Notebooks

In this post, I briefly discussed my fear of sharing. Today, I'm gonna briefly discuss my fear of deciding.

I have dozens of notebooks. I love them! Writing in them is so fun and exciting... So why are the majority of them blank?

It's hard for me to take that "big step" of writing in a notebook for the first time. Suddenly, all the potential that the notebook had when I first bought it is destroyed. It becomes a planner. It becomes a song book. It becomes a messy mixture of drawings, lists, and ideas. It's no longer a journal. It's no longer a response log. It's no longer a fashion design book. All of its previously-held possibilities are stripped from it, and it becomes one thing, or a disorganized mixture of incongruous things.*

Similarly, it's hard for me to make decisions about college, careers, and my future in general. All the potential, all the possibilities I'd previously had to choose from are gone. With each additional decision I make, a potential future, a potential life, dies. If I choose to go to college A, the versions of me that chose to go to colleges B-Z die. If  I choose to become an artist, all the other versions of me that chose other careers will die. The astrophysicist dies, the actress dies, the teacher dies. Maybe two of them can live together, simultaneously, but, even with the option of cohabitation, countless versions of me will die. You can only do so many things in one lifetime.

This is making me think of the episode "Remedial Chaos Theory" from season 3 of Community. If you haven't seen Community, or if you haven't gotten that far in it, I highly suggest you make your way up to it.

"I wonder what happened in all those other timelines."

*Wow, that's a little cheesy. I'm cringing just the tiniest bit at that, and I wrote it. Ich.

Oops!

I've been just a tiny bit busy.
Since I last wrote, I've finished all 3 seasons of Community, started applying to colleges, decided that maybe I want to be a screenplay writer, and come up with an awesome idea for a Halloween costume that I won't share quite yet.

If I want to be a writer, I should probably write, right? So you can expect more from me now!
I don't have any followers at the moment, but my blog gets multiple views every time I post something, so there has to be someone reading these other than my best friend (hi, Rachel!). If you're that someone, I'd love to know!

I'm on my school's Academic Decathlon team, and part of Academic Decathlon competitions is giving impromptu speeches, so we've been practicing those lately. I have fairly significant stage fright, so, when I first started giving impromptus, I would just blank, and get nervous, which would make me pace, which would make the weak points I'd sometimes manage to stammer out even weaker by distracting my audience. Last weekend, however, I spent an hour or two responding to practice prompts, and now I am, if I may say so myself, a pretty good impromptu speaker. I spoke for the entire team last Monday and got a good number of laughs and compliments!
I've often thought, Hey. I could be an actor. I act things out by myself all the time (don't judge me; I can't drive and I don't live near anyone my age, so I'm alone a lot), and I normally do pretty well at it! There are a few problems with that idea, though. I have bad stage fright, and I've never really acted in public before. Maybe if someone told me I was a good actor, I'd have more confidence, and be able to act in public, but, because no one ever has, I can't. I've heard that some people, when they act, use their lack of confidence to help them get into another role, so they can forget about their self-doubts.

Wow, so, I started this post yesterday. Today, I was in a head-on collision with another car on my way to school. No real injuries, but this post's inspiration is just gone, at least temporarily. Maybe I'll finish it later.

On Not Knowing

I'm applying for colleges. I don't know where I want to go, or what I want to do.

Before, I was pretty closed-minded. I thought, "I'll be a teacher," or I didn't think anything at all.
I thought, "I'm not good enough at music to go into that."
I thought, "I'm not good enough or interested enough in sciences to go into that."
I never even thought about writing, acting, engineering.

Now, suddenly, I'm thinking, "I love movies! TV! Books! Everything! I'll write screenplays!"
I'm thinking, "I'll become an actor! I mean, I really do love movies and TV!"
I'm thinking, "I'll go into music anyway, and learn every instrument ever, and compose music!"
I'm thinking, "I love animals! I'll become a vet!"

But, to be honest, I still have no idea what I want to do, and I don't know where I want to start. I'm only a kid, by most interpretations, and challenges like college applications and career choices take a lot of thinking and planning and work, and, most importantly, a lot of starting, and I find myself coming up against this big wall of responsibility and freedom and it's scary, and, instead of climbing over it or going around it or breaking through it or something, I've just taken to pretending the wall isn't there and instead just staying on the side of it I was on originally and pacing back and forth, muttering about unimportant things that have nothing to do with all the very real deadlines that are fast approaching.

I see the freshmen walking around campus, and I just want to walk over to them and hug them. I want to do the same to the juniors. The freshmen are so far from where I am right now. The juniors are so close, but they still feel so far. EDIT: WOW, that sounds condescending. I'm pretty sure I didn't mean it that way.

Do you know what I mean about the wall? Do you ever get like that? And how do you get over/through/around the wall?
OK. Back to homework, and college-searching, and "Community."

Things I like doing when I'm sick

The following is a post I wrote a while back, but never got around to publishing:

I've been sick for a little over a week. Last weekend, it started to really hit me, but I (seemingly) slept it off. For the rest of the week, I had a runny nose, but that was my only real symptom. Now, it's back with a vengeance. So, here's a list of things I like to do when I'm sick (but can't do this time, because I really don't wanna have to miss school tomorrow and make up tests and homework and ugh it's just way too hard to miss school now):

• Sleep.
• Watch movies my family (and me, too) would normally give me a hard time for watching. Some past movies that fall into this category are "When In Rome" and "P.S., I Love You."
• Watch/catch up on tv shows. Last night, for example, I lay in bed watching How I Met Your Mother for a good few hours before going to sleep.
• Eat soup/drink tea/drink hot chocolate. I know eating or drinking dairy when you're congested only exacerbates things... but I like tea with milk and hot chocolate! And I'm sick! Leave me alone!
• Not doing anything that really requires a lot of thinking. Because... uh, I dunno.

So, you may have noticed that all of the above activities are also Things That People Do To Relax. I probably got sick because I was already stressed out and not in great health due to lack of sleep and the aforementioned stress and then someone else decided that they couldn't handle missing school*.

*It's ok, buddy. I get why you came to school sick. I get that the cons of staying home outweighed the pros. I get that you had a big test, that your AP classes have really unhelpful late work policies, that you had a lot of homework due and a lot of big lessons to sit through, and it was more stressful to think about doing all the late work than to just go to school despite being sick and power through the congestion. I get it.

On wasting time

School's started, and I feel like I wasted my summer online, scrolling down and down and down for hours on countless tumblrs (especially tumblrs that have infinite scrolling; oh, god), rarely leaving my house, rarely being particularly social, rarely doing any of the plethora of things I'd planned to do during my summer. Have you read that first post I wrote, "How to enjoy your last bit of summer?" Yeah, I didn't do any of the things on that list... Oops.

Now, I feel like I'm wasting my weekends, and I'm determined not to. This weekend, I will either go to a river, or I will go ice skating. I will practice instruments I have not practiced for a while. I will really study for the tests I have on Tuesday. I will maybe go swimming. I will leave the house and do something every day of this three-day weekend, and I will hopefully follow through on these goals now that they're being posted to the internet, because the internet is permanent and serious business and who am I kidding I could easily just edit this post after the weekend's over and I've done nothing again, as usual, as always.

I can easily make excuses for why I wasted my summer. "I had to recover from such a difficult school year! I can't drive! I'm lazy!" While they're all actually pretty valid excuses, I should've forced myself to make more of the two months I have each year in which I'm not forced to sit inside all day. I should've done something with those two months other than, well, sit inside all day.

But I didn't. Hopefully my regretting wasting my summer will encourage me not to waste my weekends.

Do you feel satisfied with how you spend your free time? Is that too heavy of a question? What's your favorite color? Is that better?

On the fear of sharing, and school supplies

My last post, "On Doctor Who," sat there, saved as a draft, for nearly a week before I finally got up the nerve to click the orange "publish" button.

Maybe I'm scared to post things to the internet because I'm scared of doing something stupid and being judged for it, maybe because I'm scared of somehow going viral for some reason, maybe because I don't want to become even more addicted to the internet than I already am. Whatever the reason, however, I am, indeed, scared of posting things to the internet.
Part of me thinks this is a fear to be overcome, that it's like stage fright, and that I need to just grow up and push past it.
Part of me also thinks that, maybe, I feel that fear for a reason. Maybe some part of my subconscious knows that no good will come if I post too many things to the internet.

Regardless, I feel that fear. And, regardless, I'm posting things to the internet.



I love shopping for school supplies. I'm not sure why I do, but I know it's not just me, and that lots of people love shopping for school supplies. Maybe the act of buying something new reminds students that there is a new year about to commence, and maybe the act of buying is just really fun. Regardless, school shopping is awesome.

Sorry for the lower-quality post.
Do you enjoy school shopping? Do you ever get internet posting-related anxiety? I'd genuinely like to know.

On Doctor Who

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”

― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

That's how I felt about Doctor Who when I started watching it maybe 5 years ago. I always tried to get people to watch it, and I would always be overjoyed to find another person who watched it already, because, in America, or, at least, where I live, it was like a secret little club.
I know a lot of people found out about Doctor Who through Youtubers like Charlie McDonnell. Incidentally, I found out about Charlie McDonnell and other Youtubers through Doctor Who. One day, my mom showed me the original video for "Blink," and I was already a Whovian, and I thought it was great. A few years later, I thought, "Hey... I wanna watch that video again. And I wonder what that guy's doing now!" Well, "that guy" was getting close to hitting a million subscribers, and has since passed that mark.
While I think it's great that so many more people are discovering and enjoying a great show, I miss the feeling of being in a secret club that came with the show not being very well known in America. If you found another Whovian, you'd quote little bits of the show and discuss your favorite episodes, and you'd know that, if they liked the show, despite it not being popular, then they must really like the show. They weren't doing it for appearances. You'd have this thing that you both knew about, and the people around you had no idea.
I normally keep this feeling to myself because people see it as an "incorrect" feeling to have. People mock you for being a "hipster," and feel insulted, attacked, if they're one of the recently-converted Whovians. I don't mean to insult or attack!
Maybe part of the reason I feel this way about the show is that I tried to get people to watch it when I first found it, but they wouldn't. Now, they're watching it because they've heard about it on tumblr, on Youtube, from other people, and that's great! I'm glad they're watching it! I'm glad they're enjoying it! I am, however, a little hurt that they wouldn't watch it when I suggested it, but are watching and loving it now. And that's another part of the problem: I don't know that they really are enjoying it. There are some new Whovians who obviously enjoy the show as much as I think they should, but there are even more who seem to like it because it's "cool" to like it, without really appreciating it for being as fantastic as it is.
But, of course, that's ridiculous; I can't know whether or not they really like it! Furthermore, everyone reacts differently to things, everyone likes different things for different reasons and at different levels. But the "weird evangelical zeal" that Doctor Who instilled in me carried with it an expectation that new viewers would also be filled with that same feeling. So, when I hear someone say, "Doctor Who is weird, but I like it," I'm glad that they like it, but I'm also a bit angry and defensive about their thinking it's weird, imperfect. This is also, of course, ridiculous, because it's not perfect -- nothing is. It just feels like some kind of blasphemy to insult the show, because I've been so attached to it for so long.

I feel torn because, while I'm really happy that they like the show, I liked it being a "secret" (in America), I'm hurt that they didn't watch it when I recommended it to them, but are watching it so much now, and I feel like they don't always like it "enough" or "in the right way." I try to fight feeling angry about it, because I know that's not fair. People watched the show before I did, and I would have been sad and defensive if someone was angry about my watching it.
And, I suppose, I'm also a little hurt because, since I've loved it so much for nearly 5 years, the show is personal for me. I love it, and I don't want to share it. Which is, of course, ridiculous. The show isn't mine to share. Other people are sharing it with me. A whole other country is sharing it with me. I have no right. And, yet, I still feel this way.

Doctor Who isn't the only thing I feel this way about. Do you feel this way about anything?

How to enjoy your last bit of summer

I know why I'm writing this post. It's because there's no better incentive to do something than knowing that there's something entirely different that you should be doing instead.

My summer's almost over (it already feels like it's over because all these clubs and groups are deciding to start meeting and making us students do things before school even starts), and I'm worried I may have wasted it. I'm sure there are other people, students or otherwise, who feel similarly and want to be able to look back on their summer with satisfaction rather than mild disappointment. To help myself and anyone else interested achieve that goal, I've made some guidelines for "How To Enjoy Your Last Bit Of Summer And Not Hate Your Past Self For Wasting So Much Time Seriously Come On Did I Really Need To Watch All Those Cat Videos." Of course, some of them won't be universally relatable, but I can only write from what I know.

1. Get off tumblr. For anyone who has discovered how ridiculously addicting tumblr is, it may be tempting to sit inside all day looking at pretty pictures of people doing things outside instead of actually doing things outside yourself, but after the third day of wondering what happened between 9 a.m., when you woke up early to be productive, and 1 a.m. the following morning, when you finally managed to tear yourself away from your computer screen, you'll start to regret ever hearing of tumblr. (If this is the first time you've ever heard of tumblr... I'm sorry. Also, this guideline has now done the opposite of what I intended it to. Rather than enjoying your last bit of summer, you may find yourself spending countless consecutive hours looking at Sherlock gifs and pictures of Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield. Try to resist, for summer's sake.)
2. Wake up early enough that you can still do something fun with your day. While sleeping late may feel nice, it does steal away some of the time in which you could be doing other things.
3. Even when you're stuck in one place, where there is seemingly little to do, don't let yourself become bored. There's always something to do. You're only bored if you're boring. (Too harsh? Sorry.)
4. If you haven't done the stereotypical "summer stuff," get out there and do it now, while the weather's still warm enough and you're still free enough. Haven't spent a day lounging around by a pool, or swimming around in a pool, or at a beach, or on a hike, or having a picnic? Haven't had an insane all-nighter movie night? Haven't gone to a fair, or a carnival, or a concert? Do it now! You might not have time once summer's over.
5. Do the things you promised yourself during the school year that you'd do during the summer. You owe it to Past You (typing that makes me think of when, in "How I Met Your Mother," Present Ted says he hates Past Ted) to do the things you spent whole class periods daydreaming about.

And, by the way, I'm Violet. I am, among other things, a Nerdfighter, a Whovian, a Browncoat, and a Sherlockian. How/who are you? I'd genuinely like to know! Some things I intend to do with this blog include reviewing things, making lists, and hopefully also making both sense and good points.