It's important, but only to me.

Nobody reads this anymore, so here's for posterity. Just for myself.

July 11th

July 20th

August 1st

To one specific, important life.

This is for you, and you know who you are because I just finished talking to you, and I wish you knew how much of an impact it has made on me. And I know you read this blog, or you still did last time we mentioned it in conversation.

I'm sorry.

I wish I had known earlier. I wish you had felt you could trust me with this information sooner, and I'm sorry we drifted apart for a while. I wish I could have suffered for you.

I feel selfish when I fret over my own comparatively miniscule problems. And I feel even more selfish for all of these I-statements I'm making right now.

I wish I could help.

I know that there is nothing I can really do, practically, and because of this I choose to delude myself into thinking that offering my emotional support is enough.

I want to believe that rationality is enough to keep you around, and I know that this is not necessarily true.

I love all of my friends. You are no exception.

And because I am stubborn and do not like airing my emotions in the open, you have never really known how much you helped me, years ago, when I desperately needed a friend.

(You helped a lot.)

I cannot possibly fathom what you feel. If it was anything of smaller magnitude.. But it's not. I only know that I feel powerless.

Times like these, I wish I could pray. I wish I could believe that a higher something could fix a person's problems. I know it can't.

I hope this helps, if only by a fraction of a degree. I hope you take this to heart.

I wish I could do more.

Olivia

There are two hopefully-more-in-depth-and-intellectual posts coming soon; actually, they've both been in the works for at least two months, and for some reason I keep expanding on them and editing and delaying and I'm really not sure why; remember when I used to post daily, uncensored?

But right now there's just something I have to say, because I'm afraid I'll forget what I'm feeling right now. (This sounds stupid already.)

I'm going to keep it vague: I'm confused and I'm really not sure what's happening, and for what seems like the first time I literally do not have anyone I'd feel comfortable talking with about this particular matter. Sure, it's not like I've ever been the most social (although that's changed for the better lately; I love my friends), but there's always been at least one person who could..help, if only by listening. And if it was any other situation, I wouldn't hesitate. But this.. This is just strange. And not even necessarily in a bad way. But it feels too much like a familiar pattern - far too familiar. I don't know how to deal with myself.

In a week I will likely be less attached to this and I will be able to push it away. Right now.. It's just throwing me off a little.

Olivia

On death.

I've been meaning to write in my blog for a while now. I have a backlog of post topics I've been wanting to cover. One about money and entitlement, one about how I'm trying to be a better person and act as my own therapist (and whether or not that can actually work), an update on my apartment search, how I've been making clothes recently and enjoying it, etc. I'm nearing the end of finals season, and my projects are eating me alive, so I could complain about that too. But I'm not going to.

Someone I know died today.

Texts sent between a friend and me:

"Marisol passed away this morning"

"Wait..what? What happened?"

"Marisol passed away this morning. She's gone Olivia."

"How, though?"

"There was something in her brain last fall. And it sent her to the E.R."

I don't know how to act. I don't know how to respond. I don't know what to say. This is the first time someone I know - someone I know personally - has died, excluding pets. Whenever friends have had friends who died, I haven't been much of a comfort. All I could say is I'm sorry. And obviously, that's not good enough.

I didn't know Marisol very well. I liked her well enough; we talked in high school. Jenn, the friend who just told me about her death, was very close to her. They both went to UMass Boston; they were talking about getting an apartment together. Anytime I saw Marisol outside of school, it was because I was hanging out with Jenn. I've been to her house once, and it made me uncomfortable, like how I feel whenever I'm in a stranger's house. Honestly, I barely knew her.

But I can't stop thinking about this. I know young people die sometimes, but it seems even more unfair when it happens to someone you knew, someone whose car you've been in and whose voice you remember and who hated the same people that you hated. Like a true kid of this generation, I turned to Facebook. Her last wall post was on Saturday. (Her last interaction with me was on my birthday in November.) Her boyfriend (oh god, to be the boyfriend of a girl who just died) just says 'She's gone'. Jenn's status says something about not caring that's she's gone to a 'better place', this place was good enough. Her sister changed her profile picture to a photo of Marisol.

Everything I do or think or feel seems trivial right now. This blog post itself sounds like a whiny, insensitive little asshole.

And, selfishly, I wonder what it will be like when I die. I wonder how this would have happened if it had been me. I don't live at home. I mean, my family would be notified if I got hit by a taxi or something, I guess, but what about the rest of my world? My parents would tell the school. They don't know who my friends are, though. Sometimes Akky and Izzy and I joke that if one of us dies, it's up to the other two to inform the internet. But how does that happen if you simply disappear, if you stop returning calls and texts and IMs? What happens to your life after you die? I think about the people who don't have friends or family to speak of; do they just vanish unmourned? An anonymous, unattended funeral, and nobody to remember them? How is that fair?

Jenn asked me if I'll come up for the funeral. I feel like I have to. I'll probably say something insensitive, like how finals nearly killed me. I won't have anything black to wear that isn't a t-shirt or a sweatshirt. I won't know how to act. I barely knew her; I'll probably cry anyways.

I feel lost.

And I have to finish these final projects today and tomorrow, so I don't even have time to process this, save for the time I just spent writing this entry.

Olivia

HNNNNNNNNGH.

MOTHERFUUUUUUUUCK.

I had a post to write but I'm too angry at Blogger right now to do it. There was a merging of Blogspot with Google in 2006 or something? Occasionally it gives me a glitchy login where it wants me to login with my Google account even though I'm already logged in on the browser, and then it directs me to a 'new' Terms and Conditions page from 2006, and when I log in again it asks me to claim a really terrible stupid blog I started in middle school, and sometimes I get frustrated and close out or something I just do it and then whoops, directed back to the Terms and Conditions page, wait haven't I done this already? And then I fumble through the cycle a few times, hoping blindly that maybe it'll work this time, but it NEVER DOES, so I log out of and back into my Gmail on a different tab and then refresh my blog page and hopefully that works but NOPE, so I get upset and open a new browser and this time the latter fix works.

And then I'm too angry at Blogger to write the post I was intending to write in the first place, so you get that instead.

Olivia

PS. AND THEN IT WON'T LET ME CHANGE MY FONT SIZE AWAY FROM THAT INTRUSIVELY LARGE 'NORMAL', AND NOW I'M JUST PISSY THIS IS WHY I DON'T USE SAFARI no not really, I just don't like Safari as much, but at least it's better than IE, sorry Safari you didn't do anything wrong I'm just taking out my anger on you and I shouldn't.

Better.

Most of the time, recently, when I say something about myself that sounds disparaging, it actually isn't. It's a statement of my own truth. When I say I'm fat or lazy or terrible at something, the remark is not meant to put myself down, not anymore. It's just a truth. It's something that I've come to accept as a part of me, or something that I want to change, or just..something. They're all just adjectives. Descriptions.

It actually might be more damaging for someone to say 'Oh, no you aren't' to whatever I believe, because it is a contradiction I really don't need, if I'm going to change my attitude and outlook.

And believe it or not, I actually do feel myself changing. More and more, when I see myself in the mirror, I'm not pissed off by what I see. I recently discovered that I have a good smile. This thing, this being okay with who I am and what I look like, or at least most of the time - this is new. And I guess I like it. I like not hating myself all the time.

This is not a Tavros thing, not an if-I-say-I'm-confident-I'll-be-confident thing. I'm actually feeling a lot better about myself.

This is a good development.

Olivia

PS. And yet, on the other hand, when I read Cyrano I can still completely identify with his attitude. He thinks he repulses women with his appearance, and better to stay away; there are examples from the beginning that seem to prove him wrong, but his stubbornness in belief in his truths sabotages him until his death. Once I fix myself in the broader way, maybe move on to more specific categories.

Wheeeeeeee?

I have realized that my attitude toward myself has been changing lately. I find myself more and more likely to be okay with what I see in the mirror, and I've been mentally beating myself out of most negativities. I'm thinking the struggle I put up against my friend a few weeks ago, when she told me I should see a therapist and I replied that I could fix myself or at least live with my stupid problems, actually did something. I'm thinking I must have conned myself into being nicer to myself, and right now I'm pretty okay with that.

That said, social insecurities are peaking. More and more in the past week I've found myself fretting over what other people think of me - whether or not they actually like me, whether or not I annoy them. These worries are stupid and needy but for some reason I can't shake them, and I find myself saying things that I regret simply because the reactions throw me off.

And it's also been kind of a roller coaster (hnngh cliches why). The last ten days have made up one big moodswing filled with a lot of little moodswings, but I'm finding my ups higher than usual, and my downs, if not also higher, then at least around the same and maybe not quite as severe most of the time.

I'm taking on a few rather ambitious side projects, which will be fun. And it'll mean that in my down time - what time I have, at any rate - I will have something to do, rather than just lying around worrying about homework.

On average, things are pretty okay. Pretty good.

Olivia

Men in love stories. (This title gets me thinking; should I write about women in love stories? I certainly have opinions on them.)

I'm rereading Cyrano de Bergerac, the play. The first time I read it was in freshman year of high school; I had finished the assigned reading and was flipping through the textbook trying to find something interesting to occupy my time - probably was procrastinating on science homework or something. I read Cyrano, and loved it. I loved the clever, witty character of Cyrano, always ready for a fight or a declamation (sometimes both at once), and disoriented only by infatuation. So when I encountered him again today while browsing the bookshelves that house the classics at Barnes and Noble, (wow that was quite a half-sentence) I decided to revisit.

Halfway through, and I still love it.

(SPOILERS: Cyrano dies in the end.)

And I feel like in all my favorite love stories that are considered classics, people die. I'm not talking about Romeo and Juliet; that play has always annoyed me, because it has never, never seemed plausible for me for a couple of people to fall in love and die for each other within a span of a few days. I'm sorry. Just no.

I'm talking about stories like Hunchback of Notre Dame (the novel, of course), and Phantom of the Opera (any version will do; the first I was exposed to was the musical, for which I have a huge soft spot), and A Tale of Two Cities, and Cyrano. And I guess just now I realized why I like these so much.

It's the unrequited lover; it's obvious. (Romeo doesn't count, because he got over Rosaline in a heartbeat, the fickle manwhore.) And you know, it's always a guy. (Unless you're thinking about Esmeralda's love for Phoebus, and..well, Phoebus is a bitch.) I guess there's something decidedly less romantic about a woman pining over a man. Has this ever happened successfully in classic literature? Generally when a woman is the main character, the work is about how (head)strong and independent she is, or how she gets the guy by being (head)strong and at least mostly independent. Women assuming the roles of men, whether in life or in literature, is a modern and still not entirely thought-out concept; for instance, I rather doubt that 'progressive' feminist novels could possibly have a woman pining over a man in any way. (Please, correct me if I'm wrong, if you can; I don't have a tendency to read feminist literature.)

And also, another thing that I guess I just realized. Quasimodo is ugly. The Phantom is ugly, or at least disfigured. Cyrano thinks he's too ugly for love. Sydney Carton..well, he's just an emo fuck who thinks he's too much of a pile of shit to be loved by Lucy.

Oh, boys. Love yourselves. I certainly love you.

<3

Olivia

PS. That was a bit of an anticlimactic ending to this post; I was probably thinking about writing more, but everything's gone out my ears. I'm so tired. I've had a hell of a weekend.

Friends, roommates, coughs.

Yesterday (I guess technically two days ago) was Valentine's Day, and it was the first in years that didn't find me feeling sorry for myself. I also realized that more and more I'm seeing myself in the mirror and being okay, or mostly okay, with the way I look, and that's good. That's progress.

On the other end of the spectrum, I haven't really talked to Jonah for probably more than a month now. You know, it's kind of weird, and it kind of makes me feel shitty. I mean he's online, but he never responds. And there's the very valid possibility that he's just too lazy to answer, because he's that kind of person, and I don't know whether that would be a relief or a disappointment. But I feel like I'm losing friends all the time for one reason or another, and I feel like it's always my fault. (And dude, I know you can read this, but it is more than probable that you're not. And if you are.. well, then why are you reading my blog but not talking to me?) Sometimes this hits me on the side of the head, and makes me feel sick.

Hnngh, time has rendered the previous paragraph void. Twenty minutes after writing it, he calls.

And, weirdly, Jen-the-roommate has come back into my life. She sits behind me in my Shakespeare class, and so far we've been friendly with each other. This is strange, but I suppose it's good. I suspect it's partially because I'm the most likely conversation partner for her in that class, and she for me, so there is some silent pact that takes us back to the stage our relationship had last fall.

Speaking of roommates, an interesting development has occurred in my life. Remember Ariel? I know you don't, because I've never talked about her. Izzy and I met her at Comiccon in whenever-that-was, was it October or November? (It was on Saturday, at the MSPA meetup; she was cosplaying as Gamzee. Definitely one of the best trolls there, the other being Vriska. And of course, if you read this blog, chances are you don't read Homestuck - which is why I keep trying to plug it. So this means nothing to you.) Anyways, we - a group of us who had all met at Comiccon - started hanging out a couple of weeks ago after keeping in touch over Facebook, and Ariel and I realized that we each needed a roommate for next year. And we excitedly said HEY WE SHOULD LIVE TOGETHER, and then confirmed it in a long string of loud and excitable comments on an unrelated Facebook post, and started working out details over Facebook message and in person. So it looks like I'll be getting a place next semester or at the beginning of summer with this Really Cool Girl, and I have Homestuck to thank JUST SAYING HOMESTUCK IS GOOD FOR YOU.

I've been hella sick the past couple of weeks. Half the department is sick; we think it's Reinfeld's fault, because last week he came in for half a class, taught us a bit, died, and left. (He did not really die.) This week I've missed all my classes but one, and I feel even shittier for it. I should probably go find a doctor and get an inhaler or something - I have this fucking cough again, though most of the rest of the symptoms are gone. I don't like seeing doctors.

That's it for now, I think.

Olivia

Restaurant Week; Olivia eating fancy food?

Pardon my enthusiasm in advance.

HOLY SHIT, RESTAURANT WEEK IS THE BEST WEEK.

I went with some classmates to Maze by Gordon Ramsay for lunch; just got back, actually. Ryan organized it; he'd been talking about it in VFX with Eric (our teacher) and some other people, but I think I wasn't interested mostly because I don't really..know how to deal with fancy food? I mean I love watching Food Network, and the stuff they make on Iron Chef looks amazing (not that it was that big a deal; this lunch was probably comparatively way casual), but I..guess I don't really see myself as a fancy-food kind of person? I eat at diners and bakery-cafe-things. Thirty dollars, which is what we each paid for this lunch (including tip), is the most I've ever paid for one meal. I mean, this place is not much more expensive on normal days; maybe ten dollars over for the same meal. (I mean, look at his other restaurant at The London, the 'real' restaurant. It's $110 for the dinner and all the food looks kind of terrifying in an I-am-totally-not-a-gourmande sort of way.) But anyways, I hadn't been in on their plan until yesterday afternoon, when Ryan told me they had two open seats and asked if I wanted to go.

I was..really hesitant, actually. I've said already, I'm not one for fancy stuff. Fancy stuff tends to have ingredients I don't like, or at least things I'm wary of. I'm a picky eater. But I took a look at the Restaurant Week menu, figured it would be safe. And also I guess I wanted to have a new experience. So I filled the fifth spot at the second table - we went in two groups, with six people each, one at twelve and one at twelve thirty. Couldn't get larger reservations, I suppose. I like the people in my department. It's easy to talk to them because all we ever talk about is related to the industry or to classwork. So I was with Eric, Kyle, Justin, this guy Jesse who I kind of knew, and a freshman named John. Actually, I kind of had a mini-crisis before going because I didn't know what to wear. Stupid, I know, and doesn't sound like me. But I figured I probably shouldn't show up in my stupid sweatshirt and t-shirt or whatever. My family went to see The Nutcracker when I was home for winter break, and my parents had made me go out and get some slightly nicer clothes because SURPRISE you're not supposed to wear a sweatshirt to the ballet either. So I wore that. The jeans couldn't be helped, because I don't have any pants that aren't jeans. Same with my ratty sneakers. But it was fine. Like I said. It was the twenty-five-dollar-menu, not the over-a-hundred.

I also am pretty sure I haven't ever had a meal that lasted almost two hours. But that happened. Don't know about the guys, but I felt like with smaller portions it would be awkward to eat at normal pace, because I would have finished in several minutes. Whatever; this is how the French do it, right?

Alright, I guess I'm going to talk about the food now. I mainly want to talk about it here so I remember it, because man it was awesome.

We all ended up ordering basically the same stuff, probably because we were trying to stay on the safe side. All six of us got the same first course: "Hubbard squash soup; ragout of braised duck, black truffle". I googled this before I went (actually, before I even agreed to go), because I had no idea what ragout was and you can never be sure with food; for instance, sweetbread sounds cool until you realize Oops, it's weird squishy organs. (The other first courses were some kind of salad - the woman at the table next to us got it; it was arranged really nicely, kind of standing up and..I dunno, it was a salad - and marinated beetroot with ricotta and nuts and a wine dressing, which I didn't get because who's really expecting me to order beetroot, ever? The man at the next table had it, and the colors were gorgeous.) So this soup, I was kind of iffy about it before I saw it because I'm not a squash person, but oh my god. It came out in those shallow plate-bowl-things, just a little dollop of brown stringy-looking stuff which confused me, but Oh right, that was just the duck-and-truffle; they poured the soup in later. It was a very pretty orange; we all took pictures of our food, but the light wasn't great and I'm not much of a photographer so I'm going to see if one of them puts photos on Facebook that I can steal. And man, that stuff was delicious. The soup was a cream base, and I think the squash is more for texture than flavor, like the pumpkin soup Max and I made for Thanksgiving this year; it was also spicy. The duck-stuff..wow. I haven't had duck in a while, and I always have it Chinese-style when I do. I can't really describe it; it was really flavorful, just very..duck. I still have no idea what truffles taste like, but I'm assuming they helped.

Second course: "Roasted Amish chicken breast; braised red cabbage, bacon, thyme jus". (Jesse and Kyle got bouillabaisse, which is a seafood stew that I learned about in the fourth Harry Potter..) Man, this chicken was amazing. Extremely tender and juicy. I never eat chicken skin, but I did this time; it was awesome. The cabbage was a little sour, and really good. Kind of..soft and crunchy at the same time? There were also brussel sprouts, which I've never had before. That was probably the only part of the meal that I'm not really enthusiastic about; I mean, they were nice enough, but I guess I prefer..normal-sized cabbages to tiny ones? I've heard most people hate them, but I guess these were just too high-class to hate. The chicken breast came with a leg, and I tried my hardest to get the meat off with my knife and fork because it just didn't seem right to use my fingers for a thirty-dollar meal. No luck, so I just picked it off shiftily and hoped I wasn't too bad. It was worth it, though.

Dessert: "Vanilla custard with citrus fruits; steel cut oats and mandarin sorbet". So awesome. It looked like melted vanilla bean ice cream with pretty little slices of fruit, and..that's basically what it was? The custard was kind of pudding-y, kind of creamy. There were slices of orange and blood orange and these little cubes of..well, it was like Jello. Tangy; tasted like it was probably lemon and grapefruit. The sorbet was great. Very colorful dessert. Jesse, Kyle, and Eric got 'chocolate fondant', which came hot in a little cup with salted ice cream on the side. It smelled amazing, and looked kind of like a little souffle or something. I tried some of the ice cream when Kyle said he thought it was weird that it was salty, but it was pretty cool. (I think sweet and salty is in right now; at least, that's what I'm getting from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and some of Trader Joe's desserts.)

It was funny; the couple at the table next to us had come in later, so they were about a course behind us (and still finished at the same time, because I guess we were taking too long). But they had obviously been there before; I was kind of accidentally eavesdropping (oops), and they were talking to the host about the sous chef, and how they hadn't been there since blah blah something, and I think they had a problem with their food. At least, the woman did not look very happy with her chicken, and I was just sitting there eating mine like MY GOD HOW CAN SHE NOT LIKE THIS, IT'S THE BEST CHICKEN EVER. They were dressed nicely, and I'd guess they were around fifty or sixty - I'm not good with guessing ages. They didn't seem very happy, though. Probably because they were seated next to student rabble, and oh yeah, because there was something apparently wrong with the chicken.

But anyways. This was a good experience. It'll probably be a long time before I get to do something like this again, but it was definitely worth it. Maybe we'll go somewhere else for next year's Restaurant Week. I'm feeling a little guilty for dropping thirty bucks on lunch, so..don't know what I'm going to do for dinner. Probably water and crackers.

Olivia

The what-if game.

The multiverse is shaped by every single possibility that could ever have occurred; as time goes on it expands astronomically. So what if you had a week to live in your 'perfect' universe, as the you from that world? And at the end of the week, you had the choice to stay? All you'd have to sacrifice in return is your current consciousness.

I play the what-if game with myself a lot. What if we'd never moved from Minnesota, what if I'd been raised on video games instead of educational television, what if I was better at keeping friends, what if I didn't like art. And this particular scenario has played over and over, because how do you define your ideal self?

The problem is that your experiences shape your personality and your mind, and do you want to give that up to be 'perfect'? If the person I want to be was never a fatass, she would not have lost her self-confidence, but she also might not have decided that it's unfair to judge people by their appearances, which I'm sure I learned for selfish reasons. Then again, if she was confident and outgoing and made friends easily, she would not have spent liberal amounts of time socializing on the internet; she wouldn't have met the people I love, she wouldn't have read MSPA - okay, slightly less important but still a factor! She probably dresses well and drinks and goes to parties when invited instead of staying away because, as explained the day after when asked why she wasn't there, she 'can't do parties'. She probably wouldn't have retreated into books; maybe she's never read Neil Gaiman, maybe she hasn't discovered the glorious medium of comics, maybe she likes Twilight. She probably has a boyfriend. She probably knows how to use makeup and understands popular society's emphasis on leg-shaving. She very obviously isn't me.

The question: Is it worth it? Safe in the confines of a hypothetical situation, I can make lofty and moral decisions like How could I give up who I have become? How could I trade my dreams for the future in exchange for a different past? You can't have everything. Choose: social life in high school or internet friendships? Dresses and jackets or sweatshirts every day? Top 40 or Amanda Palmer? Smiling for photos or wanting to untag everything that pops up on Facebook? Partying or sitting restless and alone in your room, wanting to go outside but afraid to leave?

I'm not making my 'ideal self' into a stereotype; I'm saying that if I want some things, I have to give up others. If I want to be self-confident, I give up what led me to my internet community in the first place. If I want to go out clubbing with friends, I give up Saturday nights in Queens with my grandparents and my uncle's family. I mean, goddamn, if I never had allergies I would have gotten a cat a long time ago, and I wouldn't have Molly.

Again. You can't have everything. And I know that if I think about it, I really would not want to trade my life for something that seems better in fantasy. Because then I wouldn't be me. I would be gone. I guess that's what's so terrifying about doppelgangers, but in this case you are the doppelganger. It is you. (See, there is another Homestuck reference I would not be able to make because I would not have met the person who introduced me to MSPA, and even if I'd found it some other way, I might not like it.) Everything I value will lose its significance. Everything I do will be nullified. The people who know me will lose me, and who knows whether they will be better or worse for it? Maybe she doesn't think about these things, like I do; and I'm sure that even if she does, she certainly does not wish to be me.

And still, I wonder. If this scenario were actually possible - if I could trade lives with another me for a week, a month, a year, a day - would I have the same opinion? Would I still value the self in this world?

Would I want to come back?

Olivia

Back.

So I keep trying to restart this blog, and it keeps not happening. I tried on my birthday, which was the first-year anniversary of the blog. I tried on New Year's. I've tried several times in between. Each time I write a long-ass post and get halfway through, and then read it and realize that it sounds stupid and give up.

So HERE WE GO. Last week month October on Olivia's Blog!: Here's what I've been up to since you last heard from me, if you care.

- The semester ended. The last couple of weeks were hell for me, because in addition to final projects I had this really terrible cough that was sparked by a cold and also probably the weather, and I ended up sleeping all the time. Last time I had a cough like that which lasted longer than a week was in seventh grade; I had that one almost the entire school year, and people liked to say I had SARS. People kept telling me to go see a doctor, to which I had to keep replying No I can't I have to finish my finals there is no time for health. Then Illustrator crashed on me as I was heading into the final hours of working on my VFX final, which was supposed to have a lot of graphics, and I ended up having to cobble some shit together in After Effects and apologize profusely to Eric, my teacher, and hide in shame in the corner of the classroom as we watched the projects, all the while coughing my brains out. He was good about it, probably because I was dying, and at least I passed the class. I basically ended up hating my animation class that first semester, because I'm mediocre at modeling and suck at pretty much everything else we did - there was no focus on animation at all - and my final project was full of sadness. So when I got home for winter break, I refused to talk about school for a few days, and just sat around with my cat.

- But I ended up passing all my classes, anyways, and I got A's in Creative Writing, Arthurian Literature, and History of Animation I. (All the classes that didn't matter..) And this semester will probably be better, at least if I think about it in patterns; I almost always do better in the second semester than the first, and last year was no exception. And hey, the first animation class of the semester, he gave us actual animation homework! And he told me specifically that mine was good, so I guess there's some hope for spring. (God, I love animating.)

- I'm applying for internships for summer again; I'm looking into more than I did last year. First due date is the application for Blizzard. It..would be really cool if I could intern at Blizzard. Or really anywhere.

- For the first time in my life since I was maybe eight, I have friends who I see regularly outside of school. I celebrated my birthday with people other than my family for the first time since I was twelve - my first and last teenage birthday. This may not be a big deal to most people but it is kind of a big deal to me. We didn't even really do much, we just hung out. But still. It was a big deal. And having regular-friends is cool. Yesterday we went to a sex shop because one of them wanted to buy a rubber dick to wear under her pants and make people uncomfortable, and she wouldn't listen to me when I said that was what socks were for. She thought I was squeamish in the store but honestly it was just sort of weird; there were thousand-dollar gold vibrators and just..why.

- There's a guy I like(d) and he has a girlfriend and that's okay. I mean sure I can't make myself stop liking him (and I did try), but it's okay. I'm okay with it. A relationship like that is honestly not something I would be able to deal with right now (or possibly ever), and that's fine. In November I went to a thing and I met some dude and after hanging out with him for a while I realized he was flirting with me and it freaked me the fuck out and I went home and had a panic attack so it's actually pretty good that this has only happened once, and it is good that my friend has a girlfriend. I am more comfortable this way. Don't know whether that equates to 'happier', but it's honestly fine with me.

- My psychologist friend recently decided that I have depression, and is urging me to get therapy. I am resisting her as hard as I can, because I have a serious issue with getting a professional to help sort out my problems. And honestly, I'm extremely hardheaded and have convinced myself that I will be able to wear myself down and make myself better. This probably will not work, but it is all I can deal with at the moment. And while it may be flawed logic, it is all that I am prepared to live with right now; I am not ready to step out of my comfort zone just yet, not in that respect.

- OH DID I MENTION AMANDA PALMER AND NEIL GAIMAN GOT MARRIED it's pretty awesome. Also the Dresden Dolls had a reunion tour and I tried to see them in New York on Halloween but tickets sold out in like..a few hours, or something, I don't remember. And then there was a show in Boston on my birthday but since it was on a Wednesday I obviously couldn't go, so it was like a birthday punch. Ah well. She's on a tour in Australia right now, and also the Tristan Allen EP came out some time ago, and I love it. He's this kid she found on the street who writes these amazing piano compositions; my favorite is Janos vs Wonderland, and I've gotten into the habit of listening to the album while I sleep. Also, her Australia album just came out, and it's pretty sweet. Most of the songs are pretty silly but there are also some really great and not-silly ones. And..yeah that's all on the musical-obsession front.

- Okay, who reads Homestuck? (WHY AREN'T YOU READING HOMESTUCK YET?) Do it do it doooooooo itttttttt. Seriously, please. Never have I been more emotionally invested in fictional characters. Well, except maybe for Pixar movies.

- And speaking of Pixar movies, I really do not suggest watching them while PMSing. Seriously. I'm in the habit of watching movies while I do my homework - really I don't watch them, I just like having some background noise as I work. A lot of people do this. But a week ago I was animating and found myself sobbing; Woody and the gang were about to be incinerated, and then Andy left them for college, and..fffft. I wasn't even paying attention, but it killed me anyways. (I really do love this movie.)

- I need to draw more. I'm going to try to, this semester.

And yeah. I think that's it for now. Now you're caught up with my life. I'm going to try to not make this blog a whole mess of annoying, self-deprecating thoughts like it was. Maybe I'll post some of the things I started writing a long time ago. Maybe I won't. We'll see. Hopefully I can get it back off the ground.

Later.

Olivia

Rock operas and new glasses.

Oh my god Protomen why have I been ignoring the links and recommendations until now.

This music is just so epic. It is like original-Pokemon-theme-song plus every-dramatic-song-from-a-musical plus the-friggin-opera plus magic. That kind of epic. I want to conquer the world in a montage with this as my soundtrack. (Also, robots.)

Okay, I have always been enamored with musicals, since as far back as I can remember. I'm pretty sure it started because my parents had a copy of the Phantom of the Opera original cast soundtrack and it was one of the only things I listened to when I was young. (This also explains my deep-set nostalgia for certain U2, Phil Collins, Bryan Adams, and Simon and Garfunkel albums. I listened to my dad's music a lot. Also a whole bunch of classical stuff we had around. Four Seasons, anyone?) There's just something really alluring about a collection of music that tells a story. Sure, normal songs are great. Normal songs can tell stories too, in themselves. But god, there's just something beautiful about musicals, and also these albums presented as rock operas, etc.

So this afternoon, when I finally clicked a link to the Protomen site that I've passed by at least three times, I ended up listening to the songs on loop while making my alpha channels and animating for several hours, and then deciding that I needed to acquire the entire story. This..this is pretty cool. I've had the two albums on repeat four times around already. Something that has always interested me: different methods of storytelling. So yes, I love reading books and short stories and poems, but lately I've been extremely attracted to graphic novels and webcomics because of the highly visual element, and also I guess I want to be an animator, so there's another method in animated movies. And I used to be very interested in plays, and that came back into the picture with last year's acting class. (One reason why I enjoy MSPA and Homestuck so much is that I am very impressed by the new medium Andrew Hussie has created. It's part comic, part video game, part animated series, part who-even-knows-anymore, and totally engaging.) So I've been sitting around imagining the events of the Protomen songs, visualizing them behind my eyes, and it's awesome. (Strangely, all the robots look rather like The One Electronic from Rice Boy, which, incidentally, is also a fantastic webcomic-thing.) I can't decide whether I would like it if it were made into a film, or whether I prefer it as only an audible story. What interests me about receiving a story purely in song is that music is extremely effective in helping to conjure visuals. You can see the setting with barely any words, sometimes, based on the contour given by the instruments.

Guess basically what I am trying to say is that this is a Pretty Cool Band with a couple of Pretty Cool Albums and some Pretty Cool Stories and I hope they make more.

...

I went home for the weekend; got back Sunday night. Refilled some medicine prescriptions, got my eyes checked. So I got new glasses! I have always liked getting new glasses; there's just something refreshing about it, and the fact that it only happens every few years makes it a novelty. These are kind of a new style for me; they make my face look different. Maybe it's just more obvious to me because I'm used to seeing my face, but..it's interesting. Whenever I get new glasses, mirrors become distracting for a few days. I just can't help staring at the new thing. I guess it's a good thing I'm not planning on getting any drastic haircuts or strange facial piercings, or I would startle myself every time I'm in the bathroom.

But mainly I went home to see my cat. God I missed her so much.

...

Ughhhh it is almost five in the morning ughhhh I am such an idiot ughhhh I have so much work to do tomorrow ughhhh okay goodnight.

Olivia

PS. Oh, last weekend I finally (finally ughhhh) got through The Last Airbender. Only took me what, three months? The verdict is here, if you want. Next movie I talk about will be an enjoyable one, I think. I just got around to reading the first volume of Scott Pilgrim, so maybe that'll be it.

Old shit.

Periodically I look back at myself and cringe. I'm skimming my old Livejournal account for kicks, and holy fuck I was so obnoxious four years ago. I talked like any other kid on the internet, minus the chatspeak abbreviations. So fucking annoying.

Some things, like the insistence that art will only ever be a hobby, have changed. And then there are some things that have stayed constant, which I find interesting. Here is an entry from about two and a half years ago.

...

[

The things that bother me, all my problems and worries, seem so trivial and immature when I think them through and write them down. Here they come, in no particular order. Close your eyes.

I don't want to have a purpose in life. I don't want to know what I want to be when I grow up. I don't want to grow up, period. Can you see me being an adult? I can't.

I no longer love to write, because I can't seem to put anything onto paper that's worthwhile in any way. I don't think I've written anything considered good since fifth grade.

Art is only my hobby, and will never be a profession. But it's the only thing I want to focus on, ever. An hour not spent at my little table in the corner sculpting or painting is an hour wasted. It seems to be the only thing that ever makes me happy at the moment.

I don't want to go to college, but it will be embarrassing if I don't. This is probably just my stubborn mind being resistant, but as it is, I just don't want to go.

I've found the college version of CTY, and it's amazing, and it will do absolutely nothing for my future.

Although it doesn't show on the outside, I've been thinking some very violent thoughts lately, and it's unnerving.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I honestly don't think anyone cares about me, not even my best friend. Don't you dare call that emo, because my head will probably implode.

I really don't like when people say I'm good at something, because all I see is hopeless, endless mediocrity. This is the obsessive compulsive perfectionist coming out in me, and I hate her, but she won't stop.

I am wholly uninteresting. And my GPA sucks. So why would a college accept me anyways?

I can't lose weight, and I want to scream whenever anyone talks about it. Especially if it's my mother, or my doctor.

When I get my third term report card (should be any day now), I will have to sit through a very familiar lecture. Or perhaps several.

I blame Barney for making me feel like I was unique way back then. Stupid Barney. I want to kick him.

I don't know why you guys are my friends. Why do you like me? I'm really not that great.

I hate allergies. I've been sneezing all week, and I can't get another pet. I miss my rabbits like hell, and it's almost been a year now.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't atheist, so I could have someone to blame. But most of the times, I'm glad I don't believe in a god; nobody's there to witness my emotions, unless I choose to let them out.

If anyone tells me to go to an adult with my problems, I will break something. Telling an adult will do nothing; it might make my life worse. I'm not depressed, nor am I suicidal. I'm just angry at life. I'll probably stop being angry in a couple of days, or at least stop acting like I'm angry.

I don't even know why I'm telling you guys all this. You probably think I'm nuts.

And gods damn it, I just put my red paintbrush into my blue paint.

Well, how was /that/ for catharsis?

In good news, I just burned up several perfectly good studying hours making a lump of clay look like a pie. I'm out of red paint, I've ruined a couple of my paintbrushes, and I'll probably fail my driver's ed final exam tomorrow (which I should have taken back in February), but hey! It looks like a /pie/!

Hahah, grammar sucks at eleven thirty.

]

...

Hm I wrote this a couple days ago and now it is Thursday. I guess I'll post it anyways. I'm really bad with that; I write so many posts and forget about them or don't feel like posting them anymore.

I don't even know.

Olivia

Pretty mediocre day, but I have come out of it pretty happy. Sometimes late night makes a good day horrible, and sometimes it makes everything better.

Why don't I ever want to sleep? Lately at least. I find myself sitting around wide-eyed and half-delirious and I just don't want to go to bed but I know I should because I don't want to get up late the next morning but there is just so much pointless shit with which to waste my time but I'm not even doing pointless shit, I'm just sitting around thinking about doing pointless shit. Last night I was reading a book and then I put it down to get some water and when I came back I just couldn't pick up the book again. I sat there staring at it for ten minutes, trying to decide whether or not I wanted to keep reading it. This was at maybe four in the morning.

What do I have against sleep?

Tomorrow I am going to GO OUTSIDE like a NORMAL PERSON.

I have a problem.

My problem is that I rarely go out alone. I emerge from my bedroom for food and supplies and classes, and that's it unless I have someone to give me purpose. My weekends drag on and on and I spend the whole time loitering inside on the computer, working and killing time and trying to convince myself to go do something instead of wasting my life away in front of a screen or in bed. I can't even talk myself into heading over to work in the labs most of the time. Why should I go anywhere ever again when I can operate from inside my safe zone?

Eventually all my books will be reread, all my movies rewatched, all my homework finished and touched up, and I'll just be sitting here not even able to draw because I am wholly uninspired and for someone who is trying to enter a creative field, I'm just not that goddamned creative. I think I've lost it. I think I lost it at least a year ago. I can't make anything I like anymore. All I can make are faces and sandwiches and stupid blog posts. I can hope that something will inspire me to actually do something, but lately I have been inflicted with a strange hopeless lethargy, and at the same time I chastise myself for flopping like this again. It's starting to fall into a pattern. And it really shouldn't, because like I've said before, how fucking young am I going through these crises? I really shouldn't be. It's ridiculous; it doesn't make any sense. I'm being stupid.

So then I reach out to the few people I can contact without feeling awkward, because they may be just about as socially impaired as I am making myself out to be. (One of them has agoraphobia. Fuck, that's kind of a big problem.) We help each other by forcing ourselves to emerge onto the outside world, and things are good until we part ways for the day. I realize that it is very difficult for me to be with almost anybody without feeling like a fat loser by comparison, or second-guessing everything I say or do as not up to par with my companions. (Not to say that the people around whom I am comfortable are losers, just that..I'm not sure. Maybe that they are more..reachable? I am not sure. And there are people I like to be around, but who unintentionally make me feel insignificant and boring.) I think I have managed to convince myself that everybody is too good for me; whether or not it is true, I cannot say.



You know what I need? I need to stop talking to myself, because when I talk to myself I just end up beating myself up about something or other, and that is kind of a jerkish move. It just makes things worse.

My problem is that I think too much.

I'm an idiot. Fuck.

NYCC and also I am sick so I'll bitch about that for a while.

So I attended NYCC over the weekend and now I am sick out of my mind.

It was pretty cool though. First real con I've ever been to, I guess; MoCCA is really small. I went with a friend and her friend on Saturday, and friend's-friend ended up giving me her weekend pass so I could go on Sunday as well, with a different friend, because different-friend waited way too long to get a ticket for Saturday, and friend's-friend is a bumpkin who cannot survive more than a day in the city, all walking around and being jostled and standing near people who are smoking. Oh Long Islanders.

Things about MSPA. We found a good amount of people cosplaying as trolls, which was amusing. Hung out with them for a while. Talked to Hussie. Got pictures drawn by Hussie. Bought a book from Hussie. Gave a little troll-sculpt to Hussie. Also got several un-Hussie-related prints, and a cold.

Sunday-friend and I spent most of our time looking for The Internet. Webcomics people are pretty cool I think.

I have decided that steampunk is the coolest weird-geek-fashion. If I were someone who was not me, I would be a steampunk. (That did not make sense, but it did in my head.)

On Saturday was dragged through NYAF as well, or at least the artist alley. It is astounding, the difference in average quality of work between the comic-con artists and the anime..people. I mean some of them were good or decent but a good number of them were just..not so much. Also on Saturday I learned way more about Hetalia than I ever needed to know. Although it's still very difficult for me to discern between some of the different countries, because for some reason they are all blond.



I hate when my sinuses get this way. I cannot breathe lying down, so I guess I'll sleep sitting up tonight. And when I swallow, my ears pop. Why does everything on the face have to be connected, whyyyy. And my head hurts like fuck but Advil isn't working and Sudafed isn't working and UGH WHAT USE ARE DRUGS IF THEY DON'T WORK ah well. And this whole thing was written in a daze so it's probably kind of strange and I just can't tell because my eyes feel like they're glued open.

Uh.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Now that I think about it, the only real problem I've ever had with a dude friend getting a girlfriend is that I feel like I am not allowed to talk to him anymore, at least not like I could before.  I guess this is kind of silly, especially since it's not like I..well I don't know what I was going to say but it shouldn't be an issue..but it has been an issue.

...

Sometimes I think I start mourning friendships before they end.  It's wrong to feel so jaded; I'm only fucking eighteen years old.  Stop thinking about these things; you do not know the world, you only know what you have fucked up so far, and hopefully you have learned from them enough to not keep fucking things up.  But god, now I'm just treading as lightly as possible and hoping that my past is not my future.  I just want people to be able to tolerate me and be nice sometimes and not find me overbearing and ughhhh I don't even know.  I guess I want to be liked.  That would be pretty cool.  I am too insecure to genuinely think that people like me, most of the time.  Why is that.

...

I have been better today, emotionally.  It was actually pretty good.  The key to my contentment, it seems, is solitude.  Do not talk to anyone and you will be fine.  This is pretty amusing, actually, considering most of my issues from last night were centered around loneliness.  Obviously, I can't make up my mind.

...

TL;DR Olivia is having emotional theatrics.  She will be okay.  She should just shut up and grow a pair and be happy with her fucking awesome life.

Now that I think about it, or have been thinking about it most of the evening anyways, I rather like living in my own head. Screaming at myself while I calmly go about my business. It is the easiest way to live, I think.

I apologize. This is the third entry today; I should have just kept them all in one. But it is easier for me to think about things.

I go through these stages like clockwork. I wonder if there is something wrong with me. I melt down for a few hours and then I am blank, good as new. I wonder if there is something wrong with me.

If there is, I am doing it to myself. It's okay.