I want to WRITE, darnit. I came back from Europe thinking that I'd be able to fill books with all the experiences I had. But thinking back on it, it's hard to isolate events enough to put them into individual stories. I tried the other day, and it was terrible. So now I'm depressed with myself as a writer, of course, and I haven't been able to write one decent thing in months. This includes songs - I haven't written a song in goodness knows how long. It's times like this when I start feeling antsy about my future as a writer.
I can't say that I'm depressed these days - I don't think that's it, anyway. I just feel like I'm sort of mindlessly going through the motions of college life at home: I wake up at 7 AM, go to school with my $9 backpack and its' broken zippers, sit in a classroom where nobody (including the teachers, for the most part) cares about what's being said, come home, and then try to force myself to do homework that I don't care about. More often than not, this last part goes for an hour (perhaps a bit more) before it turns into facebooking/reading/writing/anything-that-isn't-school-related. Every day is the same. But I guess that's what your first year or two of college is for: doing the grunt work. Incidentally, I got a pretty bad grade on my math test from last week - actually, the worst grade I've ever gotten. I kind of feel like I got my first bee sting. All the care and caution you put into avoiding it, and then it happens, and even though it hurts like the devil, you're just glad it's come and gone. I've always had A's, and only sometimes B's. Never lower than that before. At this point, I'm just so tired of stressing out over keeping my grades up... aaannnd it's only a month into school. This is a bad sign.
A few days ago while I was doing math, Mom came to me with the financial facts of Seattle Pacific - namely, that it's is ridiculously expensive and doesn't really offer large scholarships. I don't even know much about the school itself, but the thought of going to Seattle has been my happy driving thought for almost a year. When I'm sick of community college, I think of wandering about Seattle in a long coat and my red scarf, coffee in hand; perhaps ducking into the bookshop I would haunt and reading Frost or Eliot on a corduroy couch. When Mom told me that there isn't really a way we could afford it, I felt like my whole future just crumpled up. I had already had such a long and frustrating day that I actually started crying. Which never happens. Like I said, it's not even that I had my heart set on the school itself... I just need to have something nice to look forward to. I need to be somewhere that I like. I just need to go.
Bahhhh. I'm going to make tea. Curse you, sickness.
there are always grants/loans. the fact of the matter is we will all be steeped in loans probably for the rest of our lives, and if the education/place is worth it, then what's a few more loans? after i found out i couldn't go to Chapman i was super blah, and wondering about LMU, and my friend's dad asked me about it. i said i didn't want to go because i didn't want to have debt, and he said he truly felt that education is one thing that is completely worth owing money for. anyway, i'm not saying you should, i'm just saying if you feel like you should be there there are always other ways to think about it.
ReplyDeletealso, you can still have that atmosphere by going upstate. California is a great big place, and NorCal is very close to what Oregon/Washington is like. If you went to a school far North but still in state it would hold a very different, non-soCal atmosphere while not making you pay the cost of going out of state. if I hadn't gone to LMU I would have gone to Berkley; I got accepted there and the SF atmosphere was very attractive. still. you gotta go where you gotta go.
a tangent by katrina barnett.
ps, the word that they made me type in order to post this was "lably" which reminded me of "Lamely."
ReplyDelete"A drop of tea is to a woman's tongue what a drop of oil is to a wasting lamp." from The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.
ReplyDeleteAs a hopeful thought (hopefully), at least you're writing on your blog. :)
hahahaha, Lamely. How happy.
ReplyDelete