Monday, October 17, 2011

Ramblings

For the first time, in a very long while I've found myself lying awake into the wee hours of the morning lost in my thoughts. Thoughts that I suppose wouldn't hold much presidence outside the confines of my own mind, but at the time seem to be important enough.

This latest batch of ramblings was born out of a fairly vivid dream I had during the day, after shawn had left for work and I'd drifted back to sleep. I don't know if it was the lack of his presence, or just my minds innate ability to remind me how selfish I'm being when I fall into a routine, but my mind decided to choose then to send me careening into a dream full of teenage angst, and relationship hopping (my dream self, despite better judgement, and altogether unsure of how it happened was suddenly dating someone else, and was desperately confused and trying to steer herself back into being in a relationship with the person she actually cared about.)

Dream drama aside, what was actually important, as well as being part of the myriad of thoughts swirling about my conciousness, is my minds uncanny ability to take familiar places where I once lived, or stayed for any amount of time, and turn them into perverse alterations of themselves. My mind adapts these very places to suit just about any, and all dreams I might have; not including my numerous zombie related dreams, but I digress.

perhaps even more confusing is the fact that my mind will mix and match interiors, and exteriors. For instance, take my dream from yesterday; at one point the dream required I enter shawn's mother's house, or at least that's what it appeared to be on the outside. Once inside I found myself in a slightly altered version of my grandparents house in california. I don't know why my mind picks these two places to manifest most often, (with the occaissional smattering of the house I grew up in,) but it does. The odd thing about it, is that I spent so little time in either of these places, so I suppose I don't understand why my subconcious chooses to manifest them so reglarily.

In my mental excursions I've found myself debating a few other points well. Although I suppose the only other thing that's really sticking is my battle to understand my own intelligence, and capabilities. I find that I often don't understand things I hear, or know what something is off the bat. Ultimately I have trouble discerning whether this is a result of lack of exposure or lack of ability. I went through a similar mental struggle when it came to surviving on my own, and the basic skills neccessary to do so. At the time, and even now sometimes, I find myself frustrated with myself for not being able to do something so seemingly simple. My mental struggle goes something along the lines of: this is supposed to be easy, something everyone knows how to do, so why can't I just do it? Shouldn't I be able to reason my way through it? I find that I start to over anylize the situation. 

Take laundry for instance. We take advantage of how naturally it comes to us to do a load of laundry, but if you take someone who had never been taught how and put them in from of a machine with a basket of dirty clothes its only natural that they become confused. The basic concpt is simple. The clothes and soap go in and the machine washes them, but wait, do you just out the soap in there with the clothes, or is there some special compartment for it? And what's the difference between temperatures, and different types of wash cycles. Wait, what do you mean I have to wash stuff seperately, colors run? Even as simple and automated as a task might be to someone who was taught, doesn't mean it isn't a scary concept for someone else. But again, is it a lack of knowledge that drives their confusion, or inability?             

I came across a lot of adverse reactions to my lack of understanding. When I was asked to do something I didn't understand you may as well have been speaking another language. Perhaps it's so normal in our society that mostly everyone is taught basic skills as a child, and its expected of us adults to know and understand them. But what of those of us that don't?  My intent isn't to make excuses, but pehaps to garner a bit of understanding. Chances are that people like me already feel stupid for our lack of knowledge, but we aren't unwilling to learn. I pick up most skills fairly fast. I can't help but feel handicapped though.

Right now I'm working myself out of years of bad habits, and untapped skills. I try to feel intelligent. I try to be genuine, and outgoing, though I feel like I come across too strong in person. Most of all I'm making an attempt to make my life something I can appreciate. Ill always have doubts and fears. Don't most people? But I suppose what's important is that I've decided not to let them overpower me. I want to be happy. I want to appreciate what I have. I want to be a kind, benevolent, genuine person. I want to be ingelligent, and moreso I want to feel like I am. I'm working toward these things. I'm taking baby steps but I'll get there some day. Its difficult not to focus on the negitive aspects of life. Its easy to fall into a stifling, unhealthy routine. Its easy to be ignorant, and depressed. I'm sick of easy. I want to do something with my life. Something profound.           

Monday, September 26, 2011

Blegh.

found out some terrible news last night, but im not going to get into it. nothing life threateing. pardon the lack of capitolization. for some reason my phone wont let me do it in blogger.           okay, so first updatemy computer is down for the count. hard drive is failing. also imalso have my allergy test on october fifth, so im going to be eating gluten for the next two weeks. awesome.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Sketches and health update.

My allergist appointment is on October 5th. Ate gluten again for the first time today and spent the majority of it suffering hardcore. It's going to be a long two weeks.






Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Already a great day.

I spent the morning finishing up the timeline for my story and mocking up the first chapter. I'm on a roll with this one, and happy with the basic premise and the flow so far. I'll definitely be doing quite a bit of fine tuning with this one though.

My second high point of the morning was walking into the living room to find out Gears 3 arrived. Everything looks awesome so far, and I'm looking forward to playing it tonight.

The third great thing was I had my doctors appointment with my new GP. She was awesome. She was attentive, respectful of the fact that I've done my research on Celiac, and best of all she listened, and actually considered it as a possibility, and we talked about it for awhile. Actually talked about it. She's referred me to an allergist, and I hope to be making an appointment soon, even though it means eating gluten for two weeks beforehand. That's going to suck, but I feel like I'm finally making progress. None of my other doctors, or for that matter my friends and family have listened to my theories on possibly being Celiac, or having a gluten allergy/intolerance. I'm so happy that I'm finally making headway.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Can't sleep.

Another sleepless night it seems. It's close to eleven and I'm only just beginning to feel wispy tendrils of sleepiness tickling at the corners of my mind. I'm half wondering if I should just stay up for the day and sleep around 8 or 9 sometime. as long as i wake up to take my meds. I'll probably have my boyfriend call me to make sure I'm up. I tried laying down for a bit. I was kind of tired when I did, but then once I was down, and comfortable I was wide awake again. It's odd to have such terrible insomnia after so many days of exhaustion. That's not to say my energy levels are back up though. They're really not. I'm just not really tired.

I spent most of the night writing out a quick summary of a story I plan to start hacking away at. I'm sure whether or not I plan to try to publish it, or if I'll just post it all over the internet, and make it a free to read type of thing. I never really had any ambitions as an author. I just enjoy exercising my creativity in a way that isn't drawing once in awhile. I'm not really sure how to summarize the idea without completely destroying the integrity of it, because no matter how I've tried putting it, I can't seem to convey that its not just a typical vampires, vs werewolf story. Honestly, I was never all that interested in vampires, though I am a werewolf fan. I started off just wanting to write something easy and supernatural. It ended up complex, longer then I expected, and honestly it turned into politics, rioting, martyrdom, and a three way inter-species war. I really don't know how else to explain it. It doesn't sound all that interesting when I put it the way I did. Maybe i"ll just summarize the beginning to get people interested, and let them decide from there. I use the terms vampire and werewolf very loosely by the way. They're hardly even that far off from humans.


Allie and Turner Hardy are sent to claim a debt by their illustrious grand father who runs a large chain of casinos. It turns out their mark is a vampire who has gotten himself in trouble way in over his head, and is willing to do anything to stay out of the spotlight. But in an odd twist the vampire then flips the circumstances when he takes Allie hostage in an attempt to coerce the hardy clan into helping him, or rather fighting his battle for him. Could this be the last straw to break the fragile truce between the two territories?

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Quick health update.

So, I self-diagnosed, and then had confirmed a possible urinary tract infection that had spread to my kidneys. This is what I assumed was causing all of my symptoms. (Nausea, bloody urine, body aches, fever, chills extreme fatigue which sounds like a horrible sport, ect.) I've been on antibiotics for a few days now, and all of the classic symptoms of UTI have disappeared. The only issue is that the nausea, and fatigue are still there, though the fatigue has gotten better. Granted, I've only been on the antibiotics for 4 days, and have another 6 to go. I'm hoping I can attribute any current nausea and fatigue to the antibiotics. If it's still going on after I finish them then I suppose it's back to the doctor. At least I have insurance now. My body aches are also persisting. I'm hoping I'm just sleeping wrong. In any case I still don't have the energy to leave the house for long, or even be sitting up for that matter. I have a couple hours of it in me at the most and then I'm just drained. I felt bad because I had to call off seeing a movie with my friend yesterday for her birthday. We ended up coming back to my house and watching tangled instead. It wasn't so bad but it was still annoying. I hate the fact that I have to limit so much of what I can do right now. If this keeps up I don't know how I'm ever going to get a job.

On another note, I've managed to not gluten myself accidentally for a week now. It's been nice to not throw up all the time. I'm still hoping that there's an alternate test they can do for celiac that doesn't involve me eating gluten for two weeks.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Up for some enthralling reading?

I have to admit that over the past few years I haven't been doing as much reading as I like. when I have picked up the odd book I've gone an unusual route (think cyphers, and governmental sabotage,) and have been taking forever to work my way through anything. Recently I've been perusing the writing forums on gaia, and making a few vain attempts to exercise my creativity in a less visual fashion. During my browsing I came across the third installment in a series of novella's that seemed to be getting an unusual amount of attention. I've never been a huge fan of the vampire genre. I've enjoyed the occasional book series, or movie here and there, but it honestly never interested me all that much. I was always more of a werewolf sort of gal. Out of curiosity, and despite expecting the same level of disjointed highschool writing common in the rest of the forum I decided to read a quick exert for no reason other then morbid curiosity. Since the dawn of twilight I'd  taken to avoiding vampire fiction all together, as the sudden rise to popularity produced a lot of romantic swill. Don't get me wrong, i can enjoy a good supernatural romance, but I tend to enjoy it more when the it mirrors more of the reality of how relationships develop, or at least makes the reader work for it.

Despite all of my misgivings, and the nagging notion that I knew better, I gave this series a chance. Although the writing was a bit choppy at first (the series was actually written over the course of a few years, 2009 - ongoing, and it improves dramatically,) The concept was intriguing, the characters were interesting and not completely predictable, and the story itself had a way of pulling me in despite the writer's inexperience. I read the first chapter and I simple had to know what happened next. I just kind of kept reading, even though it totally wasn't my genre. I was hooked.

There will definitely be some ironing out to do once the series is finished. there were a few inconsistencies, but the story was otherwise enthralling enough for me to overlook them. It was an awesome read, and a welcome break from the meaty, intellectual books I've been reading.

You can find the first installment here. Enjoy!