Points and wild horses

Just came back from Uppsala. Great weekend. My mood curve went up 100 points, then dropped 150 when the time came to leave. When I'm around these people, I'm in this bubble and I don't need anyone else. That's why I don't want to move there, because I think it's healthy to meet other people too, and it's scary to be so caught up. =P Then I thought, what the hell, you don't need anyone's acknowledgment to feel good, girl! Not even these guys, no matter how great they are. I didn't think I'd be so easily manipulated, but my mood curve took another flash-jump up 65 points. So now I'm pretty much back to normal. Especially since I've actually done my homework.

I don't know why I keep coming back to what feels like the same subject, but - another analogy since they're my thing: my mind is a horse, and I haven't tamed and trained it properly, but it's so beautiful in the wild that I'm reluctant to do so even if that would increase the effectiveness. Make sense?

I think reading The Game is helping my confidence. Weird. But appreciated.

Ever get the feeling that you don't belong in your own family? You're not alone.

I made one of those realizations today that I imagine makes the difference between kids and grownups (that sounded really cheesy, but I'll keep it). I've been criticizing my parents pretty hard for the way they've treated my sickly little most-beautiful-in-the-world... ehrm, I mean my cat. Mostly the way they've been talking about him, like he's over and out already. But it's just their way of dealing. Mom almost started crying today talking about him. Just watching him getting worse has been wearing on all of us, especially coupled with grandma's condition (which is all too alike). Some things I know without really knowing it, know what I mean? I know it intellectually, but I don't understand it. Well, today I better understood that I've been the one pretending I'm the only one who loves him, when we only feel it different ways. I've been missing the most part, away at school. They've been dealing with it day-by-day.

My family and I are still very different, and I still can't stand them too long periods at a time (but who can I stand too long periods at a time?), and often it feels like I'm the only one fighting to adapt so we can coexist, but they are my family. For better and worse.

Weekend summup =P

Well, I was down to K-stad this weekend, and it was nice. Been a long time since I roleplayed last. Though where we ended, it felt like I was caught between following the personality of my character and mess things up, or play nice. I've never been in that kind of situation before; I've always managed to find some viewpoint from which the character would want to do what he has to do, but not this time. Interesting.

Monday was a red calendar day, which I totally forgot, meaning I went to catch the bus at 1400 but realized there were none until 1700. Argh. So I went shopping and came back with A) the book The Game which will be incredibly interesting, I expect, and B) the game Bully which will be equally interesting but in a different way. Both bought from the perspective of psychology.

Now I'm going looking for silver rings, since my parents wanted to buy me something real and lasting for my birthday and no electronics count. How is it women's rings always look like cinderella would if transmuted into jewelry? Translation: I'm going to look for men's rings. Which are too big. I feel a slight ironic reference to something called story of my life. -_-'

Overwhelming moment: when you run into the guy you barely know the name of, but just dreamed you had the most amazing sex in the world with.

He looks like Matthew McConaughey gene-modified to my tastes. (That was one hard name to spell having only heard it before!) I believe I have mentioned him before. And the little I know about his personality I like, which can't be said about too many good-looking young men.

And he has a girlfriend. Which can be said about all too many of them.

Click to enlarge

Betters and Losers

What we know is boring. What I mean is: the grass is always greener on the other side. The whole point of the other side, is that it is where you're not. There's a whole sience about this: You don't miss the cow till the barn's empty, You always want what you can't have.
Meaning: we're all jealous.

We're all home-blind. What do all these dutch people see in Sweden? It's just forest. And what is it with germans and elks? They're big and ugly and get high on our apples (Not the germans, the elks). And yet, to my experience, the strongest jealousy is when we find someone we think are better on a subject we find ourselves good at. For my part, that means thinking someone else has written something that is better than what I can do. And my evil stepsister, my envy incarnate, dances around in my head.

But remember: this is what I tell myself.
1) People may like what you do even if they don't say anything. I do that often, like something but never come around to tell the person in question. Bad me. And it's often hard to explain why or determine what you like. (But don't let that excuse those people who constantly just call everything "good" and "nice".)
2) Jealousy is good. Jealousy fires me up, makes me want to do my best, prove myself. It teaches me things (just recently I stood corrected on the subject of using too many "," It took me a week to come to peace with that the critizism was true, but I came out a better writer).
3) Jealousy is bad. Don't let it conquer you so that you're never ever satisfied. If you're never satisified, you'll never finish, and you'll never get anything done. Find a way to put a limit where something is good, or why not perfect? Overworked works are just as bad as underworked.
4) "Better" is relative. Usually people are good at different things, and that is true even in very small subjects. Maybe I'm a hobby artist while someone else, like Björn, is more serious. Maybe I'm an author while someone else, like Rik, is a better poet. (See what I did there?) You can even take it further; maybe I'm better at writing psychological drama while someone else is better at psychological horror.
5) At the final cut, you shouldn't be the one grading yourself against others. Let others, complete outsiders, do that. And if you still lose, be a good loser. Then at least you're good at something.

Anyone got any better tips? ^_-

the Sleeper

sixtyfive dozen reasons for walking away
yet this single one force me to stay
to go on regardless the reasons
to live on in rules that aren't mine
to sleepwalk so that my emotions
go on and leave me behind

need you more than words can say
sixtyfive dozen times every day
to be there in calm and storm
to know that I am not weak
to see the truth I live within
for sleepers cannot speak

sixtyfive dozen reasons to break
for I have never been awake
and I admit that fear gets the better
and I continue to make the same mistake
and my strength is also my weakness
for this single reason is more than I can take

This I Share

This Is All held a real surprise for anyone who's read all the other books in the Dance-seqence. Wow. And I dunno why I started crying either, it wasn't such a big deal. Not like the overwhelmings of Dance on my Grave or The Toll Brigde. Maybe because everything is so perfect. Not happy shiny perfect, but right. I want to write like this, not copying his style, but the impact it makes on... reality? Me. There are things I don't like about how and what he writes sometimes. But then comes these moments, like watching your lover as the sunlight creeps over their sleeping face, and then... no wham, no lighbulb of revelation, but... suddenly everything is just... everything is forgiven. Everything just is.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, go to a library, borrow any book by Aidan Chambers, read... and be ashamed that you hadn't already.

And I haven't actually watched a lover as sunlight creeps over their face. =P But I don't know if you'd understand what I'm trying to say, if I'd said like watching your cat close his eyes and tuck his nose under his paw, or like throwing a glance over your shoulder and seeing those blonde spikes and angel wings next to you, or like watching eight huge, dirty machines spit newspapers on a production line surrounded by deafening thundering, because these feelings are special, and what makes us feel them is individual. Weird, isn't it? Because they're so grand, I'm sad sometimes that I can't share them.

Well... that's what I'm trying to do now and here, I guess.

A series of reminders to the world:

SketchChallenge-people, get down and give me twenty right now you lazy sons-of-*******.
Bored people, please peer at The Island, of course only for your own salvation.
Partypeople, if you have any more smart ideas, like, I dunno, renting leather string for me, tell me.
The manufacturers of a certain Corepad item, go fuck yourself, then get your job done.
Ninjas, don't play Sid Meier's Pirates! five hours straight unless you have Hulk-wrists immune to pain. But do play it, it's nice.
Gamers, check out the Zero Punctuation game reviews. I guess it's better if you know the games he talks about. But regardless, come on, he's Brittish.
And everyone else, please return those hundred bucks you borrowed. Yes, all of you. What? Don't remember?

Someone in my family have managed to mention a certain location beginning with the letter S at least once a day this entire vacation. And my parents keep saying we've spent too much time and money on trying to cure the cat already. I don't like them very much right now. If this is his time, fine. But if he's going to die because they're not helping, then I'll be damned. I'm about to put up the ultimatum that if they don't do everything in their power to help him, I'm not coming home any more weekends. But that may be crossing a line, I don't know. I'm tired of trying to argue with them. They just don't want him to have something they can cure, because then they have to make the effort.

I have nightmares about copyright lawsuits. Putting works (especially writings) up like this feels so freaky, even if, I mean, the internet is huge, who would actually steal my stuff, of all things? But it's a little like leaving the door to the toilet unlocked with a sign that says "busy". Most people would have common sense. Some don't, and then you're defenseless.

Sneakpeak!

The current SketchChallenge comes down today. The challenge went as follows: "Draw a man and a woman in identical uniforms, and make sure we can tell which is which." Once I'd done one nice picture, this other idea popped up and I had to draw that too. I dunno what the rules are about several pictures, but I guess it's just to choose one, or things would get out of hand. So I will post the first, serious one there, and here is the other version: