Christmas! Thank Goodness!

I am so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so incredibly glad that Christmas break starts in 22 hours. So, so incredibly happy.

Over break, I am going to try to set up a meeting of all of my critique group. I haven't received comments from two of my group yet, so I will email them again.

As for the timeline, I'm probably just going divide the chapters I need to do by the weeks remaining. Nothing fancy.

Thank goodness those papers are over. I can breathe again.

The Week

This week has really just been me focusing on my papers. Stress, nervous breakdowns (almost), and all that whatnot.

I am very close to finishing the research paper. All I have left is adding a few more examples and finishing the introduction. I feel pretty solid about this paper. The vision paper needs a lot of work, but I finally found somewhere to live, hypothetically. According to my vision paper, I am going to be living in a 10x15 apartment in Seattle's Chinatown. Small, yes - random, yes -- but plausible.

I am excited for Christmas break. So, so excited. I wish I could fast forward to this Friday afternoon just to have these papers behind me.

Also, for those who care, I took the Myers Briggs Personality profiler and it came up with INFJ (Introverted iNtuition Feeling Judging). If you were curious.

Let's see... here's a line from a song I've come to love in the last two days...

"He says, 'Bill I believe this is killing me.'

As his smile ran away from his face.

'Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star

If I could get out of this place.'"

- "The Piano Man" by Billy Joel (my emphasis)

Another thing, and I may be stepping over some lines by saying this, but... I have much much more to say than what is mentioned here. So much more. But some things can't or shouldn't be shared or even said aloud. That's just asking for trouble. Sorry to be enigmatic, but it's getting late and you can tell by all these post scripts. I just felt like it should said, though it shall be remain unknown.

Progress!

It actually happened. I wrote for five hours over Thanksgiving break. It might not sound like much, but I feel like I have my... "mojo" back. I just have to keep the ball rolling and keep going at it.
I realized that I have a lot of stuff to do for my book. I have lots and lots of writing to do. But by golly I'm doing it.Recently, I have stopped watching as much television as I used to and I can feel my productivity going up as well as my overall wellbeing. I'm not saying that it will last, this television abstinence, but I'm okay with it for now.
Anything else... I am very happy to think that I'll be done with the research paper next week and it won't be over my head anymore. Not that I work on it a lot, but the mental burden will finally be relieved.
My eyes are burning. I was up until 12:30 last night doing homework and I had to stay at the school until 5:30 for tutoring. I feel exhausted. Thank goodness for the weekend.

Another Week...

another essay. My creative juices are running a little thin with all of this school writing.

Next week is the state Quiz Bowl meet.

I don't feel like I have much to say. What I want to do is work on my actual Senior Project. I find it incredibly frustrating that I am unable to do so because of all of the other whatnot. I know that there are people who feel exponentially more frustrated about Senior Project than me, so I'm glad that I am not one of them.

I am emailing out my first chapters today. I missed my original date of November 1 due to everything else. Little tasks seem to get pushed out of my mind when I have other massive deadlines looming.

In Economics, we are beginning to write a "Vision" paper of what we want to be doing in five years, lifestyle-wise and money-wise. We also need to say what we're going to doing the next four years to reach this ideal. Honestly, I cannot see myself past college. I cannot see myself working. If anything, I see myself in a scantily filled apartment with books, a laptop, and a lot of pens and paper. After college, the only job I can think of right now would be a copy editor or something. Getting to read books for free and fix their mistakes. Sounds wonderful to me. I don't even know where I want to live after college. Not Spartanburg, honestly. Maybe California or North Carolina or Germany. No idea.

This is a hard paper. Lots of thinking and right now, thinking is a scary thought.

Progress...?

I actually wrote for about an hour and a half last Saturday. It was at a party (yes I know that's weird) but the environment was quite productive.

If you didn't hear, we, the Oakbrook Quiz Bowl Team, are now SCISA Regional Champions. We beat Richard Wynn and St. Joseph's to take the title. The funny thing is, it was really close in the end (200 - 195) and when it was announced that we won, the entire room was silent. Everyone was in shock because, let's face it, we never win these things, especially against St. Joseph's. So we are going to the state meet. Amazing.

I feel better now that another wave of massive homework load has passed. I should be good for another week or two before the next wave comes.

Whistle

I have not worked on my book at all for a while now. That really, really bothers me. As for the research paper, I haven't touched it since I turned it in. That kind of bothers me too.

Right now, I'm not feeling very motivated and I really don't know what to write about here.

I might be applying to UNC Asheville next week so I can apply for their scholarships. It would be nice to get an acceptance under my belt. Now that I'm actually filling out applications, I keep looking back at other options and wondering if I disregarded them too soon... Nyah.

Whistle.

Deviant Journal Entry

Yes, I feel better now that the rough draft is done. It is definitely not one of my better works. The paper is really just a string of connected quotations, but I have a month to fix that.

On college news, I am not going to be able to meet Stanford's Early Action deadline. I entirely forgot about sending off my SAT scores, and apparently it takes five weeks for scores to be sent... yeah. I could spend an extra twenty dollars getting the scores to California in two days, but I feel shaky on the essay anyways, so I don't feel too bummed about the decision to wait for the regular deadline.

I finally got the last member of the critique group contacted. He is a male seventh grader who goes to Oakbrook. I will be emailing out the completed parts of the novel to the critique group over the weekend.

As to my actual writing, I am doing it bit by bit. Now that the rough draft is done, I might get some more writing done tonight. Not much to be done this weekend though, because I've got about four major things (quiz, book review, article, abstract) due on Monday.

The future is looking bright, right? It will be nice to have an evening where I don't need to work on school-related stuff until ten thirty and need to wake up early to complete it.

I have the urge to end this post with a quotation. Let's see... here's one.

"Don't judge a thing 'till you know what's inside it." - Bryan Adams

Ah heck, here's another one.

"Not all those who wander are lost." - JRR Tolkien