Umhum

Damn, I miss this guy.

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Quote of the Month

"I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process."
Vincent van Gogh

Quote of the Month

"We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering -these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love -these are what we stay alive for."
Dead Poets Society

ALSO, AMERICA

I have decided that I am going to call Grand Rapids "G Rap" from now on.  Try to get me to use it in conversation!  It'll be so much fun!

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Hai?

HEY.  I haven't blogged here in So! FREAKING! LONG!  Wow.  Basically, I've been incredibly busy and stressed out in this way that tends to create a stress loop, which really sucks.  I spend a lot of time just being stressed and a lot of energy on freaking out, but I don't spend enough time actually doing the things that maybe have a chance at alleviating the stress.  So.  That's a thing.  Also, I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, spending a lot of time freaking out about that.  I'm pretty sure that industrial design isn't quite right for me, but now I'm questioning if any kind of design is what I want to be doing.  Do I actually want to design?  Do I love designing, or do I love design and designers?  Those are distinctly different things.

I saw james bond today.  There was a lot of shirtless daniel craig and for an old guy, he's really hot.

I'm probably going to get grades that are bad enough that they won't keep up my scholarship, which would suck.   I mean, it's not a huge scholarship or anything, but I would rather have it than not have it, you know?  I don't know if they give you a semester to raise your grades back up or what.

I'm going to die sad and alone.  Whatever.

For this summer, it looks like I'm going to try to get an internship, and if that doesn't work, I might go on this school trip to the dominican republic, or I might take a writing workshop at WMU and then also work at the library and make prints all the time and write all the time.  That doesn't seem like that bad of a situation to be in, even if it was after I'm done with school.  Working at the library and writing and making prints?  NOT BAD.  Or I could work at a coffeeshop (Sparrows) and become Rebecca Green.  Because surely, what made Rebecca Green awesome was working at Sparrows.*

I also have kind of plans to eat paleo/slow carb ish after christmas is over.  And maybe exercise (!?!?) or something.  I feel like I want to get in better shape.  So that's a thing.

*sarcasm.  Rebecca Green is awesome because she probably worked her ass off at making awesome art.

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Quote of the Month

"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”.
William Shakespeare

Quote of the Month

"The artist brings something into the world that didn’t exist before and he does it without destroying something else."
John Updike

yolo

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Avocados, Bare, and Kayaking

Summer is ending.  Ending, as in I have to go college tomorrow. That's really, really weird.  Literally two weeks ago, I was in the woods, being woodsy.  That's most of the reason for the lack of posts this summer.
Now, I'm going to write about all the things I did this summer and didn't write about while I was actually doing them.  YAY.
So, Camp.  I went there, and it was woodsy.  EXCEPT that we have logging happening on camp and our trees are getting cut down and it's REALLY SAD.  Everyone on staff this year was returning, except for Jumana, who was international (from Palestine!).  I feel like that made the dynamic a little different.  I don't want to say that this year was less fun than last year, it was just different.  There was less togetherness, it just felt like I was...just there, sometimes.
So I'm not sure if I'm as dead-set on going back next summer as I once was.
THE NOVEL, you ask?  It's still a thing, and I still like it.  There's just a whole lot of writing that I need to do, and not enough time to do it in.  I did a lot of work during the portion of summer when I was in Novi, but I didn't have a whole lot of time at camp.
AVOCADOS, you ask?  I ate a metric fuckton of avocados this summer, and it was a really enjoyable experience.  I strongly recommend it.  There are like four avocados in my fridge right now, and...I plan on EATING ALL OF THEM RIGHT THIS MINUTE.
BARE BARE BARE BARE BARE BARE BARE is a musical about gay boys who are acting in Romeo and Juliet and go to a Catholic boarding school.  ALL MY FAVOURITE THINGS IN ONE.  SRSLY.  YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO THIS BECAUSE IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.  Just a few of my favourite songs right hurr.

I just love love love how it's crazy and dramatic and I just have so many FEEELS BECAUSE DRAAAAAMAAAAAA.  Gaah.  I feel like bare just understands me so much.
So, KAYAKING.  This summer, I feel like I spent a lot more time kayaking or at least a lot more time explaining kayaking, which makes me feel like "woah, maybe this is a thing I'm good at or something." and yeah.  KAYAKING IS THE SHIZ.  All y'all should check out mah fifteen-seventeen post on kayaking right now.
UMMM.  Yeah.  So I should have like, goals, for like, this semester or something.  I want to blog a lot!  I want to meet a lot of people!  I want to do really well in school!  I want to find an internship!  YEAH!  LET'S DO ALL THIS STUFF AND MORE, GUYS!

I should probably stop making a fool of myself now.  Kthnxbai, love y'all.


EDIT: IRELAND
Here's the deal.  Ireland seems to be the shiz, and I think I want to move there.  If you are looking for someone super duper cool to hang out with you in Ireland, TELL ME YO.

That's all.

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Quote of the Month

"You’ve got one life; live it. Follow your dreams, quit your job, drop out of school, tell your boyfriend that he’s lousy, and walk out the door. This is your time. This is your life. You know what? Dream as big as you want to; it’s the cheapest thing you’ll ever do."
Jared Leto

Quote of the Month

"It’s the so-called “normal” guys who always let you down. Sickos never scare me. Least they’re committed."
Batman Returns

Quote of the Month

"Other bands, they want to make it about sex or pain, but you know, The Beatles, they had it all figured out, okay? “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The first single. Its effing brilliant, right? Thats what everybody wants, Nicky. They don't want a twenty-four hour hump sesh, they don’t want to be married to you for a hundred years. They just want to hold your hand"
Thom (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist)

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Wonderment.

Thing that I do not quite understand and have been thinking about: Charity events.  I'm not talking about super rich people and the events that they hold to raise money for whatever cause.  I don't try to understand rich people.  But charity things that regular people do, like Relay for Life, or Walk for the Whatever, what's the point of those?  Those events cost money to host, money that could be put towards the actual cause that the charity is trying to help.  Why not just have people donate money to your charity, and do more good?  I would guess that people donate more when they have their friends and family asking them to sponsor whatever event, which is a less than awesome view of the way people work.
I think I'm just bothered by people, deep down.
People...and myself.
Don't even get me started on Kony 2012.
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Passive-Agresssive Pantslessness

Or, in which I entirely alienate my only sibling.
My brother has a vendetta against pants.  As in, he spends a great deal of his waking hours in the absence of pants or a shirt, wearing only underwear.  This is irritating to me.  My response, first, was to ask him to wear more clothes.  After asking this a few times and garnering no response, I just took my pants off too.
And that's why I was sitting on the living room floor, playing Settlers of Catan, in my underwear.
The problem is, though, that I feel really self conscious when I'm not wearing pants.  When I have my legs turned at a certain angle, my hips look wider than normal and I have full view of the stretch marks that decorate the outside of my upper thighs.  It's terribly sexy.  Not that I'm trying to have sex appeal while I'm playing board games with my family, but it's nice to not be freaking out about my legs.
And my pantslessness makes no difference in my brother's pants status.
Pants status.  Pantstatus.  Pantstus.
I've been arguing with my brother more lately.  The newness of me being in Novi has worn off, and I've sided with my parents in the main conflict that they have.  He's making choices that I think he's going to regret later, and he doesn't like being told so.  I would want to stay detached, but at the same time, I care about him, and I worry.
I've been exercising more lately.  Not seeing any physical results yet, but I'm feeling stronger and I feel like I have more endurance, even if I can't run/swim any faster.  So that's a thing.  I hope that I'll be able to keep it up when I'm at camp and back in GR this summer.
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Let's talk about some issues

that I have with the whole entire universe.  Fun!

At two places on the freeway (one in Novi, I-96 Westbound, on a digital billboard, the other on US 131 Northbound, on the southern end of GR) there are billboards for Kentwood Office Furniture.  They say "Occupy this!" with a picture of an office chair between the words.
Alternately, GET A JOB, YA DAMN HIPPIES.
Needless to say it's offensive and unappealing.  I support the occupy movement, although I disagree with some of the ideas that they support, and I think the movement needs to present a more unified front.  Criticizing a movement isn't going to get you anywhere.

Secondly, TEDxGR.  Kumare.  This guy spoke at TEDxGR, and although I understand his message, I have a really hard time getting on board with it.  Basically, he acted like he was some sort of prophet, convinced a bunch of other people that he was a prophet (note: some people would call this "starting a cult") showed them how to find salvation, and told them that he was a fake so that they would realize that they had found salvation all on their own.
If I was involved in this, I would have a hard time trusting people afterwards.

Another speaker, Lz Granderson, got me thinking a lot.  His talk was about the gay agenda, and about how his gay agenda features drinking coffee in the morning and getting stuck in traffic on the way to work and going to bed at an insanely early old person time.  Teh gayz are just like you!  You should support gay marriage!
I support marriage equality.  However, I don't think that this is the right way to change minds.  Most people who actively oppose marriage equality aren't open to persuasion.   Two major huge factors in weather or not someone supports marriage equality are their age, and weather or not they know anyone personally who's gay.  If your next door neighbor is gay, and they're normal, then maybe teh gayz aren't so bad.  The majority of Americans support marriage equality, it's only a matter of time before things change, and giving a speech about the gay agenda isn't doing a whole lot to change that.

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Quote of the Month

"Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than they say about the stories and people we're quoting."
John Green

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Dix-Neuf

So I turned nineteen.  On Sunday.  It was a wild party.  I mean, it was fun.  I saw The Spring Standards in Ann Arbor, so that was pretty cool.  Nineteen looks like this.  Except that I was wearing the same dress I wore when I turned eighteen.

Eighteen looked like this.  And this and this and this.

I think these pictures show us a variety of things, like my sheer sex appeal, my tendency to wear bandanas, and my deep vanity.  Being eighteen was a lot of fun.  I went to college.  I passed drafting (GUYS, I PASSED DRAFTING) and made a million and a half squares out of cut paper.  I didn't finish NaNo.  I switched out of Furniture.  I saw the last half of the last Harry Potter movie.  I started a blog (Fifteen-Seventeen!) that I'm really proud of.  I drew a million cubes for Design Drawing.  I started a new (awesome) book.  I acquired a twitter addiction (follow me @froomla) and I got tweeted by...wait for it...@ThisAmerLife!  Let's not talk about how getting tweeted by Ira Glass is a high point of my year.

Thanks for coming along for the ride, guys.  It's been fun.

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SO.

I am at home!  Still!  And by home, I mean the library, which is my childhood home, where I once basked in the glory of books and 1960's architecture.  And then they let me do graffiti inside the building until I got crazy dizzy from all the fumes and they bulldozed the building.
It was a fun time.
I'm writing this book, you see, and I'm actually going to edit it and let other people read it and send it to agents for YEARS and try to get some publisher to read it and put it inside bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble.  So this book, unlike all the other things that I've written in my illustrious carrear, feels very big.  This one matters.  This isn't for fun.  I'm so unaccustomed to writing being an activity where there is pressure involved.  Writing is what you do when you need to get away from the pressure and tell stupid stories.  So.  Um.  Or maybe I'll self publish, and languish at the seven thousandth spot on the Kindle bestseller list.  I think that means that you have sold three books.  I'm not sure if I know three people who would want to buy my book.  I've never actually, like, purchased an ebook.  I don't know how that works.
AND THEN I found twenty dollars.

I need to practice some more industrial design drawing business.  BLAG.

I need to get back to work.

I'm working on the whole "Eating things that are good" thing with my family.  Because eating alone kind of freaks me out.

I need to send an email today.  Deep breaths.

I miss roommateboyfriend.

My birthday is four days away and I don't know what to do about it.  Nineteen feels very strange.  All I can think of is the epilogue, which barely even relates.  Any cool and funny things about being nineteen?  No?
I see.

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The problems I create

My semester is over.  I'm moving back to Novi soon.  Isn't that crazy?  I'm going to miss the DD a lot.  I was actually starting to like drafting, in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way.
A hobby of mine is creating internal conflict out of no where when my life is boring.  I'm fun like that!  Yay for never being okay with things the way they are!
If you follow me on twitter, you've probably heard that I'm switching my major to industrial design and considering a transfer to CCS, in Detroit.
Well, I am.
I'm not sure about it though.  I'm not sure how Kendall's industrial design program really is.  I'm not sure how CCS' industrial program really is.  I'm not sure if it matters that much, I'm not sure of anything, really.  I emailed some people about CCS.  I got a response, from one of them.  I have no idea how much CCS would cost, and I have no idea how much it would matter to me.  It seems like the whole idea of that school is a little more...driven? than Kendall?  I don't know.  If I did go there, I'm not sure if I'd live at home and commute, or live on campus, or find a place to live downtown.
I wish there was a foolproof way to know if you are going to like a school/if you like the one you are currently going to.  Because me and Kendall?  We have a case of love bipolar.  I mean, that's the dramatized, Katy Perry way of saying it, but It's true that my feelings about the school vary a lot.   
I realize that if I'm going to transfer, I need to get on it like three months ago.
Also, I have next to nothing in terms of a portfolio.  I have a few things from 3D that I might be able to use, and I have a couple drawings.  We're at the point of "Finding things that are portfolio-worthy" when I'd much rather be at the point of "Pick the five best things out of a huge body of portfolio-worthy work" AHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHG.
I am channeling all this uncertainty into excitement, I'm embracing it.  This is good.  I like this.  Right?  Right.
Also, did I tell you that I got into a car accident on Friday the 13th?  Funny, right?  I know!  Now my car is a little banged up and I might be getting it fixed at some point in the future.
I'm going to be going to a talk by Tom Kelley from IDEO.  It's at the Steelcase place, and it's going to be awesome.  IT WILL BE AWESOME AND I WILL BLOG ABOUT IT, DAMNIT!
I feel like my whole life should come with a sticker that says "Nothing if not mature."

That's college, folks.

I need to write a book.  And draw some more.  And clean up.

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Quote of the Month

"Life is just imaginary. It’s your dreams that are real."
Carmela Ocampo

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TUMBLR

I do not have a tumblr.  I do not have any plans to get a tumblr in the future.

*Watches the tragic loss of twitter follower after twitter follower*

I still love twitter though!

People have told me to get a tumblr.  Like a lot of people. I read some tumblrs, but that's the thing...tumblr isn't for reading.  Tumblr is for reblogging memes and pretty pictures.  It's not serious.  Not that I'm an incredibly serious blogger or anything, but I like to think that I do something more than reblogging Johnlock porn.  I'm changing the universe with mah blog here!

Although...Johnlock porn.

There's this plugin that I'm supposed to be using with sketchup and it's just not working at all.  Like, sketchup shows that it's there, and the tools are clickable, but when I click them, I am not actually using them.  And this is a problem.  The demo videos for the plugin use the older version of sketchup though, so manybe that's why this isn't working.  Still, urgh.  I don't like it when computers don't work.

I need to be more productive today.  Design drawing, here I come!  Tomorrow is drafting day.  I just want drafting to be over right now.  Yuck.

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ALSO,

I posted about Bodies of Art on Fifteen-Seventeen.  It's pretty legit.  And it's been getting a ton of traffic and making me very happy.
When I was trying to write it, I asked one of my friends about the best way to convey my message.  He told me to write a haiku.

using the body
forest floor is like artist
pretty fabric clothes

I feel so legit.

ALSO THEY GAVE ME A PRESS PASS AND I FELT LIKE I WAS VERY GROWN UP AND SIGNIFICANT AND NOT A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD WHO LIKES THE INTERWEBS AND ALSO THE TWITTER MACHINE.

Never not cool.

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HEY THERE.

Not dead, just busy. For realz.

I am spelling things that do not have the letter Z with that letter.  I am making poor choices.

My boss occasionally points out that I reference choices fairly often.  This is a habit from camp.  There are no bad kids, just kids who make bad choices.  This can be applied to a number of situations.  For instance, the skirt I wanted to wear today is not a bad skirt, it just made a bad choice to be not clean at the moment.

The skirt makes its own decisions.  Duh.

Tomorrow I'm going to be documenting/interviewing/blogging about my school's fashion show, Bodies of Art.  It will be awesome, hopefully.  And I found someone on the interwebs who was willing to let me interview them!  People don't hate me!  I don't come off as painfully awkward to everyone!  WOOOHOOO!  So that's the post that's going up after the Bodies of Art post on Fifteen-Seventeen.  Speaking of Fifteen-Seventeen, I got to talk to some people who I've had a giant internet crush on for YEARS and it was so.  Freaking.  Cool.  They were awesome.  Really.  I wrote about them.  I am reasonably pleased with the amount of success I've had with that blog so far.  I mean, I freak out about what I'm posting quite often, but no one's told me that they hate it, and people other than my mom have read it.  That's success, right there.

PARTY ON.

I'm in class, and I have to go to the bathroom again because I guzzled down two bottles of water in an hour.  That might not have been the best decision, but I was thirsty because it has been unreasonably and unseasonably hot for the past week.  Also, my roommateboyfriend made me go running yesterday, and now my legs, THEY ARE FEELING THE RUN.  Ouch.  I think I might go again tonight.  My running goals are something along the lines of "Do not die of inactivity when I am twenty-three." and not very much along the lines of "Run in the Olympics."

So that's what I've been up to.

Also, I have worn shorts/skirt/skirt this week.  CRAZY, BRO.  The people! They are seeing my legs!  I am scared.  Also, I need to get better at shaving.

I am embarrassing myself.  In a major way.  Let's put this on the internet and pretend it never happened.

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Ping-pong

I feel like I'm in a really odd state right now, going back and forth between moods.  One minute, I have an overwhelming feeling that I'm not good enough, that I'll never be good enough, and a lot of general anxiety about the universe.  The next, everything's wonderful and fantastic and amazing.
I'm not really satisfied with how I'm doing in school right now, but I'm at a loss as to how to improve that.    I know that I have a bunch of work that I need to redo in design drawing, and I need to study more for art history, but other than that?  I have a homework assignment every week in drafting, and it's more of a constant need to do better than any single identifiable action.  3D is actually going pretty well, despite a disastrous last project.  The foam models?  They kind of sucked, but I felt like they were really good while I was working on them.
I just want to be better.
But Fifteen-Seventeen!  It's wonderful and amazing and I'm incredibly excited about it! I'm writing a post for Monday about something that's really interesting and great.  If you follow me on twitter, you might have noticed it a little bit, here and there.  And then, my school has a fashion show coming up, so that should be a good time to generate some original content with interviews and stuff.  Yay for interviews!  I need to email some people, that reminds me.
I really hate email as a form of communication, if you were curious.  I think I dislike my school email more than my personal ones, just because it's less convenient to access.  Since Kendall is a part of Ferris State University,  we have to log into myfsu to access our email, even though they use gmail as an email client.  Their security won't let me connect it to my desktop and ipod email either, so I have to go out of my way to be notified about school stuff.  Yuck.
AND THE MAGAZINE.  It's awesome and exciting and yay.
I'm being happy, right?

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Quote of the Month

"The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life—and one is as good as the other."
Ernest Hemingway

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Floating

I'm feeling odd, uncomfortable, listless right now.  I don't like it very much.

I need to email both of my old art teachers, to ask them their opinions of what I should do.  I know it's what I need to do, and I know that talking to them would help me figure it out, but I can't quite figure out what to say.  I can't figure out what to say because deep down, I don't want to email them at all, I want to think about this on my own and feel trapped for days, rather than admitting that I did something wrong, made the wrong choice, and failed because of it.

I am not particularly sure that I want to go back to Kendall next year.  I don't know if this is just a situation of being scared of commitment to an institution, or if this is something bigger and more serious.  I feel like I'm hearing stories of how much my friends all LOVE COLLEGE SO MUCH and I'm kind of like "Eh.  I mean, I guess it's okay." and I don't know if that's just a feature of me being me, or if that's an issue of the college that I go to and the program that I'm in.  The whole reason I picked Kendall over some other school was the furniture program, but now I'm not sure about it.  This feels like the first weekend I was in GR, before classes started, before I really knew anyone at all.  I remember being overwhelmed by the feeling that I was doing something incredibly wrong.  This feels a little deeper, as though I'm going to keep on feeling like this unless I do something to change it.  And I am, doing something to change it, at least.  Fifteen-Seventeen is a new project of mine.  I finished up the first post for it today, after much wringing of hands about a suitable topic.  I need to write a next post, and a next one, and another one after that, but I have no idea how to generate original content.  I just want everything to be absolutely perfect, and I'm paralyzed by the need to make it so.  I feel as though I don't know what I'm doing at all.  I'm on spring break right now, back in Novi, and it feels like I know a reasonable amount about design, given that I'm surrounded by people who don't know much of anything about it.  When I'm at school, it feels more like I don't know anything and I'm not learning anything.  I don't like the feeling, that I'm not learning anything.  I know that I've gotten better at drawing, and that I know more about art history than I did at the beginning of the year, but other than that?  About furniture?  What did I learn in Intro to Furniture, other than the fact that the department has no communication, or else they would realize that people need to take Drafting for Design before they take Intro to Furniture, especially if they'd like people to know anything about detailing.  Also, Drafting.  It's causing me so much rage, I'm going to avoid talking about it.  The internet is a public place, and there's nothing preventing my drafting teacher from reading this blog.  I hoped to grow, creatively, but I don't feel like I've done so as much as I would have in a different place.  3D has been pretty good, if we can just repress the memory of critique from last Tuesday.  It was not good.  It did not go well.  I have not received my grade yet, and like opening AP or ACT scores, I'm not quite sure that I'd like to know.  But, of course, it's art school and grades don't matter, it's all about what you learned.  I had my Art History test on Thursday too, something else to worry about.

If there's one thing spring break is good for, it's worrying about school.  And going on fantastic road trips with friends from your high school quizbowl team to Pittsburgh and Niagara Falls.  It was awesome, thanks for asking.

I miss quizbowl.  A lot.

I feel like there's nothing keeping me at Kendall, nothing that I've grasped onto and felt anchored to.  I've tried, I think.  I was going to the writer's group for a while, but they really seemed like a group of friends who all took over writing club, and didn't particularly welcome anyone new.  They're the people who hang out on the second-floor balcony, constantly occupied.  I went to Kendall Christian Fellowship for a while too, but it felt like I was playing up religion more than I was really comfortable with, and they were kind of more than I could handle.  I was reminded of this woman who I worked with in the election last year, who mentioned how God had blessed her or how her faith in Jesus had helped her with something near constantly.  If that's how people feel, I don't have a problem with that, but it's not how I feel about my faith.  Since I've been taking 3D and being more interested in sculpture, I've been going to the Functioneers, the functional art club.  They seem like they're interested in actually doing things and participating in the local art community, which is contrary to the way a lot of groups seem to do things.  I'm also participating in the school literary journal, which has potential to be pretty great.  I'm trying to do things and be involved and make friends, but I didn't expect it to be this difficult at all.  I think there might be some difference in how socially abled I perceive myself to be and how socially abled I actually am, in that I distort my awkwardness and shyness to be a far bigger deal than they are.  Maybe it's because Kendall feels like a commuter college, like I'm going to U of M Dearborn or Wayne State or something, not quite like going away to school.  Other people have mentioned that Kendall sometimes feels like the community college of art schools, and I see where they're coming from.  Maybe it would feel different if I lived in 5 Lyon, the apartment/dorm thing, I dunno.  It'd be nice to live that close to school, but for that much money, I could have my own apartment, not share one with three other people.

All of this makes me wonder if I should transfer somewhere else, and if so, where, and to study what.  I could get into and afford any of the public universities in Michigan, with the possible exception of U of M Ann Arbor.  If I went to one of them, what would I study?  Study art, coming from a school that's far more focused on the subject, and therefore, a better place to study it?  Art history?  That one's guaranteed to lead to a job in the field.  English, you have the same problem.  What else?  History?  Maybe this is a problem rooted in middle class notions of going to college so you can get a good job so you can afford to buy a house and send your kids to college, but I feel like I need to study something that I'll be able to use in a career, of some sort.  I feel like I could spend a year just making the decision to transfer somewhere else, but if I'm going to transfer, I need to know right about now, so that I can get a portfolio together (if it's an art school) or get an application in for winter semester.  I would take a year or a semester off from school, if I thought that I would do anything productive in that year and not just wallow in self-pity while pretending to work on a novel.

I need to write something worth reading.

I need to be more focused.  I need to do well in school.  I need to stop worrying.  I need to be smarter.  I need to be better, overall.  I just need to figure my shit out, really.  That's all I need.

Getting out of this town wouldn't hurt either.  Every time I'm back, I remember how little there is to do.

I need to go to bed, Justin's going to wake me up tomorrow, needing a ride to school, and nothing about that situation is going to be pretty.

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Foam

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What I am thinking about right now

Right in this very moment.  Bam!  Instantaneous.

I feel a little odd right now.  Not sure why.

Yesterday I sent texts to a bunch of people who I hadn't talked to in a while, saying hi.  If you were the recipient of one of these texts, hey!  We should hang out.

Nothing if not awkward.

I am thinking somewhat seriously about switching my major to sculpture.  It doesn't involve drafting, I hear.  But the idea of working as an actual fine artist scares the bejezus out of me because, um, duh.  I'm not self motivated at all.  I probably would need to have a job of some sort. Like a go to work and work for someone kind of job.

I have things that I am needing to concentrate on that I am also freaking out about.  I have an art history test on thursday.  It requires dates.  This is a major problem.  Out of all the AP history classes (Euro, US, Gov) I took in high school, I learned and remember one date.  October 31, 1517.  I am probably maybe going to fail this whole thing.

I have crit today, for 3D design.  I'm pretty okay with my pieces, I'm not sure how everyone else has done.  The only other person whose stuff I've seen...well, if everyone else is like that, I'll be totally fine.   Their stuff kind of sucked, and this was Sunday night.  I spent all day Sunday and a good part of the day on Saturday working on these things.  I took pictures.  I'll post the pictures, eventually.

I have design drawing next.  I might fail design drawing.  I'm not doing so hot this semester, and I'm not really sure why.  probably because it involves a lot of ellipses.  Sometimes circles too.

Robert tells me that I am a special little snowflake, and I know that it's a fact.  He's going to get a job so that he can buy more graphic novels.

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(Minipost)

Between a tweet and a blog post, right.

I'm fairly certain that at some point in time, I've mentioned my obsessive, ginormous, unending crush on Chris Colfer.  His movie is coming out this summer.  I am excited, to say the least.



You're welcome.

I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but I'm a student editor at my school's literary journal.  It's very big and exciting.  Today was the first time that I received actual stories to make actual decisions about.  I felt very....Carsonesque, but I didn't even have to blackmail anyone.  It's kind of odd, to be making decisions like this.  I know that most of these people aren't aiming to be professional writers, so I feel like whatever I do, I want to be encouraging and nice, but I don't quite know where we're setting the quality bar.  The things that I've read certianly aren't the best pieces of writing on the planet, but they don't totally suck either, and I don't know how to decide this without seeming like a pretentious ass who thinks the literary journal is a far bigger thing than it really is.

YUP.

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What I did with my Friday

Guys.  I have Fridays off of school and work and responsibility.  This is not a particularly new development, but today I did things worth talking about.  I woke up relatively early.  I texted my friend, who I'd made plans with earlier in the week.  Plans, still on.  I got my lazy butt out of bed at 9:15 and got myself into the car to pick up a friend of mine for fun! exciting! things!  We went to Wolfgang's for breakfast, which was awesome.  And then, after a quick detour back home to pick up my student ID, we went to the GRAM.
The GRAM is exactly like the DIA, except it's collection isn't as good and it costs a dollar more to get in.  And the building is new, instead of the fairly fantastic mashup of additions of time and space that the DIA consists of.  Today's visit had a Purpose (it's the little flame/that lights a fire under your ass).  We have to write essays.  For Art History.  About Rauschenberg.  He's a big deal, apparently.  And I don't think he's dead.  I should probably find out if he's dead or not before I turn my essay in.  These essays, apparently, are a big deal.  It's hard to express your thoughts in writing.  You should take notes and write an outline and then write your essay and rewrite and edit it.  This is what my professor has said.
How did all of us make it to college without writing an essay?  I mean, I'm speaking for others, maybe.  I've written an essay or two (or a million and a half, hey there APs!)

Really though, I do know how to write.  And not like a total idiot either.  We aim for 45% idiot, 50% normal human being, and 5% strange facial expressions and dinosaur noises.

I mean, I'm Literary.  With a capital L.

I like Instagram, despite all the hipster-who-thinks-they're-a-talented-photographer-stigma.

I had been thinking about taking some different classes next fall, if I can't publish a book and make all my dreams come true stay in school.  Printmaking is very high on the list.  Sculpture.  Industrial Design.  I need to get better at using the computer.  Apparently it has things other than twitter?  Who knew?  

I've heard of a class called "Digital Foundations" which may be something along the lines of what I need.  Also, CAD and Rhino, which do things mystical and unbeknownst to me.  I could take initiative and make these things, um, knownst to me.  Or something.

After the Rauschenberg, we talked for a while about the universe and how it is positively falling apart nearly constantly and also about how I have not read Jane Eyre.  Personal fault, I admit it.

And then I made soup.  Soup!  I should've chopped the onions smaller.

And then I thought that there was going to be this really great speaker at the GRAM, but it actually sucked, so I dragged my roomateboyfriend there for no reason.  Poop.  

And then I doodled.

Also, you should check out Rookie, FYTattoos, and The Mind Experience (this is much cooler if you are me than if you are, like, anyone else in the universe, but bear with me) and you might like them.  Or you might not.  I know that I was wasting time there today, and having fun with it.

My SUPER EXCITING VERY TOP SECRET GREAT AMAZING PROJECT will be revealed VERY SOON.  Dudes.  Be excited.

BUT FIRST, let's talk about something else.  Two different people pointed out my horrible accent to me today.  Maybe it's an upper midwestern thing, maybe it's a me thing, I dunno.  All I know is that, sometimes...



I love all y'all.  G'night.

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Quote of the Month

"I mean, to be honest, I’ve never even really understood the war between nerds and popular people. Like, who do…who do…who do you guys got? ‘Umm…we’ve got George W. Bush and, like, Tom Brady.’ Oh, okay. Well, I see your George W. Bush with Bill Clinton, and I raise you an Abraham Lincoln and a Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And, I can easily see your Tom Brady with the thinking man’s football player, Tiki Barber, and I think I can raise you, hmmm, an Isaac Newton, a William Shakespeare, a Blaise Pascal, an Albert Einstein, an Immanuel Kant, an Aristotle, a Jane Austen, a Bill Gates, a Mahatma Ghandi, a Nelson Mandela, and all four Beatles. We win."
John Green

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Fiction Friday

I'm not dead, I'm just falling a bit, for a while.  Becoming disconnected, becoming human again.
Someone once told me that drowning was like coming home.

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On Measurements.

Hey.  I'm being a whiny little piece of shit about this, and if you don't want to read it, I understand.  I barely even want to read it.  For serious.
Click, if you must.

(minipost)

Do you ever have those afternoonsdaysmonthsyears where you feel wildly unmotivated?  There are things to do and you sit down to work on them, but you just can't?  That is me.  All this week.  It isn't very much fun, I'll tell you.  Not fun at all.  Like a day in which you do absolutely nothing and end up sort of hating yourself a little bit?  That is my everyday since Sunday in which I did nothing.  Like got out of bed at 1 pm and lazed about in my pyjamas all day doing nothing.

That kind of makes me hate myself a little bit.  Eh.

I am also thinking of novellas as a viable option and embracing the idea of the book as a physical object.  I want to learn the basics of bookbinding and make a limited run of this little project I've been working on.  I'm thinking that it would be free to download, with an optional donation* and then have the same thing as a printed piece of wonderfulness.  Or maybe try to find a publisher?  Melville House has come up a few times in passing over the years, and they seem like they might be interested in this sort of thing.

There's also this other project that I've been working on, with a friend.  It's very exciting and a little bit scary and I'm sometimes overcome with that very bad feeling that I tend to get when I'm doing group projects at school, where you feel like you're not putting in enough work and then the paranoia takes over and you just know that everyone else resents you and thinks you don't deserve to be in the group.  I am a little bit crazy in this way.  YUP.

Maybe this minipost is not actually so miniature after all.  Hum de dee.  I'm going to bed now, I have to get to school early tomorrow for a Furniture club meeting.  Furniture club is one of those events that reminds me that oh, yes, there are more than five people in this program.  Funny.  I brought home my model of the table thing that I made and it is...incredibly useless.  Where am I supposed to put this thing?  I might just throw it away...

I am thinking more about sculpture lately.  I really like 3D.  We are building masks that are supposed to evoke emotions and mine is agression.  I have a lot of pent up agression inside my soul.

*to the "Samantha gets to write fun things fund"

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Fiction Friday

You are an expert weaver, even though you don't know it. You take these fragments of information, bits and bytes of you, and you spin them into something more, and you take all of those something mores and you tie them on your loom, taut, taut, and then you get going, shuttle flying back and forth. Faster, faster and you create something from it, you build a life for yourself. I stare at you like I'm amazed, because I am. You're creating fictions, whole universes that never existed before you, and I'm amazed. You're not. You're used to it, this is the norm for you.

How very strange.

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Quote of the Month

"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on tv telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it."
Frank Zappa


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Well.

I can't think of a title, whatever.
I HAVE THE FAULT IN OUR STARS.
So.  Um.  This year.
It's a new year.  It's my TENTH year in which Harry Potter has been playing a disproportionatly large role in my life and also the NINTH year since my house burned down which means, in a way, that I am not a child anymore.  Odd, isn't it?
I've had a bunch of stuff going on!  It's all very interesting!  And sometimes it sucks.  Like a lot.  I haven't been writing on either of the novels, because when I revisited No More Stars I realized just how much it was like my NaNo and I don't love either of them.  In fact, I think their stories are dumb and plots are unimaginative and characters are ill-defined and I kind of hate them.  So that's that.
I need to write a novel and actually finish it and not hate it.
I should write some short stories.
I should write a play.
I should get off my ass and do something, once in a while.
There's an exciting new project that my friend/housemate and I have been working on, and if it all goes as planned, it will be perfect and amazing and JK Rowling will send me a letter letting me know that she really thinks it's great and then I will DIE.  Can you imagine how cool that would be?  If it doesn't go as planned, I will be sad.  I'm very worried that it won't go as planned.  At least I'm good at worrying.
I heard, yesterday, that my school is starting a collaborative design program next year.  I don't actually know what collaborative design is, except that apparently you study all aspects of design and then you go get a MBA.  Hmm.  I think that might be interesting?  One of my friends (the person who made this blog layout, incidentally) told me that she was switching her major from Graphic Design to Advertising, which means that she would do more ad directing than actual, like, making advertisements and such.  That might be interesting.  Also, for the Fashion career day, the vice president of Kenneth Cole is coming to talk.  Like, woah.  And there's Bodies of Art coming up, which seems cool.  Fashion is weird.  I am not a fashionable person at all, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's...interesting.  You know how male is the default in most things, but in fashion, there are clothes, and then there's menswear?  Like an afterthought?  That's interesting.  I'm getting a little more excited about Kendall and Kendall things.  That's good.  Also, I plan on going to the Meyer May house on Sunday and it will be fantastic.
New semester has started!  It's pretty exciting.  Drafting will be shittons of work, Art History will be a party but not as fun and engaging as last semester, Design Drawing with a different professor is woah crazy I feel like I don't know anything anymore, and 3D is fun and great.  My 3D professor is fantasticly weird and the class only has seven people and it's all very cool.  LIKE (10).  Whenever we discuss things, it's makers and objects, never artists and works of art.  I like that.  I like that expanded definition of things that matter.  Also, we discussed artists who are alive today.  Somehow, it strikes me as very odd that there are fine artists who are alive right now and all they do is art.  And...there are more than 20 of them who exist.  How does that even work?  What is that like?  I follow one of them on twitter, and it seems to involve...calligraphy?  This is that awkward moment when I admit to all of you that deep down, I want to be a fine artist and live in a crazy commune in the woods somewhere and make things all day.  Only not.  They don't always have internet in the woods, did you know that?
I dropped Oral Rhetoric.  I have very mixed feelings about this.  In high school, I felt a lot like I should have been trying harder, I should have been challenging myself to reach my full potential and I really wasn't.  I'm scared of doing the same thing now.  I just want to be perfect.  If I keep up this only-taking-twelve-credits business, I'm going to graduate a semester or year late.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but...I have to have some sort of measurable success in my life.  Is that bad?  Does it show a deep internal lack of confidence?
Probably.  Whatever.
I need to make some shapes for 3D and do a million drawings for Design Drawing and eugh.   I will listen to podcasts while I do them.  Fuck college.  Now, I have to be at school at 10 on one set of days and 12:30 on another one.  PARTY ON.
I have so many feelings about this. This is cool you should check it out and also and wow huh.  That's the internet for ya.
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