My Five Next Books.

That I need to read, mind you.

As much as I love reading--which is pretty much evident in my bookshelf size, conversation topics, and choice of majors--I have been pretty much a hypocrite lately as far as reading goes. I've been watching too much Doctor Who and tried to keep up with my coursework to actually read a lot for myself. This year I've only read two books for myself. So, after Looking for Alaska, which I'm currently reading right now, I plan to read the following.

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I've actually never read it, which astonishes my mom, seeing that she feels that it was crucial to her child rearing approach she used with me. From what I've read about it, it seems like I would very much agree with the message that is in it... I've just never got to it. I've seen/met Ray Bradbury twice, even have books signed, just never read it.

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I read this my sophomore year of high school and really loved it, but I think that the four years that have passed since then will present it to me with new eyes and hopefully a new perspective.

3. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I've never read any Hemingway until tonight, which I'm reading "The Snows of Kilomanjaro" and I really like his writing style. It's simple, but doesn't lack in thought or art.

4. Fool by Christopher Moore. I went to the book signing for this book and have it all signed and waiting to be read, I just never got to it. I've loved most of Moore's books I've read. I didn't like Island of the Sequined Love Nun as much, but I love some of his other books. It's based on the Fool in Hamlet, so I should like it.

5. 13 Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson. I've never read anything of her's, but after she took over for John Green while he was on maternity leave for the vlogbrothers, I looked into her books more, and 13 Blue Envelopes seemed the most interesting to me.

Well, I should probably do something academic or make headway on some project.

Itches Under the Skin.

Sometimes I just feel stuck.

Okay, so I feel stuck a lot. I'm a twenty-year old living at home, taking six classes at my local university and my hours at work recently got cut. I don't feel like I relate to a lot of people around me, I don't feel good enough, I feel like everyone is looking at me and they know that I haven't been living up to my potential for a while.

"And I have known the eyes already, known them all ... I am pinned and wriggling on the wall." [T.S. Eliot, "Prufrock"]

I go to school three days a week, I go to work two days a week. By the time I get to the weekend, I want to get out. The week is school-work-school-work-school. The weekend comes and I have these itches under my skin. I want to do something impulsive. Drive and keep driving. Dye my hair. Throw away a large amount of belongings. I just want to do something that visibly shows or I can talk about that shows that I'm in charge of my life. I mean, I know I'm not... I'm under the power of my circumstances that my place in time and space has granted me. There are little choices I can make, like what food I eat or what field I study that can lead to other, larger consequences, but those consequences are not in my control. I eat like a pig and I'm fat. I eat like a bird and I'm thin, but either way I'm going to be 5'9 and not-a-stick. I choose to study philosophy, but that choice leads [and requires] me to take other classes and have a bottled experience that I can make of it what I will, but what I make of it is limited to what is available to me.

Somehow I want to break out of this cycle. I don't know how.

I think I know what I like and what I'm good at, but I try to do those and I just feel like I fall apart. Like if I try what I'm good at and fail, I won't have anything. I can be told that I have more than most and I'll just feel like a bitch because I want more.

This is disjointed, and I'll probably add more later.

Life and Books.

I think I've lived my life trying to make the perfect novel.

Let me explain. For the last twenty years or so, I've been into reading [it can be argued at least 16, at any rate] and into writing for fourteen years or so. Granted I have a much bigger repertoire of what I've read versus what I've actually non-academically written, but I'm always making stories in my head. Or after I read a book, I think of different ways the characters could have gotten from point C to point D. I'll even watch the news and wonder about the people who are being talked about: why drove the man to walk down the street at the time he got shot? Where was he headed? Was it worth it? I'll even come up with stories about bacterium and advances in science. Stories surround us everywhere. Everybody has a story, is in their story. Every place has a story, or is involved in many stories. Being out in the world, which can sometimes be an irritating experience, at least gives me solace that I'm in a story. While walking down a street, in essence I'm walking down a huge library of many different stories.

I think it's that kind of thinking that has fueled a fair amount of my actions. Since I learnt what it meant, I considered myself a bit of a Romantic. I tried to live that lifestyle, but I found it to be too irrational and not in line with what I wanted in life. It's so distracting in many ways to try to be a character in your own story. Yes, it's empowering, but it most be wondered what the origins of your actions really are. Are you doing what you want because it seems to fit the kind of character you're playing in the story you want to be in, or do you actually want to do it?

I can name so many decisions I've made that were because I thought it would fit the character I wanted to be. Most were inconsequential, like what I wore, who I hung out with for a period of time [which can also be more serious, more on that later], what I ate, my exercise routine... But some of them were pretty important, like the people I hung out with [*cough* or dated *cough*]. It's one thing to be a bibliophile, it's quite another to manufacture a life based around the kind of character you want to be.

I think [/hope for the sake of today's midterm] that Booker T. Washington's [known as BTW in my American Lit. class] understanding of double consciousness as I understood it plays a huge part in this thought process. A double consciousness is something that humans do--we split ourselves in two: one is who we really, honestly are and the other is a manufactured facade to present to the rest of the world and be judged. Booker T. Washington was outwardly observed for most of his life as a black man, many would acquiesce to his intellect, but there were few who could see past the color of his skin and see the true genius, the true thinker under his skin color.

I don't think skin color is AS big of a deal now as it was then [it could be argued, but this post isn't about race] but truly the image we present to be judged usually isn't the same as what is actually inside us. It doesn't just fall to our looks, even though that is a frustrating barrier for myself sometimes. A lot of times, our actions are different than how we actually feel, because we feel pressure from somewhere [like perhaps an obscure love of books, or society] to act in a certain manner. I wonder if we stripped that aside and actually did what we wanted [within an average moral system] how different our lives would be?

Maybe if life was a book I could make some sense of it.

American Standards.

I was reading my Political Science book, which is a bit of a rare thing for me, but some of the facts struck me as odd.

One was that only 55% of Americans vote, which is believable, just incredibly sad. The second was that less than 1% of all Americans participate in a mass demonstration in a year. A YEAR. :O

I think it's pretty common knowledge that while Americans don't necessarily mean to not care as much as they obviously don't, this is just obscene. I find it funny when you hear the outrageously outspoken people and it's assumed, "oh those Americans are so passionate!" but no... we just have really loud extremists and a very apathetic majority.

Another fact that saddened me was that as far as political knowledge, on a global average, we rank second to last for least knowledgeable [second only to Spain in least political knowledge].

I wonder what we can do to change this.

Birthday.

Yesterday was my birthday and I'm not a teenager anymore. Not that I've really felt like a teenager for a while, but y'know, now it's official.

My birthday has gotten me thinking even more about getting my life on track. On the track I want it to be on... I mean, I'm doing better than a lot of people I know--I'm going to a University, I know what I want to do with what I'm learning, I'm taking classes that genuinely interest me and I love... I think it's more some of my lingering bad habits and bad mindsets that make me feel all non-1970's funky.

So while I was in my American Literature class, I started brainstorming what I want to achieve further and how I will organize it. Yay for clerical thinking!

As far as my health goes, I will...
-Exercise with my Wii Fit five times a week and do all the activities.
-Swim twenty laps in the pool three times a week.
-Do cardio two times a week or...
-Just do random running or walking things with friends that want to lose weight.

I really need to save up for a bike.

As far as my wanderlust goes, I think my more immediate trip will be San Francisco hopefully in June. My friend found some good deals and for a few days' hotel and plane ticket I would need less than $300. I would need to save more because of tour expenses or food, but it's not terrible. A good number to aim for the trip would be $600. A good round number I don't plan on spending all in San Francisco. I also want to go to VidCon, which is in a few months in Los Angeles and I would only need around $200, so I just need to carefully plan.

That's all I can think of.

CURRENT WEIGHT: [will post later]
BOOKS READ: 2/42
MONEY SAVED FOR SAN FRANCISCO: $150/$600

Rollercoaster.

[I had no idea what to title this, but my shuffle on iTunes starting playing a B*Witched song with the same name... It seemed fitting, I guess.]

I always wanted to blog.

I mean, I started this one in May, with absolute intentions to fill it up with reviews on books I was reading and my thoughts on the book industry and a whole bunch of random things linked by the sheer fact that they're book-oriented. That obviously worked out well.

Maybe it's just because it's not a habit yet. I just need to keep writing, it always makes me feel better. Writing like any art is a selfish pursuit. I mean, ideally, an artist is putting themselves out there and are producing something to make a statement with little to no regard to what society is expecting them to create. I think people lose sight of that, and it becomes marred in such a way that art loses it's artsy-ness and is just something pretty. Art loses its meaning when it's just to impress [though it could be argued that art that is created to impress is actually making its own statement about art or nature or another abstract topic art is supposed to cover].

So, in my own selfish pursuit, what am I going to try to create with this platform? What do I want to do?

There is so much I want to do. There is so much I want to say. For whatever reason I haven't pursued many of the things I have wanted to do and I haven't said a lot of the things I want to say.

I like lists, so THINGS I WANT TO ACCOMPLISH, HOW AND WHEN:

-LOSE WEIGHT. Not just, you know, a casual five pounds. No. I want to lose 45 pounds. This isn't an OMG-I'M-SO-HUGE! idea, I'm just sick of being unhappy with my image. My weight doesn't affect much of my life besides not liking how I look. I don't look like I need to lose that much even, but the scale and my doctor have said I should. I wouldn't mind reaching this goal in a year, a day before I'm 21, but I'd like to be comfortable in a bathing suit this summer. Which leads to...

-BE HEALTHIER. I suppose this should have been first, and technically losing weight falls under this umbrella, but I figure my weight is an aesthetic issue, and my health is a more pressing I-WANT-TO-RUN-AND-BIKE issue. I just need to eat healthier and push myself as far as my body can go, safely. So I plan on getting a bike in a month or so, but that means I need to...

-SAVE MONEY. I'm a sophomore in college who only works 10 hours/week. I'd work more if I could, but job has limited hours right now and I love my job, and I can't find anywhere to work that can fit in my schedule. I just need to start saving money automatically, and when I deposit my paycheck pretend I only have half of it. I need money to travel, dammit.

-READ MORE. Okay, I'm double-majoring in English and Philosophy so I read a lot at school. Since October I've had trouble settling down and actually getting into a book. I've only read two books for me since January, and only one I was actually actively engaged it [Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk]. I miss reading, and I'd like to hit my goal of reading 42 books by the end of the year that wasn't school related. I'm going to review what I read on here [I have 40 left for the year] and on Amazon, so hopefully that'll be good.

-GET BACK INTO PHOTOGRAPHY. I've always been fascinated by photography and loved taking pictures. Since October I have taken my camera out maybe three times and didn't take many pictures. I want to go out with my camera at least once a week and take at least five pictures I'm proud of and then put them up here and on deviantART, which I already have. I also need to revamp by deviantART again.

-WRITE MORE. I used to be a prolific poet, they weren't great quality or anything, but the catharsis of it is something refreshing, that I miss and I've already referred to. I'm going to write on here everyday unless I have a hectic/crazy/bad day. I'm also going to start writing short stories, around 500 words or so based on a random poem I flip to in a poetry anthology book.

That's about it for now. I'm getting used to this format, so I'm going to be troubleshooting for a while as far as HTML and making this user-friendly and pretty. Even if it's just for me.