Monday, May 19, 2014

Journal Reflection: No More Fucks to Give

I just realized I never actually reflected on the journal entries I did, even though I'm going to be required to do so for my English final (all I can say is screw the 600 word limit). I still need to go over what my writing strengths and weaknesses were, my improvements, probable and current. I've decided to do it here because I think this is the best place/format for it, not simply on Google docs where it would metaphorically gather dust forever.

My ten journal entries are far more than what I expected them to be. I expected to just write an entry every day and bullshit the whole thing, simple, right? Well, I went above and beyond even what I expected from myself. I didn't write just a handful of journal entries, I didn't just write a bunch of things I had to write for an assignment. I really let myself go with this menial project. I truly upheld the first rule of writing, by William Forrester (Sean Connery). "The first key to writing is to write, not to think. You write your first draft with your heart, and you rewrite with your head." That I did, Mr. Forrester, That I did. Each time I wrote, I imagined the primary emotion of the whole day building up inside me to the point where I had no choice but to let it out, and I did so via the keyboard below my fingertips.


Each one of my journal entries is it's own chapter in a story I write about the two weeks of my own personal metamorphosis, my discovery of my own personal identity. I would've found it eventually, but this assignment really did speed up the process. When I started this assignment, I was stressed as fuck. My depression was hitting me head on, and I found no way to escape. By the middle of the whole thing, I felt ready to kill myself, I felt ready to die. Finally, at the peak of all that, it was as if my body would shut down, each individual cell simultaneously, and in a way, yes, I died.

My final blog post detailed my emergence as a new man. The post about my love life sucking was in the aftermath of my death. The old me died when I ceased to care about school. Stress suddenly found itself unable to afflict me. I was untouched by my paranoia, which without the ability to feed off my stress, slowly decayed. I felt refreshed, I felt anew, I feel confident now. My productivity has almost hit rock bottom, but my self-esteem has skyrocketed. I wrote about my shitty love life because that was the only thing, the only thing, that ever serves to stress me out. I no longer care for the schoolwork, it can't make me nervous, but my crush can, even when I but see her from an entire hallway away. I didn't know then that my love life was the only sorrow I could write about, as the others I was freed from the burden of.

My technique for writing, the one thing I have done to augment the quality of these posts, was not to think, but to feel. I've always bashed emotion, saying it's merely a distraction, but it's so much more. Emotion is my tool, how I write, I don't revise any of these. Everything you see here, if I don't disagree with it in the mere ten seconds I spend on it, it stays. Everything here is what I feel. Ironically, my greatest strength in writing can also serve as my greatest weakness. As I said, emotions are a distraction. Think of the new BBC Sherlock TV show. They were great in the beginning, Moffat really pulled through, but not anymore. My mom described the new series as "good, but they're kinda drunk on their own fame"

I carry the same flaw. My weakness is when I write to outdo myself. Whenever I write, I have to remember to write. I can't think, I can't try and be better than everything I've done, I have to do what I can, and just that. My sin is pride, but hey, I'm actually a fan of all seven.

My current state, my new regeneration, was an accelerated result of the fires I was subjected to. I have become in one year what I would've become in several. I am carefree, unburdened. Whatever I do in school I'm never forced to do, everything I do is of my own accord. If I want to do it, I'll do it. If not, then I won't. The days of my life, in the most stressful time of this year, have been so uplifting, I have discovered inner peace, my own inner peace, and nobody can take me down. Even if my crush were to actively reject me, I would still walk away empowered, knowing that despite my failure, I at least took the initiative and conquered what I've always feared, what I've never been able to cease caring about (speaking of, I'm debating whether to utilize my new-found confidence to say her name right now, as I do know she reads these, and let her put two and two together. What the hell, it's hidden).

I do remember that night, that night of the blog post where I'd gone to bed having enough. I didn't want to live, I wanted to die, despite my own personal disfavor towards ending my own life. I could only sleep. I woke the next morning, not wanting to check my phone for the daily scoop on the front page of Reddit, not wanting to get up, not wanting to even listen to music. All I wanted to do was lie there and stay there. I stayed there, all right, and I realized how much I didn't care. I was in the present, and I wouldn't take any more shit from anyone. I now exist having run out of fucks to give. At any moment I could fly. I live in the present now, I am truly free.



Word count (because it's somehow required): 1026, because as I said, screw the limit

Monday, May 5, 2014

Fear of Judgement: the Phobia of being told you Suck

Of all the things we are afraid of, one of the main things we find ourselves afraid of is other people, more so than any supernatural object that haunts our imaginations. We all find our breathing increase when you get up and present to a group, when you show your friend something new, and especially when you act like yourself, for then you are presenting your liked image to the world, and fear criticism.

I regard criticism as a good thing, something to help me perfect my technique and/or methods, but it still enervates me, as it does most everyone else, just another one of my many personal conflicts between emotion and reason (I know nothing can go wrong, but my body will react as if everything will, which sucks because I know nothing will go wrong but it might and therefore I worry against the will of my own logic). We aren't afraid of the criticism, criticism can be good or bad, depending on how it's worded. As I said just now, I enjoy criticism as it provides me with a direction to go (I also enjoy feedback, especially on my blog posts, because I rarely ever get proper feedback on them in the comments. Hint hint, everyone). That being said, I like hearing other people's opinions on my work because I know how to work on it further. I'm not afraid of being told how my stuff is, but then again, that's not what anyone is really afraid of. What we are really afraid of is being told that we suck.

Imagine this: You work on something for over a month, you invest all your time into imbuing detail into it and making it as perfect as you can imagine. Finally you take it and show it to your friends and ask them what they think, and they all tell you that it sucks. Pretty heartbreaking, ain't it?

That's what you're afraid of. You're afraid of being put down for other people for what you've done. You have an urge to be accepted. I know, I do too. Ever shown your friend funny pictures from your phone? You want to show them the humor you think they might like in order to get them to accept you. You even show them random things you like in order to evaluate them and see what they like. You have the urge to be accepted. Why else would you want to stand out? Why else are you nervous around people rather than being yourself? Because you're afraid they won't accept you, that they'll reject you.

That's why you're afraid of being yourself, of talking to people, of showing your stuff, it's because you fear rejection, we all do, some less than others. You fear going up on stage because people might not like you, you fear asking your crush out because (not to be repetitive) she'll reject you. You fear being shot down. I don't blame you, I do, too, it's only natural.

My mother wants me to delete this blog and to instead write everything under a fake name. Why? Because colleges may not like me and thus reject me. She continues to push this opinion onto me, despite the fact that I've made it clear I don't care. I'm repeatedly told I'll get hate for my opinions, posted publicly onto the internet, but if I get hated on, fine, I don't give a fuck. Even if a college refuses me for something I write, I won't feel bad about it so long as you tell me why (yes, I'm talking to you, future college background-checkers)

Instead of simply hating me, tell me why. If you hate me, I want to know exactly what I'm doing wrong, I want feedback. I'm okay with being told that my writing sucks, so long as you provide a decent rationale for why it does, so that I might be able to perfect it in the future, I'm okay with it. What I don't want you to do, what I don't want anyone to do, is to hate my work and remain silent. Critique me, critique everyone. We all want to know how we do, so tell your friends how they can do what they do better (not to the point of being pretentious, but you get the idea).

I want feedback, and from now on, I ask you this: if you read my blog posts, critique them. As I've said, I don't want to be here simply lecturing to you, the comments section is your battleground. Tell me what the hell you think of this! I hate silence from you guys, the crushing silence that ensues when you +1 this entry and nothing else. No feedback, whatsoever, I never know what you think, and thus I never get to know what kind of person you are, on top of everything. So please, if nothing else, even if you hate me (which you probably don't but there's someone who does, most likely), tell me what you think!