The Small Things

Wow. It's been almost two months...and I said I wasn't going to neglect this blog...famous last words, as my grandmother says on all occasions.

Speaking of grandmothers, I had a funny adventure with mine at the end of last month (this being the grandma on my mom's side of the family). She lives about two hours away from us, so usually when we go to visit, we stay at her house for a day and a night. Well, she also has lots of land around her, and a few old abandoned houses across the road. My cousin and brothers and sister wanted to go exploring over there, and she said they could but warned them not to go inside because the houses are in bad shape and there had been rumors of someone staying over there. They went. Those of us still at the house went about our business. The kids didn't come back. Grandma started to freak out. Eventually the worry was too much for her, and she practically made me go with her in her rickety old golf cart to see if we could find them. She drove that darned thing way out into the sticks and shouted and called, and still they didn't come, and I was sure if there were any sinister people in the area they would find us, alone and defenseless in the woods, with a golf cart that would stop groaning along at any second...I began hearing things, imagining the mystery of our missing bodies... No sooner had we gone back to the house, she more worried than ever and I completely freaked out by this time, than the kids came trotting up the path, blissfully oblivious. I ran at them and pretended I was going to bash them with my cane for putting us through all that. Later that day, my aunt saw a man emerge from one of the houses and go walking across the fields. How creepy is that?

I am now president of the Greensboro Career Club for the Visually Impaired. Wow. Actually, I have been since its conception in December, but we didn't have our first meeting until this past Saturday. We had a smaller group than expected, and it could have been a tad more organized, but the meeting itself actually went off without a hitch. I'm very excited...and vastly relieved to be past all the nervousness and shock at finding myself president of anything at all. :) That aside, we have wonderful officers and wonderful members. More updates on that when we actually start doing stuff...I'm going to try not to think too hard about the fact that I've never in my wildest imaginings done anything like this before, and just go with it and put all my resources to the best use I can. Praying for help, knowledge, and quick wits and high spirits.

I still haven't heard anything from UNCG. Oh! My! Gosh! I don't know what I'm going to do if I don't get in there or Chapel Hill...I'll have to take classes at GTCC, and I do not want to be at home another year. I've already determined that I'm oing to start saving for a house or something ASAP, so that maybe after six years of school, I'll have enough for something cheap and small, just some place of my own. I actually don't want to live alone, but if I haven't found my prince charming in all the time I'm at college, I'm not hanging around in the nest waiting for him to find me. Major pro and major con of homeschooling. Pro: if you use the right resources, the academics outstrip any crap you'll get in public school. Tried that for two years and just about perished of boredom. I wonder more people who actually care to use the brain between their ears aren't totally smothered by the beurocracy. Con: lack of emotional breathing space. I've concluded that during adolescence, drama is capable of following one wherever one goes, and if it's not silly girls wailing over their pathetic and premature love lives, it's going to be family stuff, or other stuff capable of creeping through cracks in doors. Hmm, that's a slightly sinister image. That might become a poem.

Writing is going slower than I'd like, but still going well. I finally have a title: The Shining One. I'm just about to a huge turning point, which is exciting and slightly nerve-racking as well. I've found, though, that I'm not turning my back on writing what I know after all. Yes, this is quite different from my usual work, but rather than defying that age-old piece of advice, I've found new meaning in it. For instance, Renee is perhaps the first of my characters to ever have a realistic family life. Now that I'm over the initial shock of that, I like it, because I can identify with her more, and I think anyone else who reads this will be able to as well. I hope I'm not going overboard with Eric, the romantic interest. My two friends that are reading it both love him, but I'll have to get a guy friend to take a look - if any are that brave - when I'm done. :)

School has begun to slither along at a snail's pace, yet I feel that time is going by incredibly fast. It will be the end of the year before I know it...I hope I'll be ready.

This post is long and rambling, made up of lots of small things. But the small things in life are what keep us from being bored to tears with our lot on this earth...they're what make us human.

Miscellaneous and Random Things

Okay, I realized just now that I might have introduced this blog, but in a shallow way; I didn't actually say what the real purpose in even having one is for me. Maybe I didn't truly know it myself until I noticed that after only two posts, one of which hardly counts, I'm already creating another pile of worthless scribblings. To publish essays, articles, book reviews - that's all very well; but the blog will have no heart in it if that's all it contains. Particularly if the essays are horrible academic ones. I've read some blogs over the last couple of years that have touched me deeply and even changed my life, though perhaps not in drastic, perceptible ways. Most of them detail the daily lives of people that matter, people who have something really meaningful to say, people with incredible odds against them but who still take great joy in life. I don't believe I have incredible odds stacked against me or any really amazing stories to share with the world, but I have passion, and hopes, and fears, and perhaps a teaspoon of knowledge and experience, and a keen desire to make a difference in this world before I leave it, even if it's only to a few people. This blog is merely a medium, a means to many possible ends, and that is its whole purpose.
And now, with that in mind...

First some advice for future college students: ***DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO SUBMIT YOUR APS.*** I have done so...they still aren't all in...and I have learned the hard way that the longer you wait, the better your chances of being absolutely, gloriously screwed. There's still hope for me - a fair amount, actually - but honestly, my dear brothers and sisters in pre-college insanity...it is not worth the stress. If only I had really listened to the many friends who tried to tell me so. UNCG is my first choice of school. I've gotten a letter of acknowledgement and a little ID card from them, which I'm assuming is a good sign. Then today at church, I spoke with a friend who is quite a successful student there, and she told me that she submitted her ap about the same time I did a couple of years ago, and she still made it in, even with complications. I'm praying. Hard.

Okay, moving on...

I am very happy, because this past Saturday, I got more writing done in a few hours than I have in the last month. All things are possible when one rises from bed at a seasonable hour, a wise woman once said...that wise woman being not-so-wise me. *grins* Seriously, though, I am being showered with blessings I can't believe. First the great idea for this story seems to fall out of the sky and into my brain, and then I find myself invigorated with new passion for my calling. For months before this story, my writing was insipid at best, and at worst, downright awful. I don't know what went wrong or when, but I just tried to do what the professionals say: keep writing even if you don't feel like it. Well, that can only be done for so long before one gets really discouraged. Feeling slightly worthless, I beguiled much time with computer games (one in particular which is very good and will get some stage room here at some point in the future), but my mood continued to spiral steadily downward because of the lack of motivation to write productively. Then something wonderful happened. I found myself participating in a collaborative story. At first my goal was to help one of my very best friends deal with some stuff in her own life, and writing this story seemed to be cathardic. But gradually I was reawakened. I realized just how much when she found out my reasons and threatened to kill the story on the spot...and I reacted with horror and a stab of grief and even a little fear. The collaboration is still going on and is tremendous fun, but lately I've been hungering to work on this wonderful gift - this idea that has such great potential that it must surely be a godsend. It couldn't possibly have come from me, after all; I'm not that good. *grin* I tried, but I was in the midst of a fairly creepy part and would end up having to stop, incapacitated by shivers of horror, after only a few minutes of writing. By Saturday I had finally gotten past all that, and now...I can't remember the last time I felt this free! It's amazing! I will be facing a lot of challenges in this story, doing things I've never done before, turning my back on the convention of "writing what I know," and exploring unknown territories (literally and figuratively), but my excitement is definitely outweighing my lack of surety.

Coming hopefully soon: an article on writing what you don't know.