heretherebefandom:

Hello?  Hello, yes.  This thing working?  Alright then, good, good.  Okay.  So.

I need you to pay very close attention.  Yes, you.  Reading this right now on your laptop or your tablet or your multi-dimensional interface pad.  Have those come out yet?  Right, sorry.  Yes.  Very, very close attention.  Because something big is happening.  Right now.  And you’re a part of it.

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may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.
Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die—
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

The thing is, I’m very fickle about what I should use it for. And nobody cares anyway, because why would they? I wouldn’t if I was someone else. 

Anyway, I decided that on Valenine’s Day, I would make a resolution to do something for a month. It had nothing to do with it being Valentine’s Day, it was just that I watched a TED video on positive thinking and I was reminded about the whole “it takes 3 weeks to establish a habit” thing. 

So every day I’ve been writing down three things that I’m grateful for. I also decided that I wouldn’t lie for a month, but it turns out I don’t typically tell lies anyway…

So the ultimate goal is to think more positively and make myself a happier person~

I guess I’ll start posting those here, as my current blog description is “things that inspire me.”

2/14
1. My parents, who I can turn to for advice and help
2. Unexpected free time
3. Carly and Aurora, who regularly think of me and make me feel loved

Actually, I’m just going to start posting from tomorrow. This will be way too long if I include everything.

lettersandlight:

Fast Company magazine has been running an intriguing series called Starred, where they showcase innocuous emails that went on to do surprisingly big things. It inspired me to dig through my old Yahoo! account and see if I could find the email I sent out to my friends in 1999 inviting them to take part in a ridiculous book-writing endeavor I’d hatched the night before. Here’s that email, in all of its exuberantly imperfect glory.

From: Chris Baty
To: friendlist
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 1999 8:51 PM
Subject: national novel month

Hear ye! Hear ye! Come one, come all, and dust off those word-processing devices!

Under the motto “A lousy novel is better than no novel at all,” I have declared July National Novel-Writing Month.

To celebrate, I want to write a novel. In a month. And I want you to write one too.

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lettersandlight:

Every year, we have some young Wrimos who not only write their novels in November, but are preparing to take the leap into a new phase of their lives: university! We were lucky enough to have lightonwings share her college application essay with us:

Success doesn’t come easily.  I have learned this lesson every November for the past three years.  November is National Novel Writing Month, a donation-funded literary challenge that entices thousands of people to write fifty thousand words in thirty days.  Since my freshman year, I have balanced thirty-day “noveling” with schoolwork and extracurriculars and succeeded every time, but never without an intense amount of struggle.

The big point, for me, of National Novel Writing Month is that success only comes if I drag close to two thousand words from my fingertips every day for thirty days. While the novel is new and fresh, this is a treat, but the middle of every novel is pure drudgery.  Plot holes become apparent.  Characters seem trite and irritating. Plenty of days, stuck in the middle, my inspiration was nonexistent and writing was torture.  But because I wanted a finished novel, I kept pushing, learning the huge lesson of November; if I continue to pursue, I will eventually succeed.  

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So, I’m going to be spending next semester in IC’s brand new New York City program. There are good things and bad things about this. 

First, the good. 6 credits of the program is an internship, which I’m looking forward to even though I’m still searching for one. It’ll be a new experience to live in a city, and hopefully living there cures my broken navigation sensors. The winter won’t be as bad as Winter in Ithaca, which is a blessing in itself. I have relatives in New York, though I don’t know how much I’ll actually see them while I’m there. That’s up to me, I suppose.

I live by the philosophy of tearing myself away from anything that makes me too complacent. I chose to go from Laguna Beach to Ithaca partially for that reason, to force myself to grow up and overcome my weaknesses. And I have, to a large extent. But I’m getting complacent again, so I need to go on a new journey. I believe that when you stretch yourself out beyond your comfort levels, you’re more competent when you return to wherever you were before. 

There are bad things about the program too, of course. Leaving Ithaca means leaving friends, a paying job, a secure apartment, my volunteer position as a a Peer Career Advisor, computer science classes, and other interesting courses I would have liked to take. It means going to a city in a program where (as of yet) I don’t know any of the other participants, where I have to find an apartment and an internship somewhere in NYC, and likely without a paying job.

It seems lonely, but I’m trying to look at the positive. If you are okay with being alone for a while, then you’re stronger as a person. And of course, I don’t intend to stay alone. I don’t know how to move to a new place where I don’t know anyone and make friends, to feel completely at ease in a sea of strangers. I’ll learn, which is of course the whole point of doing this. 

And it will be nice to get a break from the full-credit semesters.