Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Ruminations on Life

Hey, it's me again, and I'm still alive. My family just moved to a new house and so I needed to take a blogging break. In fact, I think my blogging is going to drop off from three times a week to two times a month now that I'm prepping for the new school year and everything.

What a school year it will be too! I have a 19 credit load, swim team (2 hr practices everyday with 16 swim meets), a national reading conference to prep for, a potential TED talk, and I need to work on some personal projects too. I am very scared. Oh yeah, I might also have to be the manager of Bison With Attitude again.

Oh and my personal projects: a theology paper that I want to publish in a theology journal, my stuttering in ASL project with my professor, a potential music album, and my novels/stories. The TED talk and NRA conference were completely voluntary so I'll need to find time for those too. I am going to kill myself fosho.

It's very scary, but it's also very amazing too. I often wonder what life would be like if I hadn't made the choices I did. What if I had taken the road not taken? What if I had gone to Kenyon, where my favorite author John Green went to school? I would have a great English degree, but no education degree and I would be drowning in debt. Graduate school would be an impossibility. Now, I'm making plans to get into one of the best graduate programs for Creative Writing in the country. I have opportunities that I would never have had at Kenyon, and I live in Washington DC, one of the coolest places on Earth. I also have my sights set on a fellowship the Kenyon Review offers. That way, I would be able to teach at Kenyon, which makes up for the loss of my awesome English degree (sort of). I'm thankful for the opportunities Gallaudet has given me. I would never have been able to participate in a TED talk or do a project with my professor on stuttering in ASL.

The "what ifs" always catch up to me though. I could have become a doctor, and I would have never had to worry about paying the bills, and I would have time for writing. What if I took the road not taken? I want to do so much, but there's never enough time. I have to do what I choose to do or I'll waste my life reflecting and worrying whether the decision I made was the right one. I have to make it the right decision though.

That's the part I hate about life sometimes: how it's limited. I'm jealous of people that know that what they're doing is what they were meant to do. Stephen King says that he is meant to write his horror stories, but sometimes I'm not so sure if I'm meant to write my people stories. I stick with it though, and I hope I'm making the right decision.

I know I'm meant to mean something though. Someday, I want to be famous, but I'm just not sure what I'll be famous for, and whether I'll ever be famous enough.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Bookwormy Wednesdays: High Fantasy

Sorry for the Thursday blog post. :-( I forgot to blog on Wednesday, but hey! At least I remembered. ;-)

Anyways...Let me say that I was never a big fan of High Fantasy until I read "A Song of Ice and Fire". I always though Lord of the Rings stuff was kind of boring. I couldn't care less about Frodo and Modor.

However, I read the first two books of "A Song of Ice and Fire" in my GSR 240 class and I fell in love with it. George R.R. Martin has such talent, and it really took him a lot of time and effort to give us this series.

First of all, there's about...900 something characters in his books. That is insane. Could you create 900 characters and stick to you story well? My office/dorm room would be covered with post-it notes!

I think creating such an immense amount of characters made Martin exceptionally good at character development. I can identify each narrator's voice within a paragraph.

Also, his descriptions are great, but I have to warn you that it is kind of dense. If you don't read carefully, you miss out on important details.

Whatever. Read the books yourself and you'll see why I'm praising them. Sorry if I seem kind of distracted. I want to be working on my music album. Yes, you heard that right. I'm working on an album. :-) I'm trying to think of an artist name sort of like "Owl City" or something...Right now, all I've got is "Autumn Fall." Right now, I'm working on a song about Alzheimer's disease called "Nothing to Remember" and I think it's going to be great. Sad, but great. :-) Can't wait to share with everyone!