Blogging

Hmm. I don't know what to write about (that's general enough to start a blog post, right?) I feel like I keep doing this. Posting, then taking a long time off (months!) then coming back and saying 'gee, I don't know what to do about my life... or my blog... bah."

Sooooooooooo... I'm back!! I just read Katie's post on blogging over at her amazing blog Chocolate Covered Katie. She argues that a successful blog is a blog you enjoy writing. I realize that this blog, along with writing in general, has not been pleasant for me. (Ugh. Count how many times I wrote 'blog; just in the beginning of this paragraph. Ick.)The ironic thing is that I have always wanted to be a writer. The problem is that I set huge standards for myself. I have a very all-or-nothing mind set, and I believe that I must write extremely well - perfectly, in fact - or not write at all.

I believe I must write exquisitely (gah! okay, I will admit to you that I just spent about 20 minutes looking for the word I wanted to use. I am a huge vocab-nut, and I thought of this adjective that begins with an 'e' and is usually used to describe writing, but immediately lost it into the dark depths of my sleepy head. It's kind of like exquisite, poignant, expressive... Ah!! Just found it!! eloquent. Such a beautiful, smooth, polished word... so expressive... Eloquent. It ranks on the top of my favorite word list. Wow. You must really think I'm crazy now, huh? Anywho... moving right along...), with style, and attract a huge following - I must be like all the other successful bloggers. I must be upbeat, pleasant, smart, interesting, intriguing, unique, likable - lovable. I must be perfect.

Obviously, this is impossible on a day-to-day level.

I need to relax my standards. So, to do so I came up with a list of guidelines to follow to make sure that I enjoy blogging, and don't turn it into a painstaking and frightening chore.

1) Short posts!
If I know I only have to write a quick little blurb, I'm a lot more likely to do it. I think to myself 'eh, it's only a short little thing, it doesn't have to be perfect.'

2) No self-judgment
I will post what I post, and that is that. This is not a book, published in one shot before I close my eyes for the plunge. It isn't a huge deal. If a write a less-than-perfect entry, who cares? Write, post, and then move on. If I get criticism, at least I put myself out there, exposing myself to the good and the bad. As they say "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

3) Enjoy!
Blogging is a hobby - a time outside of work to let off steam and have fun. If I'm not feeling it, then something needs to change. Maybe my blog's format, maybe its contents, maybe the photos I take! I don't know. But if I'm going to invest time and effort into this thing, I better enjoy it!

4) Reciprocate
AKA - comment on other peoples' blogs. Usually, I read peoples' blogs, but never actually comment on them. Why? The same reason I have trouble writing posts. I feel like this comment has to really mean something. It has to catch the author's attention with its insight and uniqueness. The author should think 'wow - this must be an amazing person, she's so smart! I want to check out her blog right now, get to know her, and be best friends!' Yes, extremely unrealistic. I think this has to do with my insecurities from my childhood, and still today. I feel like no one ever liked me enough to want to go the extra mile to be my best friend. Sad, huh? I have to realize that bloggers get hundreds of comments every day, and they're all about equivalent. Yes, my comment may be brilliant (in a perfect world...), but there are a lot of other brilliant people in this community (hence why I was attracted to it!) and their comments were likely just as interesting as mine. Nothing personal.

Yeah. Four for now. Maybe I'll think of more on my journey through blogging. But right now I'm going to follow step 1 and keep it short and sweet! It doesn't have to be a perfect, exhaustive list of things. I'm tired, it's 1:25 am, and I need mah sleep, gals! Gotta take care of this bod.

P.S. Follow step 4! Haha.

Questions:

1) Do you feel the pressure to make your posts 'perfect'?
2) Do you keep your posts short and sweet, or long and deep?
3) Any other guidelines you would add?

Update and Food and Books!

Well. It's been a while. I kind of want to change the direction of this blog. Many things have happened to me since I last posted - taking the semester off, being in treatment to recover from my anorexia, getting healthier, being happier, reading, painting, doing activities again - and I think my blog should reflect that (not to mention I should update more often *cough cough*.)

Sooo, I'm thinking of making this a food blog, since I love food, cooking and baking it, and those are the kinds of blogs I love reading. I'm kind of worried about the whole taking photos of my food thing, because firstly, I'm not the world's greatest photographer, and secondly, I might forget to take photos, not to mention it would be rather awkward to whip out my iPhone every time I have a meal and take photos of it.

But alack, I shall do it. If only for my own gratification.

Hence, let's start with breakfast this morning!

1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup pumpkin purée, loadsa cinnamon, a big dollop o' peanut butter. Cup of soymilk on the side. Matching dishes from Crate & Barrel.

Bliss in a bowl.

Pumpkin oats is my all time favorite breakfast. So so good. It's also a balanced breakfast - one serving of carbs, for energy, one serving of veggies, for vitamins etc, one serving of healthy fat, essential for mental flexibility and soft skin, and one serving of dairy, an amazing source of calcium, protein, and essential for my bones. It's love.


Otherwise, it's a beautiful day, here in Northern California. It's been raining non-stop since last week (not that I'm complaining - I love the rain!) but the sun has come out and the trees waving gently in the wind are dappled with crystals of sunlight. Hopefully this will do my mini vegetable garden good, at least what's left of it now that the slugs have devoured my chard and soy beans.


Anywho, the second thing I wanted to talk about was... Books! Yes, I have rediscovered my love of literature (pleasure literature, that is.) I kind of lost my ability to read a while ago. I had no energy, no ability to concentrate, no interest in reading. It was really quite lamentable. However, one day in treatment, I found myself itching to read some Jane Austen. Her prose is just so relaxing, so calming, so smooth without appearing to try. I decided to go to the library that afternoon with my friend K - but ended up not picking up Austen, I forget why. Maybe they only had ones I'd already read? Emma, Sense and Sensibility and the like. No Mansfield Park or Persuasion, which I was rather hoping for.

So I carted myself over to the "P" section, seeking the much acclaimed Jodi Picoult. I picked up Salem Falls and House Rules. I also picked up Blue Angel by Francine Prose, a teen novel that ended up being extremely shallow and awkward, Runner's World and Writer's Digest - along with a hefty pile of DVDs I never ended up watching. But hey, they were free, why hold back?

So, the point of this rather long post is that I wanted to review Blue Angel by Francine Prose. It's basically the story of a professor/novelist, Ted Swenson, at a University in New England, teaching a Creative Writing seminar. However, he develops a relationship with Angela Argo, his punk, black clothed, metal studded, tattooed students. Swenson falls in love with her novel about another teacher-student relationship, and subsequently, with her. However, it all goes downhill from there as they attempt to sleep together, Angela asks him to show her novel to his editor, and she ultimately presses charges of sexual assault to get revenge on him for failing to convince his editor to read Angela's lewd novel.

So what did I think? Swenson is an awkward, aging professor, not entirely likable, though rather witty and humorous at times during his inner monologues of paranoia, disdain, and boredom. The romantic interest between Swenson and his student is definitely believable, Prose makes it authentic and progressive, which I liked. The Creative Writing seminar is fun to read about, partly because I can relate, being a student at a New England University planning on majoring in English or Literary Arts, partly due to the unimaginative, perverted students and their stories.

I read it quickly - it was definitely a book you can get into. However, there was something about it that was rather disturbing. Maybe it was the atmosphere of guilt and paranoia. Maybe it was the consciousness of eternal failure. Maybe it was the constant self-destruction. Maybe it was the manipulation. I don't know. It put me in a bad mood, over the weekend, perhaps because I could relate to Swenson so much - guilt, failure, self-destructive behaviors, falling in love with inappropriate people... I don't know. It was all too personal, all too dark, for me to feel good about. All this capped off with a terrible ending in which the protagonist, bent on self-destruction, does not even attempt to save himself, but throws himself, head-first, into the abyss, jubilant in his misery.


But, I won't end on that negative note - let's enjoy my wonderful doggie, Bella, shall we?

Bella! The love of my life.

Questions:
Do you go crazy at the Library?
I do. I always checkout a million books, dvds, and magazines. What can I say?

Have you ever fallen in love, or had a crush on a teacher?
For sure. My English teacher in High School was amazing - I looked up to him so much, and wished we could just run away to some alternate world, go on adventures, and read Shakespeare together!


Any Books you liked or disliked lately?
Salem Falls - liked.
Blue Angel - disliked, but respected.

Update on life and Spring semester

Wow, it's been a while.
How to sum up those last few months?
I was feeling really depressed and stuck in my recovery when I last posted. But after a while, things started getting better. I met a wonderful group of friends that showed me how to have fun. I wasn't always depressed. It was actually... enjoyable? That, and I went on an anti-depressant - best decision EVER!

Seriously, I'm feeling so much happier now. I'm enthusiastic about things, I'm bouncy, I enjoy spending time with people...

Oh, and big advent in my life: I'm taking the semester off. Yup, after much deliberation, I decided I needed to focus on my health right now. I realized that I wanted to enjoy college, to take advantage of it, instead of taking the minimum course load and spending my life in my therapist's office. Yeah, wouldn't that me a pleasant memory of college?

So I've started treatment, and it's going well, other than one girl in treatment who is extremely triggering. She doesn't want to recover, she switches out her foods for lower calorie ones, and she is so so so incredibly negative. She's just really mentally messed up. Not that I blame her, but she should be in a much more intensive program.

So yeah, little update on my life. I'm going to try to be a bit more consistent in my posting, because three month gaps just don't cut it.

Taking Spring off

Okay, my last few posts were extremely negative, I know.
But I'm feeling a lot better now.
I talked to my parents a bit more and told them what I was planning on doing if I were to take Spring Semester off, and they (or at least my mom) seem rather favorable to it now.
I'm just so caught up in my ED and recovery etc that I just can't concentrate on school, homework, studying... I just feel so disconnected. The prospect of going home for several months, relaxing, getting treatment for my ED, and just taking an art class at a nearby college is SO attractive right now. Brown is a great school, but I feel like I just can't get as much out of it as I could if I were healthy and mentally prepared for an academic challenge. Right now, I'm exhausted, mentally and physically, the prospect of learning more material is just so draining. And I just can't cope with the whole social aspect of college.
I just really hope the outcome, staying or leaving, will be for the best.

Health and Sanity

I've come to a realization.

My problem with recovery is my shifting perception of anorexia. Some days, I think: "Wow, anorexia really is a disease, an addiction like alcoholism or drug abuse. It's terrible - a sign of weakness, a sign of uncontrollable obsession and addiction to terrible things. What loonies they are! In need of mental support, why, not much better than someone psychologically deranged, and yet we would never glamorize a crazy person for being out of their mind. I see emaciated, gray-faced girls with feeding tubes up their noses and think: why on earth would anyone want that? That is the lowest of the low. I want to be healthy, happy, able to go for runs and eat foods that nourish me and make me strong."
Other days, I am enraptured by the thinness, the self-denial, the will-power - all so impressive, so "beautiful". And I am disgusted by my "fatness".

But really, that's the nature of the beast. The latter point of view is twisted. That's why this is not just a physical disease, but also a mental health issue. That fascination with thinness is sick, it's irrational, deranged.

Change your point of view. Change your perception. Realize that wanting to be emaciated is crazy! It's sick. So... embrace the wonders of recovery (wow, that sounded cheesy). And realize that really, being healthy is just a sane thing.

Ah, the wonders of having an egotistical, self-centered roommate!

Okay. I must admit I am quite pissed off at the moment. II just feel like my roomate is so presumptuous sometimes. This evening we somehow got onto the subject of boys (but, with her, when are we not on the subject of boys?) and the topic of sexiling came up. Now, I know I'm at college. I know that people have sex, a lot, at college. And I know that sometimes one person will want to have sex in the room. But the way she phrased it! She just acts so entitled! She was just like, "well, this is college, I mean, this is normal... I mean, when The guy I'm interested in is standing at my door and I want to have sex, I'm going to be thinkin about what's best for the relationship... You know... (implicitly: not you!) I mean, this is a shared space... And you have friends you can go stay with, right?"I just feel like she has no consideration whatsoever about me, and she will do whatever necessary in order to advance herself and benefit herself, even if it means stepping all over me.
Ugh!
I mean, why should I be punished just because she is a whore and wants to sleep around with every guy on campus? She just makes me feel like I'M the guilty one in every situation for deigning to consider that I have any rights in anything. I mean, IT IS a shared space, and I deserve to be able to sleep in my own bed at night, and get enough sleep (yes... She gets up at 6:30am every morning to go to the gym because she is freaked out about the freshmen fifteen... Irony. And she she's it's "unfair for her to change her schedule" (Aka go to the gym in the afternoon so I don't get sleep deprived because "this is a shared space").
Ugh. I just needed to vent my frustration. I should go to sleep now. It's nearly midnight, and of course :) I'll be waking up at 6:30 tomorrow because my roommate can't help herself and eats like a pig and then must go to he gym and thus deprives me of sleep for her gluttony. Ah, the wonders of having an egotistical, self-centered roommate!

Okay... So this is the most random place to be writing a post... After an evening of going to an Asian food market in Sayles hall and watching Knightley's Pride and Prejudice with my Champlin friends... I'm sitting in saferide, winging my way back to my dorm - on the most circuitous route possible !