Feeling :  hungry  Listening :  Just a Gigolo - Thelonious Monk Quartet  Reading :  Stuff for school

It has been awhile since I’ve been here.

I was contemplating giving up blogging (that lasted for a whole day, haha), as I am now officially paranoid about it. I was telling Janet that HR managers have ways to circumvent the privacy locks on your social networking profiles. So I disabled my Facebook since I hardly ever use it. I also deleted the blogs on MySpace that I had because they mentioned names not just initials like I usually do here. I’m sure HR managers could find this blog if they looked hard enough, but since I only use my nickname and not my last name, I doubt they’ll find anything.

Anyways, I was kinda spacing out at work today and found myself wondering why. I just sort of stare out at space in front of me and shut my brain off. I’m not particularly thinking about things; I’m seriously just staring. But that staring off into space look looks like I’m thinking, because my co-workers and guests will say, “I didn’t want to bother you, it looked like you were thinking hard.”

As connected as I am (via my websites, social networks, iPhone, etc.), I have a great need to simply unfurl and close myself off from everything and everybody permanently. The best place to do it is in a comfortable and familiar environment. Which is prolly why I do it in class and work so often. When I’m at home, at least I have things to do and things to distract myself with.

Have you ever felt that? The need to turn your brain off? I’m not talking about the temporary disconnect; I’m talking about a long-term, run away, Peter from Office Space, do nothing sort of feeling.

Ideally, this disconnect would occur on a beach somewhere. The air thick with salt and stinky seaweed. Birds trilling. Your ass making a nice groove in the sand because you haven’t moved in hours. Not like some romantic postcard beach, but my favourite beach near Pigeon Point where if you tried to go swimming, you’d get pneumonia ’cause the water’s so cold. I felt at peace there. I’ve never felt as peaceful as I did there.

Man, that would be the life.

The other night, my co-worker saw one of our former co-workers, C. OMG. I had the biggest crush on him. A skinny, hippie white boy from Chi-town. He was tall and had beautiful eyes, which outweighs the fact that he’s a former hippie. Hippie as in counterculture sixties flower child. Self-professed too. He geeked out that he bought ties with Jerry Garcia designs on them at Burlington Coat Factory once. *snerk* But I never acted like I liked him, because 1) I answered to him, 2) I didn’t want to mess up the office dynamic, and 3) my radar didn’t go off that he liked me too. Then he got fired. I never got his number. But as my co-worker and me walked by, we waved at each other. He grew a beard! That was shocking. But my little butterflies came back, which tells me something.

I’ll put him in one of my stories someday. Immortalize that lovely feeling of having a crush.

?: “Where is your mind?“

Feeling :  frustrated  Listening :  Human - The Killers  Reading :  Nothing, I should start something new

I gave a presentation on Arab-American female writers in my Outlaw Genres class tonight. I felt well-prepared, but when I got up to talk, I choked. I was visibly sweating, and I’ve never sweated during a presentation. I dunno what grade I got, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t get a lot of points.

One of my classmates said that my presentation was “poignant.” I thought she was being facetious, but she liked this photograph I found called “this is what home looks like” from Aisha Mershani’s official website. She focuses her photography on the Israeli/Palestine conflict.

Isn’t that an awful photo? Not in aesthetic terms, but in terms of the content. *shivers*

Then she said later on, “you need to speak up! You’re so smart, and you know she’s gonna dock you points!” I agreed with her, but the discussion we had in class was just so left field of what the topic is. Being that our class tonight was structured around Arab-American females, it got highly political tonight. There is an opportunity to continue the discussion online further. I’m gonna ask why it got so political when the other topics we’ve tackled (”feminist theories of autobiography,” “oppositional consciousness and U.S. third world feminism,” “photography and American Indian women’s self-representations,” and “Chicana ‘autobioethnography’”) weren’t so thick with political questions.

I refuse to discuss politics in any situation, even if the forum is open-minded. It’s just too much of a hot potato subject for me to handle with a clear mind and heart. I would end up crying in frustration.

On the flip side, I feel like a total bonehead when I go to class. It’s not that I’m not trying. You don’t know how hard I’m trying to understand. I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older, my learning style has changed. When I was younger, I knew the answer to pretty much every question asked right away. But now, it takes me ages to comprehend everything. Trust me, I’m trying my damnedest to understand. Just when I think I know what the authors are talking about, I go to class, listen to the discussion or lecture, and leave feeling hella confused.

I took a “multiple intelligences survey” for Business Communications a few weeks ago, and guess what? I’m music smart: “loves to sing, hum, and whistle; comprehends music; responds to music immediately; performs music.” The maximum points for each were 15; I got 15 for musical/rhythm. I was the only one in my class who got a max on any of the categories provided. I got 13 points for “visual/spatial” and 11 points for “verbal/linguistic.”

Visual/spatial (picture smart): thinks in pictures; knows where things are in the house; loves to create images and work with graphs, charts, pictures, and maps.

Verbal/linguistic (word smart): communicates well through language, likes to write, is good at spelling, great at telling stories, loves to read books.

I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t you ask the professor to clarify? For me, that’s easier said than done. How would it look to a teacher when you seriously wanna say “I don’t understand” every week? Because that’s how I feel about everything I read for these classes!

I would end up saying this every time we’d meet, and look as though I’m not trying to understand what’s going on. I’m putting so much effort into these classes, I wish I could show you more than my words here. I’m just not getting it. It just feels like I’m going through the motions in the meantime. I don’t know what else to do.

Dropping out is not an option. The drop out deadline at my school is the first Saturday after the term starts, so you don’t even get a chance to see if the class and the professor will fit you.

I’m just gonna have to force myself to do something. Speak up more perhaps. Maybe that’ll help my grades, in the very least.

?: “Has your learning style changed through the years?”

Feeling :  artistic  Listening :  Clueless  Reading :  Stardust and Mouse Tales

I went to the library the other day. I try and go once a week ’cause my niece is a voracious reader. What I love the most is the books she picks are things I used to read when I was a kid. We’ll be in the self-check line, and as she’s scanning them, I’ll blurt out, “Hey! I used to read this when I was a kid!”

I sometimes wish I remembered all the books I read when I was a kid. Then again, I was a pretty voracious reader myself. I’m sure all the books I read back in the day would fill a library! Maybe two!

I usually go to the library to get DVDs whilst she gets books, but this week, I was inspired to get some books myself. You’ll see why in a moment. I got the Fear Street Saga the last time we went to the library, because I read an article on ONTD about R.L. Stine restarting the Goosebumps series. It was like, “hello childhood!” I know I had a few Fear Street books when we were still in California, so I think I might end up raiding our storage unit this weekend for them and whatever books I can get my hands on. Here’s what I picked up and what I plan to read this summer.

Partial Summer Reading List
“Journey to the Center of the Earth” by Jules Verne
“Sabriel” by Garth Nix
“Moll Flanders” by Daniel Defoe
“Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Disneyland” by Koenig

I got most of the inspiration to read these books from my own wishlist on Amazon, rofl. I have so many books on there. I don’t use it so much to expect gifts, but more of a repository for me when I feel like I need some inspiration for new stuff to read. I should probably update my LibraryThing account. I’ve got quite a few books that need to be added. I’ll do it when I get back from storage.

I randomly found and read this article on Encarta the other day that suggested a few things I should start doing. I’m already aware of what I need to do to take my writing seriously. So I try and incorporate what I can from whatever I pick up from writing resources I come across. I’ve also heard that if you have writer’s block, to go back to reading the books that inspired you to be a writer.

As such, I’ve been taking a good, hard look at my own writing. I’m not so much at the point where I want to take it to the next level, because I will always feel that way. But I have been feeling a bit uninspired.

I’m at a dead end for a short story I’m working on called “Austrian Crystal.” I can see how it ends in my head; I’m just not sure how the story should progress to get there. I kinda see it as the less sucky, female version of “The Virgin Suicides” only without the death and shit. Ugh. Does anyone wanna beta what I have so far? It’d be kinda nice to get a second opinion.

I got the movie version of Stardust from the library the other day too, but I think I’m gonna do something different and not write my review for the movie until I’ve finished the book. It’d be nice to compare the book and the movie together.

?: “What books are on your summer reading list?”