Day 3

Day 3: Your views on drugs and alcohol.

   This is an pretty touchy topic. As a fair forewarning, I'm probably going to say things that you don't agree with. That's fine, go read something else.
   Not only is this a potentially touchy topic, it's incredibly vague. I'm assuming we're talking about drugs and alcohol in general, not as they pertain specifically to me. When it comes to drugs, I don't like them. I don't like the addiction factor, I don't like the dependency one feels for them, and I hate that they kill braincells. Overall, they're just a really, really bad idea. To be perfectly honest though, not all drugs are should be viewed the way we're taught to look at them. Let's take marijuana for example. It's an herb. Why on earth is it illegal? I will go to my grave saying this: if we legalize marijuana, all of the world's problems will go away. Except for arguably world hunger. Personally, that herb needs to be legalized and taxed. Let's just do it, okay? Alcohol on the other hand is pretty bad. I'll be perfectly honest though, social drinking is attractive. As someone who writes frequently, I'm already at risk for becoming a closet drinker and living in a studio apartment and dying by the time I'm 25 because my best work is already behind me. Basically, drinking is a bad idea. I can understand why some people do it.

   These prompts are awful. I am going to get through them though! It will just take me a long time. Sorry, friends.

Whit Happens

Day 2

Day 2: Where you'd like to be in 10 years.

   What mom thought up this dreary prompt? I'll try to keep it interesting.
   The biggest problem with this writing prompt is that I haven't the slightest idea of where to begin. The "quarter-life crisis" that I am continually referring to is exactly the problem that I don't know what to do with my life. I don't know nearly as much about myself as I should in order to determine where I would like to be in ten years. I'll be 26. That's fairly young and I'll still be slightly stupid (but steadily growing out of my idiocy). By then, I hope I'm not married. Heaven help us all if I end up with a husband at that age. I'd like to be educated a lot more than I am right now. No one likes incompetent adults. I would like to do something that I'm good at and that I enjoy. As far as career options go, I'm beyond clueless. There are so many things that sound interesting, but none seem so interesting that I'd want to study it for four years and then make a career out of it. To be honest, I keep getting the creeping suspicion that I want to be a teacher. There isn't another occupation for which I have a higher respect, but imagining myself as an educator is a terrifying thought. Perhaps the reason I'm afraid of teaching is because I respect and value my teachers so much. I worry that I wouldn't be able to do anything close to what they've done or have nearly the same influence.
    Also, I hope I'm not bald or dead.

P.S. I hope you'll forgive me, friends. I was gone all day yesterday and couldn't post in time. Strike one and it's only the second post of the 30 day challenge. I'll be gone all day tomorrow, too. Oh dear. Wish me luck, kids. Wish me luck.

Day 1

  **Disclaimer: the following text contains more sarcasm than is funny and advocates feminism.**

Day 1: Your current relationship. If single, discuss how the single life is.

   This is arguably the worst prompt I've ever been subjected to. "When was the War of 1812?" is a close second. That's alright, I suppose. It was my idea to do a 30 day challenge anyway.
   I'm about as single as a kid could get and I love it. Why that matters in the slightest, I don't know, but evidently relationships are important. I don't understand why people care. Perhaps I don't care because I view high school romances as a waste of time. Two people are in love because Facebook says so? I think not. But, wait a minute! That would mean that most high school relationships are based on infatuation and not eternal love! What?? Does this mean that teenagers are still overpowered by their hormones everyday?!
   Yes.
   In other news, water is wet.

   Not only do I not care about dating at all, but I'm disgusted by how many girls see it as a priority. Heaven forbid, these psychos whom I call peers could pause and understand their potential as an individual. The worst of it is that this mentality doesn't exist only in the high school setting, it's everywhere. Women who support themselves and don't feel the need to engage in "husband-hunting" are continually degraded and frowned upon by our barbaric society. I can't stand that some consider it to be an "alternative lifestyle" for women to be single. There's nothing wrong with a woman who not only wears the pants in the family, but also is the homemaker. So many women are running around dependent on a man to do everything for them. Whatever happened to women with ambition? Where are the ladies who were striving to be politicians? Who is going to pave the way for women in a man's world? For 200 years we've been fighting for women's rights and now girls are deciding to be stupid and throw themselves around like drunk prostitutes. That's nice. While you're at it, why don't see if you can bring back slavery? Stupid, stupid, stupid!
   To be fair to the dating game however, I'm very bad at it. Surely there isn't another person on this planet who is more oblivious or obtuse to a pressing flirtation than me. Regardless, I'm happy to stay independent. Personally, I think people obsessed with dating in high school are in the midst of an identity crisis and need the attention of everyone on the planet in order to feel important. This sounds like all of the teenage girl crap that I can't relate to. I don't understand girls, I don't understand boys, and I really don't care. 

P.S. I have lovely things to say about my relationships with fictional characters (well constructed characters like Hamlet and Marius, not Edward or Jacob). That post is for another day, probably when I get another horrible prompt.

Whit Happens

I'm late for a dinner date with a stylin' communist

   I've been thinking a lot lately; so much in fact that my head is tumbling through nothingness and I've developed an exasperating throb in my left temple. Even though my quarter-life disaster is waning, I'm still concerned as to where exactly I'll be just five years from now.  I am slightly concerned that I'll end up sleeping in one of Andrea's cabinets and still roaming the kitchen while listening to Spotify as I make crappy grilled cheese sandwiches. It's a mildly scary thought.
   Other than that, there's not much more to say. I have books to get back to.

P.S. I have stolen this from a friend's blog and fully intend to use it. Get ready for writing commitment.

   Oh, and no, the title of this post has nothing to do with its contents. Deal with it.

Whit Happens

And just when I thought I'd lost it...

   As you may or may not have heard from a previous post or my actual self; the past few months I've been locked and trapped in what I like to refer to as my "quarter-life crisis". You have to give it props, this pesky little problem of mine. It has managed to linger longer than the remorse of any reprehensible action, embed itself into the brain deeper than anything in memory (regardless of its positive or negative connotation), and excavate the very core of passion and self-respect leaving it empty, confusing, and pointless to reconstruct. I haven't the slightest idea regarding what exactly to do about my existential predicament, but I have discovered a crucial aspect that could in fact pull me out of this to a certain degree.
   I haven't been reading.
   I can't pin point exactly why I lost the motivation to read in the first place, but as we all know, no well-read person can ever hope to be a writer, or at least a good writer. I'd been fumbling with the idea that maybe by reading again, I'd start writing again, and eventually the brutality of my mid-mid-life emergency would lighten up. Whether or not my plan is working is nearly impossible to say. The only firm conclusion I can extract from my recently started project is that I have come to realize how much I missed reading. I wish I would have decided to not be lazy, sit down with a book, and at least try to focus for a small amount of time. Oh, how I've missed my imaginary conversations with Wells, Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Poe, Dickinson, and countless other literary geniuses! And just when I thought I'd lost it...I fell in love with literature all over again.
   This could be a turning point, folks.

A mild rant and its drawn conclusions

   I'm wishing that I knew exactly why I get as frustrated as I do. With people. With writing. With music. With everything.

   Going to lunch today with a friend and mentor that I haven't seen in a while kind of provided me with some insight as to why I've genuinely hated my old location for the past two years. I realize now more than ever that what I lacked in my old neighborhood was a collective identity. I never felt like I belonged there, like I had anything in common with any of the residents, or that I would ever belong there. Despite my desperate attempts to become part of that community, everything I ever tried in order to help me fit in always backfired and proved detrimental to me. I tried acting beyond immature. I tried acting rebellious. I tried to be everything that I wasn't and it wrecked me.

   The people there, as a whole, treated me differently. It didn't matter what I did, what I pretended I was or wasn't, they knew that I thought apart from them and they acted accordingly. I felt it. I could feel their judgments, their assumptions, and most importantly their refusal to listen and consider that; maybe, I could offer a different perspective.

   I find it ironic more than anything, this idea that, of all places, that neighborhood should have been the one place that I felt comfortable and secure. In actuality, it was the only place I ever felt obligated to shut myself away and pretend I didn’t exist.

   When I saw that there was absolutely no way that I would ever be one in the same with this group of people, I tried a different approach. I felt that I was being attacked all of the time through the harsh and inaccurate conclusions that were being made about me. Arrogance is form of self-defense to me and I used it. If people were going to accuse me of thinking I was smarter than everyone else, why not just take up that challenge? So, I did. I upheld myself as better than all of them. I negated everything that they said, I shot down every single one of their ideas, I played devil’s advocate, and I hated it. I hated having to act arrogant; HATED IT.

   I suppose it’s mostly counter-productive now to complain about it, but sometimes you just need to voice why something was as awful as it was; especially if you've been holding it in for as long as I have. I’m glad it’s over. I feel better living in my new area. I’m close to people that I’ve known for years and feel comfortable around. I get to fall asleep to the sound of a city, rather than the eerie silence I was met with every night in my old house. I feel good here. Or, at least, monumentally better than I did before.

Quarter-life Crisis

Oh, look at what I've stumbled upon. A rusted Internet link and works left to collect viral dust under a mess of cyber cobwebs. I would apologize and tell you how sorry I am for neglecting the compilation of accumulated thoughts, but that would defeat the purpose of writing, now wouldn't it? See, the best part of writing is that it's a self-evaluated piece of art. I'm not here for my audience, not matter its members. I'm here for me. And lately, I have been getting bothered by the audience to pick up this blog again, so for my sake, I'm writing. It's not for you, let's just clear that up right now.

I left off two months ago (during what I now understand to be the roots of my quarter-life crisis), feeling somewhat defeated, for no reason in particular. I said that it was time for a change, that I'd work on things, that I'd rediscover myself in the woods, that I would come back in time, and that I would be back in full swing.

Truth be told, I lied. As much as it would please me to tell the few of you who are still with me that I'm back in full swing, I'm not. And, as much as I wish that my current state of writer's block, mild illness, emotional instability, and exaggerated cynicism would deteriorate to nothing, it won't.

I'm in a kind of mid-life crisis, though I'm not midway through life. I suppose you could say I'm in more of a quarter-life crisis? Regardless of the specifics of this crisis...I'm still in a crisis! And that's the problem. The few anchors to sanity that I had left are slowly leaving me. Before my quarter-life crisis, I had writing, music, and debate. Now it feels like I only have debate. I can't write (obviously), everything that I try to create is appallingly synthetic or overly raw. So, I stopped writing. Music has always been more of a fallback to a fallback. If I couldn't write, I'd pick up the guitar. I can't play guitar anymore, as it would turn out. I've never viewed an instrument with such frustration. I know full well that it's an instrument of beautiful capabilities and when I can't pull that out, I get extremely angry and want to throw my fist through a wall. So, I stopped playing. And then there's debate. Despite the emotional turmoils, drama, excitement, and heartbreak that go into debate, it's the only consistent activity that I have left. Unless the whole world wants to fall to hell, I'm preserving it.

I don't know what else to say, though there's a lot left unsaid. Have you ever been in one of those moods when you just want to curl up with some chocolate or maybe a pint of ice cream and watch sad movies all night? I did that last night. I fell asleep to the Last Song. I didn't have chocolate or ice cream though. I didn't cry either. I'll work on that.


Now what?

Whit happens