Becoming Someone Else

Most of my writing is at least loosely based on someone or something I know well. I have found that it makes the stories seem more realistic. My first stories in elementary school were about my own life and some of best work in college has been the same. But now my fiction writing teacher is pushing me out of my comfort zone. All weekend so far, I have been trying to write a story with characters and circumstances absolutely foreign to me. Actually, right now I am having writers' block but I don't want to stop writing so I'm blogging until I can come back to it.
In some ways I am frustrated about this assignment because I think I have found my forte and shouldn't have to change, but in all reality, I've always wanted to write as another person. Like so many kids of my generation, I dreamed of being the next J. K. Rowling. She never went to a school for wizards or fought the Dark Lord, but readers fully believe that her characters did. I even read a news story last semester that fans of Sherlock Holmes constantly send letters to him as if he were real. That's so amazing. So, since I know this blog is not super thoughtful or exciting, I'll share an exercise I worked on this week in order to try out becoming someone else. Thanks to everyone that keeps reading my blogs. It means a lot :)

I had my first beer in the 4^th grade.

            My father had been working cows all day. He plopped down on the brown recliner in the living room and dust filled the room. I wasn’t sure if it was from his shirt or the chair, which probably hadn’t been cleaned since mom was around.

“Could you hand me a beer, Kels?” he asked.

            I paused for a moment, hoping he would say something more. I adored that gravelly voice when he wasn’t hollering about my God-damned whining. Then, I scurried off the couch and opened the fridge. And there they were. Two cans of Bud Lite sitting side by side on the top shelf. Without hesitating, I grabbed one in each fist and carried them into the living room. I handed the first one to him and carried the next to my place on the couch.

            He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even look up from the rerun of Walker, Texas Ranger on the old television set when I handed him the beer. I waited for him to pull on the tab of his can and then I pulled too. A long hiss filled the space between us. He tilted the can up and starting chugging. I saw some drip down onto his beard. I began to mimic his style and let the beer run down my throat. I wasn’t awfully good. I remember grimacing for the first few gulps. Then I looked up and Dad was staring at me. He was silent for a few moments and then he chuckled. We spent many nights after that bonding over beers in that dusty room with cowboys on the TV.

How Lucky Am I?

So I obviously haven't posted for quite a while. It wasn't writer's block, I kept thinking about writing, but kept getting busy and forgetting to post. I was planning on doing a "lucky" post for St. Patrick's Day and even though it's a little late I think I will still do it because I have a lot to be thankful for lately. So here it is: How Lucky Am I?

1. I got into the teacher's program at UNL. Hooray!

2. The morning after I got into the program, I work up to these...

 

...and this....

I have amazing friends. :D



3. I got to spend 2 weekends visiting my extended family in Columbus and celebrating a new cousin's baptism. I've learned how lucky it is to have so many people who not only love me, but who I can love back.


4. My parents drove over 2 hours to have dinner with me....and my mom made brownies!

5. My resident director randomly gave me cereal! Haha

6. I spent spring break shopping in Colorado with my mom and then at an concert with my sister. It was more amazing than any beach vacation, I promise. 


So thanks to everyone for making my last month so wonderful. I am so LUCKY to have all of you in my life. :)

Being Pretty

If you have a Pinterest account or a Tumblr account, you will probably agree that there isn't a day you log onto your account and don't find some new exercise plan or fitness motivation or healthy recipe. I think it's a fair bet to say that most girls my age would choose beauty over intelligence if given the choice. My professors are always lecturing me on how our society is becoming more technologically dependent and we need to be able to communicate online. While that is true, this lack of face-to-face interaction hasn't seemed to lower our obsession with appearance. Success does depend on looks, whether we like it or not and being unattractive can be a huge hindrance. Actually, the television show playing on my TV right now is about a woman who is in fear of losing her beauty with age.

 I've been reading a lot of books recently. My insomnia causes more reading, not the other way around like you'd imagine. The two most recent books I read were The Hate List by Jennifer Brown and Every Day by David Levithan.  The Hate List is the story of a girl who's boyfriend initiated a school shooting and the reaction of returning to school. Every Day was about someone who doesn't have a physical body but takes over the body of another person, a different person every day. But even in two books that on the surface have nothing to do with beauty really are all about appearance at the core.

In Every Day, the main character can not find love because of lack of an appearance. The girl the narrator starts a relationship with shows more or less affection depending on the body the narrator is in. In The Hate List, one of the characters gets hit in the face by a ricocheted bullet and becomes disformed. Even though everyone has been through a traumatic event, she is the only one that can't seem to cope because she has lost her status and, in that, her identity.

As Brown said, "Being pretty isn't everything, but sometimes being ugly is."

Oscar Predictions

So, the awards season is coming to its finale. I thought the SAG awards were great this year and Tina Fey and Amy Pohler did a fantastic job at hosting the Golden Globes. So I wanted to put out my Oscar predictions before Sunday. I want to say that I just checked the Huffington Post and and NY Times predictions, and some of mine seem to be way off, but I changed nothing. I will stick to these.

Best Picture: I'm going on a very very long shot for this and picking Life of Pi. Argo is on an winning streak and will probably go again, but the Oscars can surprise you. And Life of Pi has the most nominations this year.

Leading Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis. This one's a no-brainer. The academy loves him. Truthfully, though, my stand out pick would be Bradley Cooper because I think he was better than Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook and isn't getting half as much attention.

Leading Actress: I'm going to go with Jessica Chastain. Once again, going with the streak would be Jennifer Lawrence, but I'm a rebel. Plus, Chastain has been nominated before and Lawrence is a newbie. If I could pick, though, it would be Naomi Watts who was phenomenal in The Impossible.

Supporting Actor: I'm going with Robert De Niro. I really liked Alan Arkin, but I don't think he has a chance.

Supporting Actress: Once, again a no-brainer: Anne Hathaway. I haven't seen Les Miserables, but my sister said Hathaway made her cry, so I'll take that as a good sign.

Animated Feature: Wreck-It Ralph. Truthfully, I wasn't blown away by any of the nominees here, but this was the best in my opinion.

Director: David O. Russell for Silver Linings Playbook. I'm just tired of Stephen Spielberg and Ang Lee getting so much attention and Russell is the only other one with a chance.


All Other Categories: Cinematography-Skyfall/ Costume Design-Anna Karenina/ Documentary-Searching for Sugar Man/ Documentary Short-Mondays at Racine/Film Editing-Zero Dark Thirty/Foreign Language Film-Amour/Makeup and Hairstyling-The Hobbit/ Original Score-Skyfall/Original Song-Skyfall/Production Design-Anna Karenina (even though it should be The Hobbit)/Animated Short-Paperman/Live Action Short-Curfew/Sound Editing-Zero Dark Thirty/Sound Mixing-Les Miserables/Visual Effects-Life of Pi/Adapted Screenplay-Silver Lining Playbook/Original Screenplay-Zero Dark Thirty

How to Measure Success

I think there's a lot of pressure on people my age to be "successful." But what does that even mean? What is success in life? Professors and advisers make it seem like a status thing; your career will define your success. Sorority and fraternities act as if it's the number of your friends. Television's weight loss victory stories tell us it's our waist size. Parents and grandparents advise us that it's the ones we marry or the children we raise. You know what I think? I think we define our own success.

People don't all use the same scale. We each have our own ruler. Or yard stick. Or tape measure. Every example I listed above is success on someone's measuring stick. And no measurement is wrong, because success isn't something we do for other people. We do it for ourselves. Striving for success gives our lives meaning in some way.

So here's what I decided are the three criteria of MY success:
1. I will Learn as much a I can. This is not measured by grades or paychecks, only knowledge.
2. I will Love with all my heart. This is not measured in friends or boyfriends. I'd just rather love than hate.
3. I will Laugh whenever I can. I can't imagine a better success than happiness.

So what is your success??

“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I Don't Know Why I Remember...

During one of the first weeks of the semester, I had an assignment in my Intro to Fiction class in which we had to write paragraphs starting with "I Don't Know Why I Remember." I didn't have a blog topic, so I decided to post a few of my favorites that I came up with this week. Although all of these are at least loosely based on real memories, it is a FICTION class, so these are fictionalized. Enjoy!

-     I don’t know why I remember shooting the cats from next door with water guns. The cats belonged to the witch next door. Sometimes we heard her cackling in her house with the peeling blue paint.  Her cats would crawl into the back of our mini van or use our lawn as a litter box. Our parents discussed their “overpopulation.” I didn’t know what that word meant, but as the oldest, I wouldn’t admit it. I told Josh and Brigitte that it meant we needed to have a war with them. That was in our Power Rangers phase. My brother was always the red ranger and my sister the pink. They had first choice, but I was always the leader and that day I led the cats to screech and the witch to cry. But it didn’t feel like a victory.

-     I don’t know why I remember the color of my cousin Heather’s room. Deep Royal Blue. She painted it the summer after my 4^th grade year, just before I came to visit. I remember thinking she’d drown in that blue from all the time she spent locked in her room with her beat box blaring. I sat outside her room in the carpeted hallway, waiting for her to play. She didn’t say a word to me the entire summer. My aunt said it was hormones. I still blame Deep Royal Blue. 

 

-    I don’t know why I remember the M&Ms. Ten of them every Sunday. I sat in the wooden pews with a coloring book on my lap. About halfway through the sermon, my grandpa tapped my shoulder and pulled a Ziploc bag with ten plain M&Ms. He always winked and squeezed my hand after the secret exchange. I slipped one at a time into my mouth, checking to make sure my parents didn’t notice. I’m sure the streaks of red, green, and blue on my sweaty hands gave me away. As I got older the pocket sneaks turned to crumpled five dollar bills or pieces of gum, but I still secretly hope for the ten M&Ms.

Cry Me A River

Do you remember the last time you cried? I don't mean when you saw a sweet love scene in a romantic comedy and got a little emotional. I mean real tears that roll down your cheeks because you can't keep those drops of feeling inside. Personally, that was probably yesterday for me. I'm a crier. Always have been. It's actually really pathetic. I'll cry when I'm lonely or when I'm frustrated. I'll cry at movies or just thinking of a memory. It's very inopportune sometimes and I need to get a handle on it before I get into the "real world."
But this week, I've thought a lot about crying. I went and saw the movie The Impossible and I sobbed. I actually had to catch my breath. And remember when I said The Fault in Our Stars wasn't weepy? Sorry to ruin this for anyone, but I was mistaken. Honestly, though, it is a book about cancer. If I, of all people, didn't cry, it probably wasn't any good. It was a stressful week and I haven't been sleeping well because I'm always either stressing or I can't sleep because my back hurts.
I have a distinct memory of sitting in the backyard of my Grandma Marj's house, crying in the grass. I'm sure I was being a spoiled brat and pouting about something one of my siblings did. My grandma walked up to me and looked down and said, "Crying will get you nowhere in life." This wasn't the first time I heard that sentiment, but I never cried in front of Grandma again. And I can't tell you how many times my father told me that "crying won't solve anything."
I love my grandma and dad, don't get me wrong, but I have recently decided I respectfully disagree. I think crying will not only solve problems, but also might get me somewhere in life.
 First of all, when I cry, it often feels like I'm cleaning my body out. I have cried myself to sleep countless times and, let me tell you, those are the best sleeps of my life. I wake up refreshed and revitalized for whatever situation led me to cry in the first place. As a person with insomnia, this is a benefit.
Second, John Green said in Will Grayson, Will Grayson that "crying is totally avoidable if you...don't care too much." Tears scream honesty to me. They also scream empathy. I am much more likely to trust people that I've seen express emotion than those who haven't. I think the social norm that men shouldn't cry is dumb. I don't think I am a bad person or even a weak person because I cry. I think it shows I care. Sometimes it's inconsequential things like grades that I care about, but it's also sometimes about other people. I care when a family member is upset or when I've hurt a friend's feelings. I care about others' pain or loss, even if it's fictional. I think maybe that will get me somewhere in life. Everyone wants to be cared about.