"Oh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix!"

I get discouraged sometimes.  Which is why there isn't going to be a February post.  Well, not a real one.  This is technically a post, I know, so shut yer trap!  It's not a proper post, I'm mostly just complaining.  Totally different than all my other posts.  Totally.  Different.

OK, here goes:
I'm almost done with college.  Like 18 credits away, that's how almost done I am.  That's including this current semester of 12 credits.  And I'm floundering.  And I totally know why, but I can't seem to stop my brain from feeling super anxious and scared and just dive in and get it done.  When I graduate, there isn't going to be any excuse for me to not start living my life properly.  My 'real' life is going to be there, all shiny and expectant like a new baby, and I just know that I'm going to drop that squirmy thing.

I'll have to find a job, start paying back my student loans, be an 'adult' and do all that normal shit that those of us in our 30's are supposed to do.  Both my kids will be in school full time this fall, I will be done (or very nearly done, depending on summer class availability) and things that have been on my self-imposed back burner will start boiling over, demanding attention.

I got my associates degree in 2010 and looked for a job in the corresponding area of the market.  For a year.  I didn't even get an interview.  So, I went back to school to get my bachelors degree.  What if the same exact thing happens again?  What if everything I've been waiting to do (I don't even really know what I've been waiting for, some kind of magical self-actualization, complete with an army of trained monkeys that I can command to do my bidding.  Or something), everything about myself that I haven't been working on or thinking about or trying to improve because of having kids/going to school/watching my dad die/dealing with anxiety and depression/experiencing the inevitable stresses that come with being alive are broken or have evaporated or are simply boring and disappointing?

 Anxious people like me typically don't handle the unexpected future very well.  We worry and fret and wring our hands while our hearts constrict in our chests and we fight until we've worked up a sweat to stay on the edge of that cliff,  because once we've slipped, once we fall down that deep, dark, cavernous pit, we are lost.  It can take a long time to climb back up, mostly because we have been beaten so soundly by the terrible monster that lives down there.  I call him Panistrosity (which isn't a great name, I know, but it's hard to be creative when you feel like gouging out your eyeballs just so you can stop seeing the terrible thing trying to tear you apart).  It's completely exhausting and traumatizing to have your brain misfire and cause your body to panic like you are about to die when you're not.  It happens over and over and over again to some people, and it is unpleasant.  I haven't had an encounter with my ooze-dripping monster in a long time, but a few days ago I fell down there close enough to see that puffy, orc-like face, and I'm still feeling shaky and uncomfortable and sad.

Um, this is all figurative, by the way, in case anyone that's reading is tripping on acid or mushrooms or something and thinks there's a real cliff somewhere with an actual monster below.  Just saying. Drugs are bad, Mmmkay?


So I'm preoccupied, is the point I'm trying to make, I guess.  I'm doing the best I can, so please don't judge me too harshly for missing my self-appointed deadlines that don't really matter because I don't think anyone not related to me by blood or marriage reads anyway.  That was very sad sackish of me to say, and I take it back.  I don't take it back enough to simply delete that sentence, but I do take it back to the point that I felt the need to say something about it.  Jesus, what the hell am I talking about?

BOOK REPORT ONE: #88- The Call of the Wild, By Jack London

Remember like, six months ago when I said that I was going to start reading the 100 best books on the best book list?  After starting and restarting and being confused and looking up a few chapter synopses on Wikipedia and then kind of understanding and then just crawling through each sentence and looking up a LOT of words, I stopped reading James Joyce's Ulysses and tried a different book on the list; The Call of the Wild, by Jack London.  Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on Ulysses, it’s very original and interesting, it’s just taking forever and hurts my brain sometimes.

I chose this book because it was a free download on my eReader.  A bunch of these books are free, which is an added bonus to a poor person that is too lazy to go to the library, but I had apparently purchased it before and it was already on my kindle app, so there you go.

Some factoids about this book:

-It was originally published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post, and then published as a novella in 1903.

- It’s based on Jack London’s actual time up north during the actual Alaskan/Yukon gold rush.

- It’s fucking awesome.

Quick Summary:

Told from a big, burly dog’s point of view, it tells the tale of how Buck ends up in the frozen tundra working as a sled dog.  He has some good owners and some stupid ones, and travels all over the place in the meantime.  Throughout the book he feels he’s slowly becoming un-domesticated and tapping into the ancient instincts of his ancestors (i.e., the call of the wild).

My Opinion:

AMAZING. 

I loved it so very much. It’s encouraged me to tackle other books on the list.  It’s told very simply and straight forwardly, with little literary pomp and circumstance.  You know what I mean, right? Some books are written by people who write fancy, formal and complicated words and phrases for the sole purpose of being fancy, formal and complicated so other members of the literati will think they’re fancy, formal, and yes, complicated.  In other words*: superfluous. 

*Do you still say 'in other words' if you're only referring to a single word? 'In another word' just doesn't sound right.  Damn, I bet those literati that I was just talking about would know... 

That being said, pushing the boundaries of contemporary fiction is completely necessary and important, because without it, everything would stay the same and be super boring.  Remember in my super long and tedious favorite movie list how I said there’s a difference between the ‘best’ movies and my personal ‘favorite’ movies?  It’s like that, but, you know, with books. 

The Call of the Wild seems to be firmly entrenched in both of these worlds, as it’s on the top 100 book list AND it's a great read.  As previously stated, it was written so simply and perfectly that it completely sucked me in.  It seemed like every word written had the exact meaning and purpose that he intended it to have.  It was so clear and concise; you could feel the coldness, the emptiness, the danger of the terrain.  It was exciting and fast-paced. There was great peril and huge obstacles to overcome, impossible odds, love and violence, warmth and death, and the pure ecstasy of absolute freedom from everything but your deepest, most primal self.  And it was about a dog!  I love dogs so very much.  If it wasn’t for the limited funds and strict city ordinances, I’d probably have four or five of them.  Or ten. 

I read this book in two hours.  I couldn’t stop, I had to know how it was going to end.  My only complaint, if there is one, would be that since it was written more than 100 years ago, our ideas have... changed on dog training.  There’s dog-on-dog and dog-on-whip/club violence.  So that part was a little terrible to read, but it added another layer of harsh reality to the story, which ultimately made it more compelling because we felt sympathy for this dog that was abused (and totally kicked ass too).  

Side Note: Should outdated societal norms be accepted in literature (and other media) as simply a part of our unenlightened past, or do we censor and remove the now-offensive parts (or get rid of them in entirely)? I'm not a huge fan of censorship as a general practice, AND there's the whole, 'people who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it,' deal.  But, people could also get their ideas and beliefs from said history.  Does it perpetuate stereotypes or cause us to reflect on how far we've come? Deep thoughts, man. My neurons and synapses certainly can't create the appropriate chemical reaction that would generate an answer (is that how brains even work? I don't know anything!).

That’s it.  My first brainy book report.  On a scale of zero to ten brains, zero being the worst and ten being the best (duh!) I give this book nine brains.  I would’ve given ten if it was longer.  

DOGS! WOO!

9 out of 10 brains!

"I've Never Been Good with Words...

...Which is why I'm in such a delicate conundrum."

Did ya ever have writers block?  Did ya ever stare at blank screen and watch the cursor mock you with every one of its devilish, condescending blinks?  You-are-a-terrible-writer-that-won’t-amount-to-anything-ever! Also-I-fucked-your-mom-last-night.

I can’t believe you said that, cursor!  Dorothy Mantooth is a saint! And, more to the point, so is my mom!

Bitch-ass cursors aside, wanting to write and not having anything to write about totally sucks.  I’ve been trying to come up with various blog posts for about three weeks now, but they haven’t gone anywhere interesting.  So, what’s a blogger to do when the deadline is a week past? Panic and run around the house with my arms flailing wildly?  It involves me knocking something over or smashing into various pointy objects, eventually ending up with a trip to the emergency room.  That’s not very productive, so no, I'd better not. 

I think my main issue is stemming from my feeble attempts at fiction writing.  I’ve got a story that I think is pretty flushed out, maybe 75% but when actually starting to write the prose, I get stuck almost immediately.  I guess my problem is merging my... whatever this thing that I do is style with a professional descriptive narrative.  I know I need to keep at it, keep writing until I figure it out, but as a person that usually writes too much, writing slowly and searching for the right words and phrases and struggling for something to sound the way I want to it is, well, it’s annoying as fuck! 

I’m really bad at following through with things until the end.  I kind of run out of steam about 3/4 of the way there and just sort of stop.  There’s some sort of task tank inside my chest that’s mis-marked and runs dry before the job is done.  Maybe I just don’t manage it well enough and use up too much energy at the beginning thinking about it and getting psyched and convincing myself it’s worth getting off the couch for.  Whatever the reason is, I’m really trying to stop half-assing my way through life.  It’s not easy.  You know what IS easy?  Nothing.  That’s REALLY easy.  Sitting around in a messy house with bored kids and fat dogs.  I don’t want to waste my life though, and that’s exactly what I've been doing.

I have gotten a little better.  School's back in session and there was a day last week when I really didn’t want to go, but I did anyway, and it felt good, like I’d accomplished something.  Hell, the fact that I’m in school at all is a step in the right direction, isn’t it?  I’d like to think so, because college is not easy.  Well, the stuff that I’m doing is easy, but getting all the work done on time is difficult.  I did get all B’s last semester, so that’s something. 

I need to take little steps when all I want to do is long jump Olympic style.  I need to be patient and gentle and calm with myself, and cradle my fragile, broken inner-self like I would a singed kitten pulled from a fire, when all I want to do is whip that racehorse until it runs so fast we’re only a blur past the finish line (I do not condone whipping racehorses, or any animals for that matter, it was just a metaphor, duh!).

My point is, I’m inpatient for my life to start, but I keep re-breaking my brain-bones by trying to use them before they’ve healed, making my recovery twice as long and three times as painful.

Wow, I’ve made myself feel better.  Oh, sweet blog, is there nothing you can’t do? 

‘Yeah, a whole bunch of shit actually.  First and foremost is achieving sentience.  Damn.’

Sorry, blog. Didn’t mean to bring you down.