-2 the three leading ladies wore different variations of the same costumes. But it always seemed they could be wearing each other’s clothes – they girls were conventionally pretty and modelesque, and their clothes are game designer pret-a-porter. They always looked a variation of cute/sexy, and didn’t get away from that.

But even gorgeous Zelda would look kind of stupid in Princess Agatha’s clothes, and anybody except Link would look douche-y in that floppy hat. And why do we tolerate talking to a toddler in a skirt? Granted, some people don’t tolerate it.

Gameplay note:

My brother and I had been walking Hyrule like crazy for hours, looking for hearts, when we both heard Midna’s preliminary warp garble and kind of twisted our heads. She clearly said “What do you want?” I thought it was funny because it sounded like the kindest ‘what do you want’ I’d ever heard.

Maybe –SPOILERS- Zelda had been teaching her Hylian through her heart or something.

I have a Chem test tomorrow, and two essays for this week, and three creative writing pieces, and a diary entry to fill. AND, if luck has it, a social life to rescue from crumbling apart.

So I’ll make this short.

The Club Fair was today – thus, Chryseis will present you with her regular schedule for the rest of the year:

D.T.F.A.M. – Day-by-Day Torture For Academic Masochists

Monday: Spanish Literary Magazine (of which I’ll most likely be president and will certainly be editor of) from 2 to 4, then ballet lessons from 5 to 7 PM.

Tuesday: Pro-Life Club from 2 to 3 and, as a weekly regular, an almost-assured test (Teachers think they’re being so generous by not giving tests for Monday but then wham everything for the day after, which isn’t exactly as effective as they believe.)

Wednesday: English Newspaper, 15 minutes (yes, it’s that crappy); Spanish Newspaper, from 2:15 to 4:30 (yes, it’s that tortuous), then ballet lessons from 5 to 7.

Thursday: Honor Clubs from 2 to 4 PM (This is by far one of the most agonizing clubs, since the whole premise changes only about .5% from one year to another, assuring that you’ll be repeating the same activities and reunions over and over each year, just so that you have four years of Honor Society Membership – whatever that’s supposed to mean – written in your transcript as the pinnacle of your high school achievements).

Friday: FREEDOM, though this usually translates to “go-home-and-catch-up-on-all-lost-hours-of-sleep-which-in-turn-translates-to-don’t-wake-up-till-twelve-PM-the-next-day.”

Add to that, of course, SCIENCE FAIR *insert Psycho scream here* and - this one’s good - DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA, the first novel ever created, the pride of all Spanish and Hispanic literature and, as an immediate result, the horror of all eleventh grade Spanish-speakers.

I am a wind that knows no home
And only wades across the sky
Dizzying itself with colors
I wonder if I’m ever thought about
As more than Nature’s last brushtroke
In whatever work of art
I hear a girl’s far off giggle
(Though I’ve sped away too quickly to catch her face)
She says, her voice an echo: “Winds shouldn’t think like that.”
I see her point, and yet
I want a home – I want to greet
The earth and life of a single place and know it for
Its little nicks and creases
I want a happy familiarity
I am a homeless wind

I pretend to be free and careless and unperturbed but
I feel the breezy tips of my fingers
Rustle terrains and substances with less and less impetus
As if numbed by repetition
I touch water and
The senses dilute
It’s no longer seawater or freshwater
The water’s just hot today
The water’s just clear today
I worry the wind’s just dry today
I cry because the gale just blows today
Just blows – aimless
I am a homeless wind

I understand my plight is trivial and changeable
Tomorrow I might wish to ride the paths of the sky without aim
Simply defy the limits of a cycle
See where speed takes me after the finish line
I say the world is not round, but spiraling
Twisting unto itself
So that the journey is the same, yet not the same
The second time around
I dream of stopping time
And feeling zero-gravity moment
I try to be content
With touching lives for the seconds it takes
Their faces to be filled with my flowing hands
Before I dissipate
I hope, one day
Content won’t be the norm
I am a homeless wind

I know I should get back into the LiveJournal habit. I know that it proved surprisingly effective in improving my writing skills. I know that the virtual social life allows me liberties often unheard of when there's tangibility to account for. I know this - and yet it's been so HARD. 

Besides, whatever novelties or events I'd recount from here on would invariably be subjected to my current academic life, and thus be limited to simple snippets of narration with little literary thought involved. Not that there was any respectable literary thought involved previously. There was an attempt, at least, if anything. 

Though I imagine it will be refreshing to have to draw inspiration not solely from abstraction but from real experience. As I learned during my time away, abstraction is so utterly lifeless if there's not an experience to back it up. And so, I've realized that if I want to be a respectable writer (in the most amateurish of amateurish terms) I should obviously take the time to write from in-the-field, live action.  

Without further ado, then, my first attempt to get back into my priestess-miko toga and maintain the eternal fires of an unruly mind alive.....

- - - - - - - - - - - - - o - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I took my first - and hopefully last - creative writing class today. This is what I came up with in the course of 55 minutes of deep, concentrated thought:

"An improvised orchestra slammed over their heads, the shrill screams of aluminum meeting savage drops of rain growing stronger and stronger in the midst of an awakening hangover.

'Don't point your fuckin' finger at crazy people,' she yawned, stretching her arms forward as much as possible and locking her index fingers at the tip, 'Even if they are your friends.'"

.....Yes, that's it.

I'm obviously not cut-out for this (though, a few points to my side, I was battling against the tempting waves of teenage, nonsensical small talk coming from my Senior classmates). At any rate, the activity was enjoyable, but I'm too incredibly psyched with my prospective Humanities class to really mourn the loss of such a free-spirited elective course. I'll take it next year, anyway.

Let's see, what else......

The Welcome Dance is coming up. None of my friends are really into the boogie spirit this year, but I'm determined to have a fun time. It's annoying, really, 'cause despite the fact that I don't NEED a dance partner, the knowledge that one taken directly from school grounds is unattainable because of my nerd status and that I could have had a good handful of functional dance partners from a few thousand miles away, deep in the throngs of Boston, drives me crazy. Not to mention that some of the Boston guys were a few exponents smarter, nicer, cuter than the guys back in school. Why must I be cursed with the nerd cooties? *heart-wrenching, dramatic music plays*

...Ummm, yeah

If it seems as if I'm trying to make something out of nothing, then you, reader, are decidedly right. The uneventfulness that not even three months of absence could mitigate is enveloping me in clouds of despair. Few of the guys had breakthrough hormonal alterations (actually, I lie, since many had  breakthroughs, but not of the pleasant kind - the amount of acne was ALARMING), there were no relevant summer love stories to tell, no impressive teenage scandals, no changes to the school schedule, no new rules to enforce. Nothing. 

At least, that's my school life. My extracurricular life promises to be another matter. I'll leave that for another entry, though.

     I’ve decided to find my literary voice. I’m not a writer and never will be, but within my own little concept checklist of all those things I’ve been able to accomplish throughout my life, I want the little box saying ‘literary voice’ checked. Double checked. I wish to write compelling, fluid, inspiring pieces of crap. And I will…eventually.

 

     Most likely, this initial plan will fail, and my amateurish enthusiasm will erode, and I’ll have to take on an emotional break to recuperate. The first fall of many I’ll suffer. So be it. It’s better to lose one’s fear of failure during the initial stages of life so that the one failure which teaches us to appreciate all the others as stone steps towards success comes quicker. Or maybe if I just learn to shrug off all failures and keep working towards my goal I might pull it off - I’ll acquire the same effect, albeit lacking the spiritual enlightenment part (this second method may or may not involve Prozac or secular and carnal abuses, unlike the last). At any rate, I’m ready, you big, oppressive cloud of disappointment!

 

     My plan is this: write in my room for snippets of time. Take breaks in between to read varying works of fiction, so that the taste of the language stays for just long enough to create respectable sentences within my own work (voice is my biggest weakness). Eat, read some more, write. Eat, read, write, and sleep, occasionally. Rinse and repeat for the next ten days (then I have to take a break, since I’m leaving the country).

 

     I’m working on a novel and revising a short story. I pray the working project turns out better than the revised one, which is horrible. If you pity this soul who’s soon to embark upon an unnecessary dive into the dangerous world of literature, pray for me.

Sometimes, life has its ways for issuing complication where, if at any other moment or context, it would have been otherwise passable. Like Bluu, for instance. Bluu’s my toe, the cute mass of swollen, violet tissue protruding from my left foot.

 

If I’d have injured myself in, say, my hand or ear or nose, I’d still be able to dance. Dancing, one of those few activities that I routinely enjoy apart from reading and writing, would have become difficult, yes, but fundamentally possible. However, a busted toe renders many of the simple, mechanical acts of dancing practically impossible. No relevé (or, how regular, untrained people would say: no tip-toe-ing), no spins, no jumps, no pointe. There goes all the improvement I’ve made in the past month – lack of dancing, even if it’s for only two weeks, constitutes a heavy regression in terms of strength and balance.

 

As I’m writing this, I sporadically stop to look at my Bluu with motherly pity. I can trace the sort of whitish arch which marks the place where little Bluu smashed against the adjacent toe while suffering the entire weight of my body upon its small joint.  From a bird’s eye view, Bluu has this sideways purple shadow which serves to augment its crooked, grotesque figure, and which extends to cover the entire surface of the toe’s backside. To top it off, Bluu is so engorged that its tip is slanted in compensation for the increase of volume, making it take an awkward turn towards itself, as if in fetal position.

 

…No, you won’t have to hear me talk about my toe any longer.

 

Small announcement: I’ve decided to really edit this journal. You guys shouldn’t have to suffer through my literary inconsistencies and structural errors. I won’t change the entries too much in terms of essential content: it’s the nonessential, utterly atrocious which I will eliminate.

 

Now, onto a more passable topic…

 

Chry’s Summer Checklist – Part III

1 – Read 5 books before leaving for summer camp.

2 – Lose 4 pounds.

3 – Write at least 3 chapters of ongoing story.

4 – Refresh knowledge on conceptual metaphors (reread the 2 books on the subject).

5 – Become informed on significant contemporary issues (I’ll expand upon this later).

 

That’s all for now ^^

I had visualized this entry very vividly in my mind two hours ago. The appropriate scraps of information to make it colorful and entertaining sporadically entered my mind in cascading doses that complemented each other with ease. Unfortunately, two hours ago I was in my car, paperless, heading into a family reunion that would leave my mind periodically numbed and dysfunctional.

 

I am still in the process of recuperation, so bear with me.

 

I finally finished the layout for my website after long minutes of fidgeting with FrontPage over those annoying hyperlinks. The site turned out to be somewhat plain, but I thought it'd be easier, more logical to people if they were working for a plain website rather than for no website at all. Now, they have no excuses for resilience at giving me articles...

I'm going to see the Da Vinci Code today: I enjoyed the book, so I'll most likely enjoy the movie as well. Afterward, I'm seeing a ballet adaptation of "Carmen," which I'll probably enjoy more than the movie and the book together.

What a boring day. Well, I made it to be that way, I guess. Due to the high amount of mental inactivity I'm suffering today, I hereby present to you:

Chryseis' Summer Checklist Part II:

1. Read "The Scarlett Letter" and "Brave New World" before the huge batch from Amazon comes in.
2. Strengthen my legs through periodical exercises.
3. Lose three pounds.
4. Write good poetry.
5. Write mediocre fiction.
6. Prepare myself for upcoming summer program.

Things have become increasingly annoying lately.

It's not like I can be mad about it, but, honestly, I'm begging for the moment I get to have my own space and not have to deal with the inconsistencies of family social life.

I'm a night owl. I work my best, think my best ideas, write my best poetry, have the most enlightening insights during the night hours, from 10 PM to 2 AM, approximately. My parents think it weird, unnatural, bad for my health. Which it most likely is, but considering the kind of things people do for some physical or emotional satisfaction - I think we can forgive some late night action, can't we?

I have the house to myself during the summer, and yet I can't seem to concentrate - time withers on and I sleep, and eat, and feel hot and that's basically all I can remember of my day - eating, sleeping, heat. I sit on my crappy little chair and pretend to be interested on whatever's showing on the TV, internet, video game (it's all the same when the entire affair is deemed, from the start, as uninteresting), trying to shake of the feeling that, deep down, all I'm truly eager on pursuing is having those quiet, uncorrupted, relatively cool nights to myself. I 'plan' my day around this desire - if you can call my day worthy of any premeditated act, not that it would make any difference in its apathy. The day starts of somewhat positively, and for a fraction of a moment I actually believe I might do something productive in the course of the day, but 10 AM comes in like a bag full of exasperation and lassitude, and I 'decide' - it's not really a decision, more like a wading sort of mechanical action that springs to mind when all sense of purpose is shrouded in heat - to sit in front of my computer and wait for 3 o'clock to kick in, which is my cue for a rather forced afternoon nap that's meant to recharge my energies for the upcoming late-night extravaganza.

And yet, Destiny takes its toll in the most annoying way possible. I should be happy: It's 11:36 PM by my clock, I have no desire to sleep whatsoever, and my parents have made no move to deprive me of my extended wake time, since they're too physically and mentally exhausted from the toils of work to care.

But - here's the catch: My little brother, so much more apt than myself at late-night activities, so full of vivacity and vigor, so clueless as to my inner desire for undisrupted silence, darkness, and thought, has no imminent wish to settle in his crowded little room, with its 6 different video game consoles each with its little 20 collection of games, with its air conditioning, with its oh-so-attracting telephone service, which he uses, surprisingly, more than his adolescent sister. He, instead, has this understandable desire (understandable because he was banned from this desire a few weeks ago as punishment for some very ugly end-term grades, and everyone knows that what you wish is always what you don't get) to use a laptop, obviously not his own (banned, forbidden item of said punishment), but rather mine. I personally don't mind to lend it to him during the heatness and numbness of the day, or even during the night, IF he'd move it somewhere I couldn't hear his constant tinkering, the infuriating little sound of the Messenger jingle, and his rather low voice murmuring incoherences to the phone - being the Generation Y kid that he is, multitasking is a way of life.

This convoluted person right here, however, has difficulty in what you might call unnecessary adaptation. If I was sitting here after a day of expectation and longing for this moment and my brother came in to disrupt it with his innocent wish for adolescent expression, the logical thing to do is for me to find another area for involvement and not lose my hard-earned hours of bliss. But for some reason I cannot work like that. I have to be where I WANT to be and not where I NEED to be or even where I would BENEFIT of being in order to function effectively. For me, the functionality only serves its maximum satisfaction when it not only roots from the producer but from the producer's inspirational atmosphere, appropriate only to herself and made for herself.

......I lost my track. This rant could have gone on for quite a longer time in which it would have eventually included several aspects of my personal philosophy and some poorly-developed attempts at humorist narrative, but thankfully my brother just existed the room, leaving it phone-and-Messenger free, cutting my horribly pathetic and unquestionably stupid cant short.

For the sake of reminding myself of my summer vows, I hereby present Chryseis' Summer Checklist:

1. Read. A lot.
2. Write. A lot.
3. Develop an entire methodology for my upcoming Science Fair project.
4. Grow some sense of responsibility *coughcough Yeah right coughcough*
5. Do the "Practice of the Day" section on the College Board website.
6. Clean my room.
7. Keep it clean.
8. Lose 3 pounds.
9. Finish playing "Shadow Hearts Covenant."
10. Finish playing "Star Ocean Till the End of Time"
11. Drag all of my school friends onto LiveJournal.

I've never been particularly good at introductions, nor have I been here sufficiently long enough to actually know how all of this works. And so, I'll simply work to fill this entry with enough compositional crap as possible, so that my journal doesn't look like the barren thing it currently is.

General and random info about moi:

I'm a fifteen year old girl with too little time on her hands and way too much to do. I love to learn, and I know that the rest of my life will be diluted in novelistic dreams and aspirations to learn more and more and more, to the point that I'll end up as insanely depressed as Viktor Frankenstein. I love to dance, and act, and write, though my execution in all of them reflects a genuine, amateurish love for the art rather than actual talent. I love to analyze everything and everyone, especially myself, which is why I'm horribly critical of whatever it is I do. I came here propelled by curiosity and boredom, and hope to find people who share common interests with me and who are friendly and sweet enough to be foils to my utterly uninteresting, stiff character.

If you took the time to finish that last paragraph, you'll by now know I'm overly dramatic. Maybe the day has served to augment my overzealousness. If I look through my window, I see a sunny, breezy day like the ones that are advertised in Caribbean cruise ship commercials, palm trees and all. However, if I were to take a step out on that beautiful, sun-filled day, I'd be immediately suffocated in its sticky, humid, vaporous heat. And that, my friends, wears a tropical girl out in a mixture of dehydration and pastiness. Even in the relatively cool shade of my house, I can't eat, nor sleep, nor write without feeling myself progressively sticky and dirty, thus forcing myself to take cold baths at random moments of the day - like at 2 o'clock in the morning or at midday, when the sun that filters through my bathroom window practically renders my attempt at a bath useless.

Thus, my summer days are filled with means of entertainment that wane under the unforgiving heat, like video games and books and dancing and eating. I tend to eat compulsively during summer breaks. Actually, I do a lot of things compulsively during summer breaks, like ordering 15+ books from Amazon and setting up a pretty elaborate schedule of how I'll read them all in the course of 2 weeks. Another example of my SCS (Summer Compulsive Syndrome) is, well, this journal, which came out of a whimsical, side-tracked idea that needed to be put to play somewhere, anywhere. It is, simply put, the manifestation of this unconsumed wish to blab to the open winds, practicing my literary voice in an unabashed, unrefined manner for the purpose of merely letting it sit there and consume itself in its awkwardness.

Alas, I digress. I'm not really as neurotic as I sound. I'm just one overwhelmed teenager. Overwhelmed by this sense of depression at what this world I'll soon dive into shows itself to be. But I'll leave that for another entry. Anyways, I'm happy to see what this nifty little network has to offer ^_^