Stress

Let's face it, this post has been a long time coming.  We all knew this was coming, and now you people who actually read my blog can rest at ease because it's true, I'm stressed and I'm going to be writing about it.

After the end of the Disney College Program, I found my way back to my hometown, which means that I'm living with my parents.  This doesn't feel like it should be a really big deal, but with my brother returning to university, I'm (for all intents and purposes) an only child.  I mean this in the sense that my parents' attentions, concerns, aggression is all concentrated on me.  I've only begun to realize this now.

(BRIANNA sets about packing up a bag with her laptop and other things.  DAD comes down the stairs, just woken up.)

DAD:  Where are you going?

BRIANNA: The library.

I understand that it's a parent's job to know where their child is, and I understand that they're really just looking out for me and worrying because that's all part of their job description, but I've never given them reason to worry about me, and it really shouldn't matter where I'm going because it's broad daylight, I'm a responsible pseudo-adult, and I don't have any bad influence friends to meet up with.

That's another stress that I have.  Once again I've sunk into the feeling that if I contact the friends who are nearby, I'll be bothering them.  Only a couple of my friends have steady work right now, so I really shouldn't be worrying about this as much as I am, but there it is.  I need to see people every now and again though, because otherwise I get lethargic and sink into a funk.  Which I've been on the verge of doing multiple times right up until I go to the library for some sort of human interaction with the lady who checks out the movies I'm torturing myself with.

Because there it is, the broken heart that I'm nursing.  And the cliche of saying it makes me weep more than the actual thing, so I've been telling people that the reason I'm so cold all the time is because my soul is made of ice and I don't have a heart anymore.  Because frankly, that's what it feels like.  I'm quick to cry, and I sit there remembering good times on loop.  I feel like the epitome of a romantic comedy heroine who's stuck in the misery montage with no hope of pulling myself out.  So basically, I feel not a little bit pathetic.  Through some terrible coincidence, I keep pulling romantic films off the shelves at the libraries and insisting that they'll make me feel better...and they don't really.  Which shouldn't surprise me, really.  I'm just at a loss there because no matter what I do, it hurts.  Everything hurts.  Doing things, not doing things, listening to music, skipping the familiar songs, writing horrible break-up poetry, avoiding writing poetry at all, reading, watching movies, talking, not talking.  Everything hurts, and it feels like my insides are frozen and my outsides are burning up.  Like my skin'll just turn into steam and escape through the roof and the rest of me'll just freeze and connect with concrete.  I have no idea what to do to fix this.

Oh, and money.

(BRIANNA comes back through the back door, bright and excited from a lunch with a friend.  MOM is playing a Facebook game on the computer.)

BRIANNA:  So my friend and I are planning to go on adventures in the city and maybe take some day trips out of town--

MOM:  Brianna, I'm not going to fund your fun.  I can't.

BRIANNA:  I--what?

MOM:  I can't fund your day trips and your fun.

Once again.  I understand this.  I have no job.  I should be looking for a job.  Preferably one that will pay me money.  With that money, I can have fun.  But at the same time, I need to have fun and see my friends in order to remain sane or run the risk of becoming a hermit.  That's ignoring the fact that hermits can have friends.

Well, if I were a hermit and friends with The Doctor, things would be different.  Point being, if I don't leave the house and have human interaction, I feel less human, more stressed.

And then I'm looking for a job.  I don't even know where to start, so I'm making it up as I go.  I keep forgetting that I'm supposed to call to follow-up and make sure that places got my resume after all, and I constantly lose track of where I applied anyway no matter how many lists I keep.  I'm looking at positions in libraries, small publishing houses, and universities, anything that I might be vaguely interested in.  Once it starts warming up, I'm planning on knocking on doors all up and down the streets where the small businesses live nearby my home, but I'm really hoping that it doesn't come down to that.  And all I want to do is write.

What it all boils down to is: I'M STRESSED!  Living with my parents is a weird dance thing that I have to do so everyone retains some semblance of happiness, I have no friends, busy friends, or friends I'm afraid to bother, I'm looking for a job, dealing with a broken heart (or lack of a heart), and wanting to write.  And there it is.  So now I've spent 20 some odd minutes writing this post instead of searching for a job while I've been at the library, but you know...it kinda helped in a weird way?  Happy Tuesday!

"To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time."

- Leonard Bernstein

Challenge Day 3

I'm doing such an incredible job keeping up with my daily writing challenge, that I figured I should just keep plowing on.  The whole concept of a "daily" writing challenge is really just an exercise to get me to keep writing, right?  The fact that I'm writing a poem a day is irrelevant.  Basically, I really want to get back into writing fiction, but right now...all my fiction is kinda centered on certain life changes that have recently come to pass.  Moving home, for example.  Being newly single again, for another.  I wouldn't say that I'm poisoned or anything, just that I'm kinda extremely focused on these things.  You wouldn't believe how boring the poems about the same thing over and over get.  Okay, maybe you can, especially since these blog post tend to be the same thing over and over again.  I apologize for nothing, I'm just having a hell of a good time.  So here we have Day 3: A story that takes place pre-1950.

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Once upon a time long before the advent of time-keeping devices or the creatures that deemed them necessary, there lived a dinosaur.  This dinosaur was the kind that only consumed greens and things that grew out of the ground rather than the kind that ate other dinosaurs.  This dinosaur's name was Gilbert, and he liked to think that he was a kindly sort, never starting arguments with other dinosaurs and never eating more than his daily allotment of grasses and berries.  (Though this was a timeless land, it was not a land without government.)

Gilbert was happy enough, he wandered the land, visiting with his friends when he stumbled upon them and sidling past the carnivores in the neighborhood when they looked a little peckish.

On a day that dawned like any other, Gilbert woke up in his dinosaur bed and scratched his dinosaur head, stretching and yawning before pulling himself out of bed and heading out in search of breakfast.  There was a patch of grass that he had in mind for the morning's meal, and he had gone to bed thinking about it.

Though Gilbert's dreams had been filled with the emerald hues of this particular patch of grass, when he arrived at the patch, he found three elderly dinosaurs munching on it and gossiping.

"Oh, and I heard that her scales are actually surgically shined every season," one of them said through a mouthful of grass.

Another gasped and exclaimed, "No!  It couldn't be!" before squinting at the patch of grass and picking a particularly succulent bite.

"Oh yes, I heard it all from Gertrude.  You told me all about it, didn't you, Gertrude?" the first one said, nudging the third in the shoulder.  The third dinosaur either hadn't been listening or was hard of hearing so she squinted up her dinosaur face and said, "Whaaaat?"

Gilbert shook his dinosaur head and turned dinosaur tail to trudge in the opposite direction in search of breakfast.  He didn't go very far when he stumbled upon a beautiful bright yellow creature growing out of the ground.  She possessed the same brightness of the sun anchored to the ground by a green and leafy stem.  Needless to say, Gilbert was smitten the moment he saw her.

"I think I'm in love," he whispered to himself, checking in either direction to see if some other dinosaur was listening in to what he considered a soliloquy.  "She's so beautiful..."

The flower swayed in the wind, making little circles with her leaves, but said nothing.  Mostly because flowers aren't very talkative in the first place, but also because she hoped that if she stayed very still...the dinosaur that was looking at her so intently would lose interest and wouldn't eat her after all.

Gilbert sidled up to the flower, so close that his dinosaur breath set her to swaying again.

"Hello.  I don't mean to sound forward or anything, but I think you're beautiful, and I might be in love with you," Gilbert said, his dinosaur nerve managing to take him all the way through the proclamation without stuttering.

The flower said nothing.

"Heh, I mean...I'm sorry if this is awkward, but it'd be great if you could say something."

The flower remained silent.

Without encouragement, Gilbert shuffled his dinosaur feet and pursed his dinosaur lips.  "I...I mean, this doesn't really change anything.  I do think you're beautiful.  I do love you.  I'm just sorry you don't feel the same way.  I'm...just gonna go then..."  So Gilbert walked off, a little bit of his dinosaur pride chipped away, and feeling a little bit hungrier than before.

And the flower wept for what might have been.  A terribly Shakespearean love affair that she could never give voice to.

Challenge Day 2

Well, I started this post on January 2nd.  And then I realized that I should procrastinate as much as possible to prove how spectacularly bad I am at sticking to things.

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Here we go, the second day of my daily creative writing challenge!  I'm really excited for this month, actually, despite my anxieties about keeping up with it, but you know what?  It'll be alright.  Day 2: Write a fan fiction.  What's great about this is actually that I loathe fan fiction.  I went through a phase a while ago, probably around middle school, when I read Harry Potter fan fiction, all stories about the Marauders, specifically romance between James and Lily.  Because even back then I was a major sap.  I even wrote a story or two that were fan fiction in nature, and they were wretched, I can tell you that right now.  So here we go, here's a look at some of the worst seat-of-my-pants fan fiction I could be prevailed upon to write for today's challenge!

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The library was a quiet place, which was to be expected considering the number of vulture-like librarians staring down their long and hooked noses over the circulation desk at the tables lined up between the bookshelves.  No one would dare make a sound under the eyes of those creatures.  A young girl with golden blonde hair sat at one of the tables, running her hands through her curls and tugging at the locks.  She sat staring at a blank notebook and a Bic crystal pen lying next to it, uncapped.

When the TARDIS landed, it landed with a groaning whooshing noise characteristic to the police box, materializing bit by bit in the midst of the library's bookshelves.  The door faced one of the bookshelves, and when the occupant of the police box opened the door, he realized his error and scurried back inside to disappear and reappear once again.

"There now, that's better," the Doctor said as he flung open the door to the police box.  "Hello, good people!"

The Doctor, in his brown tweed, elbow patches, and maroon bow tie, was met by a disapproving "SH!" from the circulation desk as a line of hooked-nosed librarians looked up from their computer screens and scowled at him.  None of them approved of his volume, and only one approved of his manner of dress.  And somehow, he could just tell.

"What, bow ties are cool," the Doctor muttered, straightening the accessory as he mentioned it.  Shaking off the disapproving looks of the library vultures, the Doctor took a stroll out into the center of the room, following the aisles up and down between the tables and finally settling on the girl who seemed to be pulling her hair out.  He sidled up to her and placed his elbows on the table in front of her, propping his head up and blinking.  "Why the long face?"

Considering his entrance, the girl shouldn't have been as shocked as she was to see a strange looking man propping his head up on the table in front of her, and his appearance itself shouldn't have surprised her as much as it did, but as it goes with stories like these: the girl was shocked, and jumped half a foot out of her chair.

"Who are you?" she asked, green eyes blinking behind purple rimmed glasses.

"The Doctor, just The Doctor, of course, here to fix problems, and I'm not really quite sure what," the Doctor rattled off, swaying side to side and regarding the girl thoughtfully.  "And you are?"

"Oh, I'm just Anna," she said with a shrug, her fingers finally releasing her hair.  The Doctor could practically hear her scalp sigh with relief.

"And what seems to be the problem, 'Just Anna'?"

"Just plain old ordinary writer's block, as usual," Anna grumbled.  This seemed to be a constant problem for her, the writing and the failing to write, and the wanting to write, and the having writer's block problem.  And writer's block was an affliction for which there was no cure but time or copious amounts of alcohol, neither of which Anna had very much of or inclination to abuse.

"Ah.  Well, let's see then," the Doctor said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out his sonic screwdriver.  To Anna it just looked like a strange tool, and when he aimed it at her head and it made a strange buzzing noise, she wasn't quite certain how to react.

"What are you do--"

"Sh."

Anna obeyed, and when the Doctor ceased the buzzing sound and regarded the screwdriver thoughtfully, he screwed up his face in thought.

"You have a bad case of the nargles," he said, finally.

"The what?"

"Nargles.  You've read Harry Potter, right?  Well, Luna Lovegood had it right, nargles get into your head and make your thoughts all fuzzy.  They actually feed on good ideas, and so it feels like you don't have any ideas at all.  Makes it really difficult to pick out your clothes in the morning," the Doctor explained, nodding as he did.  He replaced the sonic screwdriver in his inner jacket pocket and began digging around in his other pockets for something.

"So what do I do about them?" Anna asked, alarmed that something like a fictional creature could be munching on her very real ideas.

"Here, eat this," the Doctor said, shoving a Hershey's bar into her frozen fingers.  "The sugars will deter them and they'll just fly out to get away from them."

Anna followed instructions without really thinking about them, biting off a bit of chocolate and swallowing before she thought to ask, "Fly out where?"

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment, Anna let out an explosive sneeze that caused all the librarians to look up at her and scowl, holding their fingers to their lips, "SHHHH!"  She looked apologetically up at them, but then her eyes widened and she grabbed her pen and started writing immediately.

"Thank you so much," she said, grinning at the Doctor as he flounced back to the TARDIS and pushed the door open.

"Any time you need a muse...just give me a call," he said, giving her a wink and setting off for another adventure.

Challenge Day 1

Here it is, the first day of 2013, and the first day of my daily writing challenge!  I'm super excited to see what comes from this, especially since I'll also be continuing my Poem-A-Day Project until further notice.  So here we go: Day 1: Re-write a classic fairy tale.  Unfortunately because I happen to be starting off this year with a little bit of scatter-brainedness, it's more going to be a collection of scraps of re-written classic fairy tales.  YAY!

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Belle sat alone on the floor in the castle's exquisite library, surrounded by a circle of open books, all of them untouched.  Instead, she had her laptop sitting on top of a short stack of books, and she was typing away on a review for Amazon's Kindle posted as "RosesThorn":

...coldly lit screens imitating the old pages that inspired them.  Their memory stores entire libraries within their sleek frame, but I am constantly drawn to paper.  It's so much more difficult to literarily eavesdrop when I'm looking over the shoulders of e-readers and every page looks alike.  There are no covers to judge on these books, which I guess is a good lesson for society to learn, but still.  How many phrases go by the wayside when books become endangered?  What happens to libraries?  Will they become museums?  I don't understand why someone would need to carry an entire library with them when they can only read one book at a time anyway.  Carrying actual books, and you can really alternate if you must.

She felt rather strongly about this.  Belle brought a finger to her chin, looking critically at that last sentence and shaking her head.

"Belle, that one's not going to work," she mumbled to herself, hitting the 'delete' key and starting over on that last sentence.

As she pondered what she could replace that last clunky sentence with, her Facebook flashed a notification. Belle navigated to the tab that held open Facebook and scrolled her feed to find the post.  It was from her father, tagging her.

So sick.  My only consolation is I got to see my Belle one last time.

Belle's eyes widened and she stifled a short sob.  Not only because of her father's sickness, but because of the sentence fragment.

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Rapunzel's favorite thing in the world was pizza.  Unfortunately, the tower in which she lived was not conducive to making pizza if only because the one time that she tried...her mother had not been very happy because it had gotten close to burning down the place.  That might have been due to the fact that she didn't own a pizza stone, but she wasn't really thinking.

So the only way she could possibly get her pizza fix was by ordering delivery.  Every single day.

"Yeah, it's me again.  I'm the one in the tower.  Can I get a Hawaiian pizza today?  And a new take-out menu, because the one I had fell out of the tower and it didn't really end well," Rapunzel said, chattering into her brand new smartphone, the one she got for Christmas.  "Absolutely bacon is okay, is that even a question?  You can send your usual delivery guy, he knows what to do.  Thanks!"

Rapunzel did a little dance around her tower, rejoicing in the imminent arrival of pizza.

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And that's all I've got right now aside from the idea of Snow White running a dwarf brothel which just might show up in a poem one day just because that idea amuses me.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” 

- Albert Einstein