On-Track in an Off-Track Kind of Life

Ah, it just occurred to me that I'm a third of the way done with these. Which is somewhat depressing..

This reminds me of the blogs I had to do like every day for Creative Writing class, but on a smaller scale. We didn't really have to write them every day, but we had to do like 50 of them over the class period. So I just wrote them every day.

But then I felt obligated to continue them after I’d passed the 50 mark because I've always been a teacher’s pet and for some reason I thought that would make me more likable, even though the teacher probably didn't even care. And besides, I've heard (and what writer hasn't) that you should write every day in order to be a good writer, so I sort of wanted to continue that..which is also why I tried to get back into writing my own blog in the summer.

Which lasted for about a week before I started slacking off. I had been inspired by seeing the movie "Julie and Julia" again, and then reading the actual blog. I wanted to inspire other people like I had been inspired.

I also wanted to mention that I got super pissed when my mom also told me I should be writing everyday if I want to be a good writer. Because, um, I already know that, but you know what, I'm not gonna write everyday and I'll still be a good writer. So there.

I'm such a teenage rebel.

Wow, so many paragraphs, and I didn't even mean to write anything on that which I did write about.. what I meant to talk about in this post was name meanings.

Because in that video we saw in class I was strangely struck by the woman who shared what her name meant.. because she suggested that her name sort of represented her. And it seems strange, but I've never really thought about it being like that.

Like, I've always known what my first name means...valley, or dweller in the valley. And I was like, oh, that's cool.. but I never really felt like that could be a translation of myself and my personality. Because I guess I always sort of assumed that I was named what I was named, and it doesn't really affect or is affected by my personality. But it kind of can be, I think.

So then I started thinking all philosophically about what "dweller in the valley" could mean in terms of myself. And I kind of feel like in my own situation, it's kind of emphasizing my mellow-ness and quietness, and the fact that people tend to come to me to talk about things, because I seem like someone who's safe to talk to.

So then my middle name, Alexandra--it apparently means protector of men. Which is kind of interesting, because I am very protective of my relationships with people, and protective of my friends in general. Also, I have a strong need in my soul to help people, and to make them feel good about themselves. It makes me feel like I exist in the world for a reason, in a way that none of the superficial things that go on everyday do. It makes me want to completely rid myself of those superficial things, though that's not always possible.

And finally my last name, the iconic "Bond"-- "a householder or tiller of the soil." Which I guess makes sense in the sense that my father's family were farmers and very hard-working, and my parents have always instilled in me a sense of needing to work for what I want or need. From an early age, I was never given any free money. I've always paid for things myself with whatever I might have saved up.

Of course, the things I deem as trying and hard-worked tasks are often not quite so in my parents eyes, but that's another story. I feel like the classic teenager, but honestly, we grew up in two different worlds. There’s a whole new, different, and equally difficult (in different ways) set of standards to live up to today.

So that was my adventure in discovering my identity through my name.

Now it seems to me that everyone should find some self-identity in their own names, if they never have before.

Go to it.

~Dale B.

I was going to name this "An Assortment of [insert subject of blog here]", but then I realized that I complete forgot what I had written

I am going into this with only the slightest inkling of what I want to talk about.

This should be interesting.

Although that's kind of what I do with a lot of my writing. I don't really plan that far in advance unless I get a good idea and try to expand on it (try being the operative word).

Also, I just noticed that I wrote "talk" about rather than "write" about. I guess that shows how heavily I place importance on my writing, because it is my clearest voice to speak with. I can refine it, pour my soul into it, think on it long into the night, thesaurus-ize it until I'm satisfied with it. Or show my pure procrastination and laziness by not touching it at all. Whatever I write, it is who I am and what I am feeling or want to be feeling at the time.

Ok, insightful point number one hit. Whoo.

But I need to write about something more clearly connected to class. Hmm..

Ok, got something. But that's depressing. If people are actually reading this blog they're seriously going to think I'm heavily depressed because all I talk about are depressing things about my life and how I need to fix myself. But that's not what I'm really trying to say, I'm just trying to discover things about myself more fully. And the depressing stuff is better expressed on paper then dwelled on in my mind.

Ok, here we go.

So we were in class, and talking about our first project and I brought up the fact that mine's kind of written and been revised a few times already but I don't know if I want to share it. No, I do know I want to share it, I just don't want certain people to read it. Wait, no, I do want everyone to read it, but I'm kind of afraid of how they'll react, what they'll think, if they'll understand the references. Because if certain people recognize the references, I could be screwed, or in bliss. Ugh, decisions suck.

So I really like what I've written. But I'm really kind of worried about it. I don't particularly want to say it out loud either. Well, actually, I probably would, I just want to polish it a bit first.

Oh wow, so I'm kind of concluding that this isn't so hard after all.

But, oh yeah. I'm kind of feel like I'm not doing the same research as everyone else. It was so easy to write up my project, but it's very hard to edit and choose what to omit and include and make letter-like and keep creative-fiction-y. So maybe that counts? I'm doing research into my soul. Oh..I just had a thought of some other side of the story I could have gotten when I realized that this isn't my journalism class, and I'm not writing up an article trying to be fair. This is my story from my point of view, and I will show it from my point of view. Screw being fair.

This is probably an extremely random blog post and I apologize. I could probably go on and on some more but I won't.

Wishing you the best,
~Dale B.

Drained of Emotion

You know what I noticed the other day in class?

I'm so screwed up.

Like, everyone was reading their beautifully written letters to loved ones and getting all emotional and everything and I had the strangest sensation.

I could tell what they were reading was sad.

I felt somewhat emotional.

But no tears came to my eyes.

It was really strange. And then it happened again this weekend. Something that I should have been sad or emotional about happened super abruptly to me, but here my eyes were, again, dry as a bone.

And I was in a position where it looked really bad that I wasn’t upset about it, which was even worse..

I also noticed something. I say I felt somewhat emotional because I recognized that I should be emotional and I normally would have got emotional because I'm an emotion person..but mostly I felt pretty numb.

Which leads me to question if my methods (i.e., not thinking about it and just essentially going numb) of dealing with a certain problem over the summer was the best plan. And if it screwed me up for good.

I was quite concerned about this, and had intended to write earlier about it, which probably would have been a completely un-objective pity party for myself. But then my best friend came up this weekend.

See, my best friend used to go to Kutztown, but decided that since they were cutting her major, she would transfer to West Chester. An hour (at least) away. So I hadn't seen her in three weeks.

So naturally we had a girl's day, and talked about what was going on with us. And I mentioned the numbness, as she had known about this issue I was having and how I dealt with it. And I was surprised and comforted to find out that she had felt the same way at one point.

So maybe I'm not screwed up after all. Except the problem itself seems to have come back, so all that effort to go numb may have been wasted. Ah, well, I know the easy solution, I'm just too much of a coward to take it.

Sigh. Back into the old rut.

~Dale B.

To Write is to be Whole

It occurred to me not particularly long ago that I think too much.

Well, maybe not too much, but a lot. Like, A LOT.

And of course I only feed this by reading anything I can get my hands on. I love nothing more than reading random articles on Wikipedia, which leads me to other articles, websites, and information. And I wonder why people label me as a nerd. Pft.

Anyway. It also occurred to me that all this thinking might not be normal. I know plenty of people who just don't think about things other than the daily occurrences of their daily lives. Or at least, I assume they don't, from what I've observed (See what I mean? Who goes around "observing" people?? Me, apparently).

Which leads me to an article I found one day, about "highly sensitive" people. In other words, people who feel too much, think too much about things, take too long to recover from stupid things. In other words, people like me.

So, because I think too much (have I mentioned that enough?) I, of course, spend much of my time thinking about how to "fix" myself; how to basically become better (yeah, I'm a perfectionist too). Anyway, I discovered something.

Now I'm someone who believes that everything happens for a reason. And I've come to the conclusion that whatever caused me to become this highly sensitive person coincided perfectly with me growing up with a love for reading, and then, later, writing. Because without being such a sensitive, thinking creature, I don't think there would have been any way that I would have been able to write with such fervor and about the subjects I do. I wouldn't be able to see the depth of things that I do see, and wouldn't be able to share them with the world.

Because the things that I say in writing are things that I can't accurately process in my own mind. There's too much going on up there, but they're good, deep things, and when I can focus on just one of those things through writing, I can make sense of it, and make sense of myself.

So I thank God for writing, for my over-processed brain, and for the fact that I am complete with both.

Just some thoughts.

~Dale B.

Rapid-Fire Writing

So we had this assignment in class the other day.

We were to write under the premise that we wake up one morning and we are something else, anything else.

Ready, set, WRITE.

What surprised me was how fast I actually got into the writing. I'm not the kind of person that can just sit down and write--actually, I don't think anyone really is. I need some STRUCTURE, a couple of GUIDELINES.

I knew this about myself, but still, an idea popped into my head pretty much instantly, and I just started to write. It was strange to me, the idea that I could sit down with one tiny sliver of inspiration, without my own set of deadlines and page lengths and be able ot produce something that, whatever length, could potentially get published. Woah. Was it supposed to be this easy?

And on top of that, I was writing at night, which was even better, because I actually felt awake. I know, backwards, huh? But that's just me. Inspiration from the night, when the light sinks out of sight...ok, enough of that.

Anyway, besides the general weirdness of this whole writing thing (which I had been doing for years, but never quite like this), there was something else I noticed.

When people shared in class, they had written concise, engaging, brilliant paragraphs, whereas I had written pages. And while my story was ongoing, everyone else's had nice clean endings. So it occurred to me that I have learned to elaborate far too well.

See, I had this enrichment teacher once. He had this thing about ELABORATING. When I started out in his class, I, too, could write concise little paragraphs. But a few class projects later, my papers were getting longer and longer, and more detailed. I once actually had an English teacher in high school tell me that I just had too many details in one sentence. Of course, this was the same teacher that refused to give me an "A" until everything was AP style-perfect, so that when I came to college, I was momentarily still lost in the world of the three-point thesis and five paragraph essay. So I tend to now question what she told me then. Still, I feel as though I've been ruined. But, hey, if it helps me to make a two page paper four, I'm fine with my little habit.

So these were the things I noticed in class the other day. Oh, and that, strangely, everyone had the same format of revealing little by little what they had turned into, creating a puzzle for the reader. It was quite interesting. Maybe the premise suggested that this is what should be done, but it wasn't really a conscious decision on my part, anyway.

Ok, I think that's all.

Until next class (or until I find something else to question),
~Dale B.