Something I’ve noticed about this world today, and maybe you’ve noticed it too, is that social media has become the main platform for not only giving news, but receiving news, updates, and connecting with people. You all know that I’ve got a Twitter (@Ipenned), and an Instagram (@Written_in_the_photo), as well as a Booksie account (@ImpulsivelyPenned) and this blog. One crucial element I feel that has been missing from my social media life (besides Facebook which I rarely ever go on) is a YouTube Account. I’ve been talking about making one for ages and I think I will finally follow through with my talk.
I will be starting it up in the next few days. What will I talk about it, you ask? What will it be about? I’m thinking of weaving some mental health stuff in, information about peer support, where to find it, how to find it and how to give it. Maybe some gaming, some rants, a little bit of everything, and some shoots of the ocean to show you the life I live and the travels I go on.
If there is anything you would like to know about me for the first video, or about peer support most importantly, post your comments down below or email me some questions through my contact page. I will be answering questions in the first video. I would also like to collaborate with people who are also up-and-coming YouTubers, people who are just beginning, or who have begun and would like a new face on their channel. If you are any of those people, or any other people, contact me through my contact page and I’ll surely address you.
This is an exciting time for a millennial like me, all this new technology, and I figured I might as well take advantage of it, despite the hate I may get. I think one of the best ways to get a message out there is to try. And YouTube seems like a great way to connect with people I’ve never had the change to connect to before.
So again, have any questions or comments or maybe even concerns, shoot them in a comment below or send them to me through my contact page. We’ll see where this journey leads us.
Oh don’t worry your, um, . . . exceptionally average little face, I won’t take you into the woods and leave your brain splattered on any trees. Hm? The gun? Oh, I keep it on me at all times.
Why do I need a shot gun you ask? For . . . reasons.
Walk with me.
You see reader, through my eyes the world is a little bit different. Colors are too bright and burn a hole in my retina. People’s stares ravage my self esteem and their voices snatch my attention: what did they say about me? Like that guy, that guy that just walked past, what did he say about me? Why was he staring? Does he know something? hm? He wasn’t talking about me, you say? Than who was he talking about? His niece, you say? Hmm.
Reader, shh, do you see the car up there? Yes, the one parked by the curb. People are in it waiting for us to walk past, they could snatch us or spray us with sleeping gas or, even worse, stare at us: we should cross the street.
The world I see is full of people with a hidden motive, with a malicious intent, and I was sent here from wherever I belong to debunk those motives, dodge those intents, and creative a life worth living. Demons (my best friends) sit on my shoulder to whisper random thoughts into my ear and mood swings twist my head until I’m dizzy enough to fall off a cliff with a purpose to gain a steady vision of things in the afterlife . . . this couldn’t possibly follow me there, could it?
The cars-except the Tesla Models-burn rubber against my ear drum. All the noise, it rips through my nerves and squeezes the life from my heart until the muscle itself, not to mention my confidence and dignity (those have been smothered for years anyway, I’m sure they’ve suffocated by now) is withered and torn. It makes me feel, well . . . unsafe.
Hm? My gun makes you feel unsafe? Oh my dear, dear reader, you’re so silly. Keep up, will you?
Don’t be offended by both earphones in my ear, it’s not that I don’t want to listen to your silly little inquires, it’s that I can’t handle this noise any longer. Music is the ultimate soother of all shattered souls, did you know?
The world is a frightening place.
Let’s watch the ducks for a moment, they’re not frightening. In fact, they’re rather cute. I don’t say cute very often, not in front of strangers, at least.
I would like to jump over this fence and get a picture of them in the water. Why don’t I, you ask? Is that what you said? I can’t hear you. I’ll assume you did.
Listen to all the cars pass on the street beside us. What if they think I’m jumping into the bushes to do drugs? What if they call the police and I’m jailed or shot all over my aching need for duck pictures? Do you know how embarrassing it will be telling people in Hell how I died?
I don’t want people staring at me, reader. We’ll wait for a break in the cars.
. . .
. .
.
Now!
You didn’t do it fast enough, they saw you, that car right there. You don’t care? Well, it must be nice to live a care-free life like that, huh?
Just remember, someone is always watching you. You may not see them, you may not even feel them as I do, but their eyes are upon you. I feel them over my shoulder sometimes. Sometimes they’re sitting next to me, sometimes they’re simply all around. Hm? What? Speak up!
Oh, how do I know, you ask? I just know. I can feel them. It’s why I can’t sleep, it’s why I hesitate telling you these things because I know they are watching and listening. Who is listening, you wonder? Well . . . even I don’t have an answer for that dear reader. I only know they exist in one form or another, whether that be physical, spiritual, angelic, demonic, a royal stream of consciousness perhaps . . . when you’re as connected as I am, you will understand.
It’s all in my head, you say? Perhaps so.
The ducks are gone. Your considerably late leap must have frightened them off. If the world is as twisted and frightening for them as it is for me, I understand why they took flight.
Do you like my photo, reader? Yes?
Just know it would have been ten times better with a duck if you wouldn’t have fucked it up. Let’s continue this walk, shall we?
My brain plays tricks on me often reader, does yours ever play tricks on you? No?
You’re a liar. You can’t leap for shit and you’re a liar, are you proud of yourself?
I apologize. Let’s take a stroll through the trees, perhaps they will calm me. I need to get away from all these people, it’s a madhouse out here. Yes, I’m talking about the two people we passed walking here, that’s a madhouse. Did you see their stares? They were either trying to scratch my soul or get inside of my head and were they to reach either it would mean ten thousand years of darkness. Now you know why I walk with my eyes down.
That and I don’t like being stared at.
This is the quiet I’ve been looking for:
I think I can take an earphone out. There are times when the silence of nature is the best medicine. And by silence, of course, I mean the breeze through the treetops above, the steady hum of the vocalist in my left ear, your whiny ass comments, and the voices in my head.
Do I hear voices? Why does everyone ask me that? I need to stop talking to myself in public. My answer is: not in the way you’re thinking.
We all have voices in our head, my friend. Some are our conscience, some are our friends, our enemies, some are internal, some are external, but we should be able to agree they are all, to a great extent, an extension of ourselves, of our emotions, of our repression, of our society, and of our humanity.
Do you ever wonder about what you can’t always see, dear reader?
What do I mean? Why, you don’t think this reality is reality, do you? Haha!
Ha!
Oh, you’re serious.
People are too caught up in narrowing themselves into a standard, and consequentially narrow reality into the standard with them. And if you don’t fit that standard, well, prepare to live a life riddled with doctors and diagnoses, instability, doubt, confusion, anger, shame, self-loathing, disbelief, and loss of hope.
No one took the time to understand my beliefs, they instead forced their beliefs of my beliefs upon me. Silly humans.
What kind of beliefs, you ask? What another silly question. Why would I tell anyone any longer? What did that get me before besides laughs and overbearing psychiatric “concern”?
Let’s take the focus off of me. Let’s put the focus back on life.
I think we’re out of the woods. There’s a wall of cloud over the ocean up ahead, can you see it? That’s alright, it comes and goes. Some how we always make it out in the end.
As some of you know, one of my hobbies is photography.
I’ve never thought of pursuing anything professionally ( in terms of taking classes, studying my heart out, and making a career out of this) but I do enjoy learning what I can about contrast, about lighting, about angles, about context and all other aspects of the art.
I probably know nothing. But I like to think I do.
My mother made a suggestion that I make a calendar with photographs specific to each month because I shot this on Christmas:
I could probably get rid of that candy cane off to the side. It’s a give or take in my eyes.
I would like to get into shooting more abstract things, and portraits. I’d like to do some good cityscapes too. I enjoyed doing this on the roadway:
I just like messing around. I think the effects are cool.
This bird says hello. I made him a little more . . . artistic and aesthetically pleasing to my eyes, as you can probably tell:
But nature has it’s own beauty and when I went out to the cliffs this evening to do some homework away from this chaotic household, I stopped halfway up the driveway and ran back into the house for my camera case and camera. I figured if I caught the sunset, I could get some cool shots. Here are a few:
Luckily the roar of the ocean on the sands edge below drowned out the screeching Superbowl fans from the houses across the street.
At the end of the day only me and one smoker guy were left admiring the skyline and sinking cement boat off in the distance.
Once again: cement boat. Not one of humanity’s greatest inventions.
Whether I’m horrendous at shots or generally “alright” for an amateur, photography is like a meditation to me. My head zones out and I focus only on what I need to focus on; I see the patterns and the shapes and the opportunities and for a chunk of time I think of nothing else lest that something else have an importance towards my original focus. I emerge from the experience refreshed, at one with myself, with my camera and with whatever random event or object I’ve etched into a digital file.
Photos to me snap more than a quick moment in time, they hold within them a quick moment of myself, a moment of my thoughts, and I see that reflection in them.
It’s much like writing a fiction piece or manuscript; your characters will always have a sliver (or more) of you in them and you will notice that reflection whether you intended for it to be or not.
If I don’t see myself in the art I create, I feel no attachment and often scrap it. Art is for the self as much as it is for the enjoyment of others. I think that’s what makes it often so undeniably momentous.
I think I have a weird obsession with photographing leaves and paths:
I seriously have a problem. It’s an obsession.
I took those about a week and a half ago and haven’t been out on a photography bender since.
It’s hard to get out sometimes. It’s like everyday is one of those weekend mornings that you lay on your back in bed knowing that you have to do laundry, go to the grocery store, run the kids to soccer practice, pick the kids up from soccer practice, clean the kitchen, scrub the bathroom, tidy up the living room, water the lawn, wash the windows, wash the car, sweep the porch, and pay the bills and you just don’t have the motivation to do any of it.
I don’t even have to do any of those things. If I did I probably wouldn’t; I’d sleep the days away, I know I would.
Because I’ve been at my college for two and a half years now, they give me priority status for choosing my classes. Tomorrow I’ve got to pick what I’m going to take for next semester and I’m worried the same thing is going to happen all over again. I’m going to get depressed and overwhelmed and stressed and drop a whole load of them and get stuck at this stupid college for another year.
Everything is going so fast.
That’s probably why I love photographing things that are still and peaceful. Some people are into that motion photography and giving a glimpse at busy city life and it makes them happy and that’s cool. But it’s not for me. I like to capture one single, still moment I can appreciate that is the exact opposite of how my brain works. Maybe it helps me slow down, I don’t know.
I’m probably analyzing something I don’t need to.
There’s one class, a psychological research class, I need to take in order to get my degree. I signed up for it this semester but dropped the second day because wholly fuck I was not prepared. I was not prepared at all. It was a small class, and I could have handled the group work. He said it wouldn’t happen every class period, but frequently. He said it would happen all the time in the lab. I’ve been in labs in other science classes and I get along fairly well with labs, especially in biology or chemistry.
I never told you all about the girl in my biology lab who thought she was hot shit and joined our group and started directing us all over the place and couldn’t do simple math, so I took over and basically told her to fuck off in the most polite way I could and then when it came to do the presentation I fell silent not because of my anxiety for once (although partly) but because she kept acting arrogant and didn’t want to participate so I made her do the presentation. It was funny. She struggled explaining her ideas mostly because they were dumb. At the very end I basically disregarded everything she said in front of the class and said the correct things. The next lab Friday she sat in the back of the class away from us.
I had won the battle and became queen of two Latina chicks who spoke alright English but sometimes struggled with the wording the textbook. My kingdom was small but mighty.
Anyway, we dissected hearts of sheep (two people nearly fainted for some reason) among other things and we teamed up with the anatomy lab to see four carcasses. A lot of people couldn’t handle it. So only a few of us went in the back and they taught us the anatomy of the heart by shoving a human heart in our face (thing is huge), and they showed us cirrhosis of the liver by shoving a diseased liver in our face, and they showed us all the intestines and all that yummy stuff by letting us lean over their work space and stare into the cavern of the four bodies. And I thought to myself: this, this room here full of these people with all their gloves stuffed inside the dead bodies and white lab coats that nearly touched the floor on short people, this is where serial killers are born.
I love labs. Something exciting always happens. But the lab for that psychology class was a bitch. First of all it happened right after class ended, so you sat in that room with those people for four and a half hours every Tuesday and Thursday. You had to schedule in time to conduct six experiments of your own at some point during the semester with psych 1 students and he didn’t even give more information on it. The one thing about bad social anxiety is that by the time you build up the courage to ask a question to clarify things for you, you’re already lying in bed at home like shit, I should have asked.
But then you remember how stupid you might sound and then you curl up in your blankets and say fuck it, I’ll just drop the class.
One of my goals is to get my social anxiety under enough control that I can finish that class. I have no other option, honestly.
So that class is number one million on the list of classes my anxiety has interfered with. I need to take another Ethics class, which I’d love to do since I love Philosophy, but I remember peering in on their class to do my own personal socially anxious research ritual and saw that they did huge group presentations and projects. I can’t even think of a simple sentence to say in front of people; thinking analytically in front of them is near impossible.
Let me write my words out on the board and just have the class read it. Then i’ll do it.
I want to take the Eastern philosophy though. I’m sick of learning western ideas. It’s boring.
There’s no way I’m ready to take that psych class again. So the only class I know for sure that I’m taking is math. That’s stress enough right there.
I couldn’t handle taking a language class. A whole class devoted to oral repetition? Ha! Kill me first. Everyone, friends and classmates and such, always said I should take Spanish. Obviously I want to learn, I’m not so much of an idiot that I don’t see that I’m going to need to be Bilingual with the next most popular language in my area. But when I say “No” they take it as “No, I don’t want to learn because I’m racist and don’t like the language. I’m black and therefore sick of being around non-black people who I can’t relate to because I’m racist. I’M RACIST.”
No motherfucker, I’m not taking it because I can barely say a coherent sentence in English in front of people when my brain stops the words in my throat and sends them below and I end up standing there like an idiot. How do you think I’ll act in a class where the majority of the people already speak fucking Spanish and are just taking it because it’ll be easy as shit for them? I’ll sound even more stupid. I don’t feel like being laughed at.
I want to feel at least a tiny bit more comfortable speaking in my own Language before I try and learn a new one.
Problem is, I also can’t get into the University I want to without language. The school system is directed towards Extroverts. The whole world is.
But does anyone get that? Of course not. I’m just a racist and a cynic. You know, I’m African American and Native American in a family that’s always, always worked hard and still lives in poverty and is torn apart by addiction but I’m the racist and the cynic. Because that makes sense.
I just don’t know about anything anymore.
Ha, just kidding. I know I’m not taking physics again. These professors suck (it’s not just me who says that, ask anyone who takes physics as my college) and the Physics Learning Center makes me shudder. Too small, too many people, and they’re all arrogant.
I’m arrogant too, but at least I’m not so flamboyant about it.
This time it only took nineteen minutes to load the page. That’s a new record, I think.
Whatever.
Anyway, just because I love writing–as I’ve stated many, many times before–does not mean I don’t get annoyed by essays. They’re honestly a pain in the ass. It’s worse knowing that I can pull it off in a day because I seem to have an insatiable urge to test myself; you know, I’ll wait until the last minute and bust out seven pages and then laugh when I get told it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. As of right now, with my essay due on Thursday and absolutely no theme in mind, I’m giving myself the ultimate test–by default and procrastination.
So instead of mapping out my essay I’m sitting here blogging.
In high school those I knew who were undergraduates and often asked me for help editing always wanted tips on how to plan out essays and they suddenly doubted my skill when I gave them the look of a deer in headlights.
Hmm.
Two things:
Don’t expect me to explain something verbally with coherence, that’s literally the bane of my existence.
My map of an essay is more like an inexperienced serial killer opening their first victim.
I’ll leave it at that.
I don’t think I’ll ever know how to answer that question. I see people with these neat little structures and labels and dates on their notes that look like they’d been edited and perfected for the last five years of their life rather than the last five minutes and I see them print words on their paper all carefully as if the break of their pencil tip is the destruction of the Earth.
I’m over here murdering pens, cussing out the ink, talking to myself until the student next to me slowly inches his desk away, and slapping words across the paper like it’s a Jackson Pollock. By the time I’m finished with my “outline” my paper looks like a bloody crime scene. My pen tips are singed. My ideas are little word bubbles across the tops, sides, bottoms, and backs of my pages and when I’m finished with my essay it looks like fifty different people wrote it on account of my ambiguous handwriting.
So to those people who structure their notes like their parents probably structured their entire life: how do you do it? How can you be so neat? How is your brain so organized? How can you think amid the absence of chaos?
Weird.
Thoughts fly the speed of light behind my eyes and if I’m lucky enough to catch one they tend to be pretty solid. You would think I would complain that I’m always distracted (I am) and that I think too much (I do), but I couldn’t see myself dotting my I’s with little hearts and neatly underlining main points and then going paragraph by paragraph. That just goes to show how your mind’s been sculpted. I prefer my Pollock to a Michaelangelo any day.
The good thing about thinking a mile a minute is you never run out of ideas. If there’s a timer, you’re sure to beat it. You might put too many words on the page and ideas might clash, but because you’ve finished a half an hour ahead of everyone else you can sit comfortably in your chair and proofread. Why get frustrated over something that has it’s advantages?
Maybe people get frustrated at it because they can’t see the advantages.
I saw one of my classmates in my literature class with Cornell notes from another class. If you don’t know what Cornell notes are, they’re this very strict method of note taking where, generally speaking, you split your paper in half and write your notes on the left side and questions on the right, ones that are meant to be answered by your notes. Or some shit. Whatever; high school tried getting me into it. I refused. Blatantly. I accepted my loss of points for non-compliance proudly.
This is the same high school that, year after year, handed me papers in Spanish to take home to my parents. If you’re not going to respect me than don’t expect me to be a little zombie for you.
Not only did they try to tell me what to think, they also tried to tell me how I’m supposed to take notes about what they want me to think about. So . . . where’s my brain come in again?
Cornell notes work for some people. Not me. Too structured, too organized, and much too standardized.
Is it a coincidence that the classmate with the Cornell notes also happens to be that one who always blurts textbook knowledge and falls flat on his face when he attempts to connect with writing pieces emotionally that I’ve mentioned several times? Hmmm.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps not.
Then you have the people who are so stressed about sounding “professional” rather than discovering their own voice, they slap their face in a thesaurus and bob for words. I love those people.
My senior year in high school I helped a friend edit his papers for his literature class (he apparently had one of the “hardest professors”) and although the essay was meant to be personal, a sort of introduction for the professor to learn more about the student and assess skill, he veered off into the dark abyss of “words that sound smart”. Suddenly he was in a “vacuous playground of no consequences” and “exposing himself to entities.”
I have no idea what the fuck kind of metaphor, I . . . what . . . exposing himself?
Words are a dangerous game, my friend; they can make you and they can break you.
***blows smoke from end of word gun, spins around fingers, slips weapon back into holster and flies into space***
He’s transferred to a university now, and hopefully isn’t exposing himself to anyone or anything.
Lesson? Sometimes the less you think, the better you sound. Your brain thinks in words all the time, it doesn’t need you busting a vein over it.
Here’s a little fun-fact about me: I’m terrified of spiders.
A lot of people are, I think. One incident I sat on the edge of my bed watching television. A brown, long-legged and probably harmless arachnid leisurely descended from the ceiling a few centimeters from my face with it’s little stick legs extended and probing outward toward my nose. I screamed and smacked it in hopes it would fly across the room but instead it swung at me with all it’s legs stretched in claw formation ready to clasp its prey and landed somewhere on my body. I screamed again, leapt from my bed, smacked myself to bruises, burst through my door screaming for my parents and slammed into the wall.
Needless to say I did not sleep in my room that night. He had won the battle but not the war.
He was probably like “what’s your problem, bro? I just want to suck your blood, fuck. Can’t a spider get a ‘lil love in this joint?”
I also stay up late and so do they.
One night at 2am I lay in my bed watching South Park and laughing my ass off as usual until something black tickles the corner of my eye. I stared behind the area of my television and there’s this thick black dot the size of a United States Fifty Cent piece crawling from underneath my world map. He was planning his world domination tactics; Hitler Reincarnated.
DEVIL SPAWN!!!!!!!
I was frozen. I’ve never seen a spider that large other than ones hanging in webs or just chillin’ on the ground outside. This dude somehow squeezed in my room and decided to harass me.
We stared at each other. I knew he felt my presence because I felt him feeling my presence. He remained stationary. The whistler band from the old Clint Eastwood movies peered around the corner of my door and whistled the signature tune as I crawled towards this beastly bastard, heart thumping, neck sweating, mind racing. His leg twitched. I grew rigid. He turned. My bones ached. He breathed, I breathed, he stared, I stared, and for a few minutes we raced through time together at the same speed, in the same direction, until my balls dropped and I gained the confidence to raise myself eye to eye with him. My teeth chattered so I clenched them; he could smell cowardice.
I fell backwards as he flew towards the corner of the room. There he scrunched, confident in his defense but insecure in my offense, and I stood confident in neither my defense or offense. At such an hour I couldn’t wake my parents so I sat on the edge of my bed with one eye on Comedy Central and the other on the mass cowering in the corner. Our standoff lasted until sunrise. My father squished him dead.
I always feel a mix of sorrow and relief. If we would have had means to pick him up and put him outside, we would have, but him being so scrunched in the corner and so large, neither of us were going to make an attempt.
I took every item out of my room that day, including my bed, until the floor was spotless, the closet was uncluttered, and every nook or cranny had been vacuumed out.
There isn’t a moment in my life where I don’t remember being disturbed by spiders. It’s the legs man, it really is. They’re so . . . reachy, you know? They just probe around like they own the place. That’s what makes the alien things in the movie Alien so terrifying when they launch their bodies around people’s faces: it’s the legs!!!
In nature, I think they’re fascinating creatures. I could spend countless hours watching them spin their webs and catch their prey and suck the life from them; it’s such a pleasing experience. It was the one thing I set out on a mission to find yesterday when I went for my walk with my camera. That’s something I would love to have in a single, still frame; just a spider in it’s natural habitat, the thing I fear the most at it’s most comfortable and perhaps most vulnerable. It takes away some of my fear. They’re just trying to live as much as I am.
But, you know, I don’t go crawling up people’s walls and flopping around in their face.
It’s alright. They don’t know any better, they just want some food. Next time maybe I’ll feed one a snack.
I guess if I wanted food enough, I’d scare the shit out of people by descending from the ceiling on their faces and flopping around speaking in tongues. They’ll be out of the house so fast I could just raid their kitchen cabinets. Kind of like:
I walked through all those trees, all those paths, and didn’t find one damn spider in one damn web doing one damn thing. All there was were squirrels trying to ambush me with tree branches. I was disappointed. Until I stared through all eighty of my photos piece by piece and found something amazing. I cropped it out of the larger photo and this is what I found:
Do you see the little guy? Click on the photo; he’s at the top!
YES, I GOT ONE BY COMPLETE ACCIDENT.
He’s tiny, but he’s cute, and I was so ecstatic when I found him my parents didn’t understand what was wrong with me. I exaggerate everything, remember?
So I say suck it spiders, I caught one of you even though I know you were all hiding from me on purpose. Got you.
I shall name him Vex.
Why? Because fuck it, that’s why.
My next theme will be cityscape, I think. Something to do with cities. Buildings. Signs. Something like that. I’ve never had the opportunity to do something like that before, so I’m going to try it.
I’m going to look like a lost tourist taking pictures of random shit, but screw it.
One guy tried taking a picture of a swim center sign yesterday with his iphone. He couldn’t get it right I guess, because he took about three or four. It’s just a giant concrete slab in some dirt that says “Simpkins Family Swim Center”. It’s dirty as hell and unimaginative. But he wanted a picture. If I hadn’t been dressed so horribly with my hair all over the place, I would have walked up all professional like and charged him ten dollars to take a picture of the stupid fucking sign for him. Probably a tourist who spent so much money to come over here he didn’t have enough for a camera.
At any rate, as you can tell I’m having a lot of fun with my new hobby. My psychologist had suggested that perhaps some of my depression is related to the fact that I don’t do anything. I laughed because of the sense it made. So I’m trying to do more things, things outside, and that’s why I bought this camera so haphazardly. It’s getting me out of the house ever so slowly. In fact, I think I’ll head over to another field right now just to get some more shots before I switch away from nature for a while.
Every day is a new day. Don’t give up on the future; you haven’t even experienced it yet!
Anywhoooo . . . I went for a walk this morning for two reasons: 1) To test out my new camera and 2) To think. I’ve recently had something major happen and I’m pretty freaked out about it. I don’t want to say what it is because I have’t made any decisions yet and I know some of my options might be offensive to people. Not that I give a shit about your feelings.
Of course I give a shit about your feelings.
So you’ll all have to suffer while I huddle in secrecy and horror and an odd excitement and keep this to myself. The walk just made me more confused however, and I guess the only thing good out of it was that I see the limitations of my camera and the lens. Mostly the lens. I’m going to need a new one to do what I want. It was definitely worth the money, I’m not regretting my purchase, and it works flawlessly to the average person . . . but I see flaws in the flawless, so I’m going to need a new one. Like a 70-300mm.
But um, Best Buy, I’m not paying 499.99 dollars for it. Ebay, here I come.
Sure hope I get called for that job soon.
I went for a stroll on the beach first and saw some awesome cranes, but I couldn’t get close enough without freaking them out and my lens couldn’t zoom enough for the shot I wanted, so I said fuckk ’em and headed out to the water. Besides, a lady walked past with her stupid loud mouth dog and scared them all to hell.
The water was nice.
I can see that with any art you have to define yourself. Nature is easy to take pictures of, it’s naturally beautiful and people always swoon over it. I’m still getting used to this camera and thinking visually instead of . . . in words . . . so bare with me on this journey. Today was more like me pressing buttons and hoping I don’t break it. Some people read manuals; I don’t have the attention span or the memory space for all that.
It took me a couple weeks to figure out what kind of mental health blogger I wanted to be; you know, sarcastic, hilarious, amazingly informative, and in your face. It’s going to take me much longer to figure out what kind of photographer I am, what I really suck at (mostly everything) and what I’m alright at, and what I want to put my energy into.
Learning! Yay!
It’s really cold. My hands are numb on this keyboard. All you people who live around snow are probably laughing and calling this Californian chick a wimp, but shut up, November is cold and my circulation sucks. I need to exercise, alright?
Anyway, I went into this forest area.
Someone Dropped Their Coke
I tried to get a photo of a squirrel but it raced up the tree, then I saw this dude on his bike in the shadows staring at me. Scared the fuck out of me, not to mention it was slightly embarrassing because I’d been talking to myself. Anyway, he was staring. It was weird. So as relaxed as I wanted to be among the silent musings of the trees, and as confident as I am in my fighting skills (try me, bitch), I spent the majority of my walk paranoid as fuck.
I swear I heard his bike tires in the trees. I heard him get on it behind me too and he rode in the opposite direction I walked: there are two paths and they meet at the same place. I figured he went down the other way just so he could meet me in the brush and potentially murder me.
If you don’t have woods in your area, and you’ve never walked through a forest where you can hear the patter of Chickadee steps across the dirt, than you wouldn’t understand how the environment only added to my hyper-awareness. Every crack of a branch or tweet of a bird or rustle of a leaf in the wind I readied my fist to punch that dude in the teeth. Whenever I turned my back to the path to take a picture, I envisioned that fucker leaping out of the bushes at me and hitting me in the back of the head before I even had a chance to hit him in the nuts. If you’re going to come after me, at least let me have a chance to hit you in the nuts.
A lot of druggies hang out around this path because there’s a drain where they can take shelter for the night. I was the only other person walking the paths. I have a camera worth a good 400 dollars in my hand (although, I didn’t pay that). It’s not as if my paranoia was unjustified.
However, spinning on my heels every five seconds because a bird slammed into a leaf somewhere is a little exhausting.
If I wouldn’t have seen that guy, would I have been thinking those thoughts? Most likely. He just made it worse. I’ve recently learned I have safety issues; I don’t feel safe anywhere, it contributes to why I hate going outside. There’s a lot of thick bushes back there, anyone could be hiding–even a mountain lion–and there aren’t any houses around so no one would hear me screaming. After all the examples I’ve seen of The Bystander Effect, even if someone did hear me scream, they probably wouldn’t waste their breath picking up the phone and dialing emergency services.
Towards the end of my walk I kind of jogged because the noises in the bushes were getting louder. I’d walk really fast, see a picture, snap it as quick as possible, spin around and check the bushes, then walk/jog until I came to another picture. So I’m pretty sure I looked like I was on crack. I’m kind of glad no one else was around.
Crack is Wack, Yo.
She Knows What I’m Talkin’ About
As I reached the end, a branch snapped off and fell in the path behind me and I almost screamed. A stupid squirrel scrambled along another branch after having saved itself from plummeting to the ground with the one it broke. Damn squirrels man, always messing with me. If they’re not staring at me like weirdos, they’re causing a bunch of ruckus. Just like a toddler.
I’m ready to go back to sleep. Too bad I have class later tonight. Ugh.
Just to let you know, I fought for two hours with my phone and my internet to get these pictures up. Two hours consisting of a lot of cursing and a lot of slapping and a lot of promising to rip someones eyeballs out and feed them to the cranes on the beach.
I tend to make general threats to nobody in particular when I get angry at technology.
If only I videoed myself.
Fuck, could you imagine how long it would take a video to load?
Of course, the one day I get it, the one day when the sun is out and I have energy and I want to go and hike and walk and snap shots of shit, it has to be windy and cold as hell.
But I’m not going to complain. I’m going to get up early tomorrow morning, see what there is to see, and snap some shots and have some fun.
Meet Charlie:
Casually ignore the GTA 5 game down there.
As you can see by the bullshit quality in this horribly positioned photo, I do not own another DSLR. That’s my 8mp phone camera. Can you feel my pain now?
I know the D3300 is not the best DSLR (don’t tear me apart with all your impressive camera knowledge), but for right now it works perfect. Besides, does it look like I have the money to pay for a three thousand dollar camera? I’m even stuck with a 18-55mm lens right now. I’m not rich. But I feel completed. I’ve wanted a camera like this since I was in middle school. Photography isn’t just about taking pictures. There’s lighting, there’s angles, there’s objects, there’s effects . . . there’s so much creativity and so much eye for natural beauty that goes into it. Not to mention all the interesting things you can manipulate with Photoshop. Now, I’m not into making people’s faces look more “beautiful” or taking a shit ton of cuts of random women and putting them into one face photo to make a woman who doesn’t exist and put her in a magazine to sell my Falafel mix. But I am interested in what you can create with your photos or illustrations.
There’s more money in it than you think. If you’re lucky and talented.
Money isn’t my focus, as you can guess. It’s highly unlikely anyway. I enjoy doing what I enjoy, but if mobs of other people happen to enjoy it as well, then hey, pay up. Happiness isn’t free motherfucker. Some people have to pay for Medical school.
Looking at this computer screen, listening to this sub-woofer by my feet shaking the apartment complex, and now petting my new buddy Charlie (Eh, lame name, I gotta think of another one. No offense if your name is Charlie) makes me extremely thankful that I’m able to buy what I want, what I need to fuel my passions, and thankful that I have the time to nurture my talents. Days like these I think about all the children fighting just to survive, whether it be against disease or starvation, the ones who won’t live to my age to find their passion. I think about the adults who also fight to survive and won’t live to continue their passion or see their children grow. It’s for their memory and their spirits that I don’t ever submit to the darkness, and I don’t ever forget about how resilient I’ve been up to this point. It’s not about being selfish, it’s about being strong for those who’ve lost the fight. Not just your mother, not just your nephew or your sister, but for everyone, for the ones you don’t know and you’ll never meet.
Many of us have lost a lot in our lives and as much as people like to claim they’ve gotten closure, that loss will always be with you. It doesn’t have to drag you down, but it will be there. Therefore to recreate and capture the beauty in life, to describe it in words, to strum it on a guitar, to play it in video, to snap a shot of one moment out of a million others, is making art out of our loss. Making art is appreciating and appreciating is remembering the value of who we are. To remember the value of who we are is to align ourselves with our soul and to find the ultimate truth. It’s not a coincidence art is so prevalent and valued in our society.
I notice a lot of people focus on the negative. That sounds cliche, but it’s not. I mean they spew it out of their mouths at a constant rate. But let me tell you something that should be fairly obvious: what you put out is what you get back. If all you ever talk about is negativity, that’s all you’re going to receive. From yourself mostly, but from others as well. You’re going to attract other people who are constantly negative and you’re going to see a mirror image of yourself and you’re not going to like it.
Sorry, I had to.
Yes, I’m talking about depression too. Don’t blame depression for your negativity, that’s playing a victim card. I’m depressed more often than not but I don’t always write about it. If I do, I try to avoid saying “Ug, life is so horrible, no one cares about me” and all that kind of stuff. It’s one thing to get supportive feedback. It’s another thing to constantly remind yourself that no one cares about you. If you’re constantly saying that than you must not care much for yourself and if you don’t well, there’s your main problem. Fuck depression, you have an issue with yourself.
If you’re thinking like that, you’re in some deep pain. Focus on loving yourself before you start wishing other people cared about you. Other people do care about you, it’s just hard to care for someone who doesn’t ever care for themselves and who blatantly expresses that fact.
Life is so amazing it makes you feel as bad as it’s made you feel good, and not many things have that power. Appreciate mental health issues, they make you stronger than your neighbor without mental health issues will ever be. They make you see life through a different lens (a 70-300mm perhaps?) and that makes your views spectacularly valuable. As much as it beats you down, it teaches you how to stand tall, and the harder you fight it that harder you fight against yourself. Just like there’s a particular way to fall to avoid serious injury, there’s a particular way to struggle to avoid serious injury; learn how to struggle, not how to not struggle.
I’ll just leave you with a few words from Paula Gunn-Allen:
“We all know who lives near the railroad tracks: the cast-offs, the unmodern, the traditionals, the ones who cannot belong to a society that has no time for things of the spirit, and whose attitude toward human and animal life is one of exploitation. But a warrior does not forget, even in the midst of devastation, where she comes from. She does not forget that beauty is what we have, what we share, what gives human beings diginity.”
I went to the cliffs yesterday evening. I’m not sure if I want to share what I wrote or not. I might later, when I’m in a different headspace, but right now it would just be a constant reminder of how bad I wanted to leap off. Little did I know how crowded the cliffs in that area get in the evening. The sunset is amazing, it gave me something to focus on. I wish I had had a better camera than my piece of shit phone whose “8 MP” camera looks more like “.0001 MP up a dinosaur’s ass”.
That was one of my goals, you know? Get a new camera (the one I have is too basic and the video camera is too clunky) and start getting back into photography. I had so many amazing ideas and I had the confidence to do them, the motivation to start them, and the drive to carry through with them. Now that school is tanking I have no more hope and barely a thing to live for. I take education so seriously because it’s the only thing I’ve ever really succeeded at–plus it’s my largest income. I don’t want to be put on academic probation for fuck’s sake. I don’t want to pay them back half of what they’ve paid me.
Well, it’s too late for all that, I’ve made my decision and that’s that. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I’m the one in my head making the decisions, I really don’t.
It’s funny how my phone knows exactly what depressing songs to play when I’m depressed. Looks like it’s gotten used to my mood swings too. Like I’ve said before, I’m big on my connection to inanimate objects, I’ve always had an obsessive thing with them since I was little, that they exist in life much like we do. Whatever, it probably makes me sound like a loon. Honestly, I don’t care anymore.
That “relaxation” I smoked a day ago or whatever was much stronger than what I’ve usually had I think, because my curtains turned blood orange (and it wasn’t sunset) and I thought it was the apocalypse so I almost hid under my desk. So I don’t think I’ll be using that kind any time soon.
Anyway, this is what I watched last night via my dinosaur-ass phone:
I think the creepy part about this is if you know what that dark boat sinking in the water behind the wharf is, than you know the town I live thirty minutes from. If you don’t know what it is . . . well I’ll just tell you. It’s a cement boat. Yes, a cement boat. I used to play on it as a child until it got too dangerous for people to go on. Now it just sits there sinking, fenced off. The birds love it. It’s covered in seagull shit.
Well, that was my night last night. I still feel shitty and I’m sleeping ten, eleven hours again, so I should feel rested, right? Wrong! Oh so very, very wrong! So fucking wrong on so many fucking levels!!!
Plus every little thing is irritating me today. I just want to sit at my computer and feel like shit, I don’t need people (meaning my parents because who the fuck else would it be) walking in and out of my room! Just let me fucking wallow alone, for fuck’s sake!! It’s not like anyone is ever willing to walk into my room (“Friends” included) and say “hey, wanna talk?” or anything. No, they just act like it’s something they don’t know how to deal with so therefore I should deal with it on my own. No offer to talk, no offer of hugs or even a “what’s wrong?”. If being on the brink of offing myself isn’t enough to get even an offer of a hug, than I’m just not going to get one. So if that’s how everyone wants to act then fucking leave me alone. Don’t call me, don’t text me, don’t ask me for weed, don’t ask me for shit.
It’s funny how when you just need to feel loved people are suddenly busy.
But oh, when they need to talk I’m supposed to drop all my shit and pay my fullest attention. Fuck that shit. Go sit in a corner and talk to a wall because I’m done with this shit.
Anyway, I don’t know what else to write, I might just go back to sleep.
I wasn’t feeling good today. I hate having no energy and feeling so useless. I cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen (at least that dog is gone so no more hair or vomit), so I guess I’m not completely useless, but I’m still feeling like a failure. I can’t wait for this depression to pass, it’s really putting salt in my game. And my game was already shriveled up as it is. Rather than deal with that, I ate some chocolate, smoked a little relaxation and, of course, started reading about aliens.
I’m sure everyone’s heard about the object circulating around some star. It’s got an irregular pattern or something, so it’s not a planet. Honestly, as much as I love science, I didn’t read the articles, I just skimmed them and got bored because my mind doesn’t really feel like thinking about a lot right now. Instead, I found these ufo shaped clouds:
Beautiful, aren’t they? It just helps remind me how amazing life is.
So that class is number one million on the list of classes my anxiety has interfered with. I need to take another Ethics class, which I’d love to do since I love Philosophy, but I remember peering in on their class to do my own personal socially anxious research ritual and saw that they did huge group presentations and projects. I can’t even think of a simple sentence to say in front of people; thinking analytically in front of them is near impossible.
In nature, I think they’re fascinating creatures. I could spend countless hours watching them spin their webs and catch their prey and suck the life from them; it’s such a pleasing experience. It was the one thing I set out on a mission to find yesterday when I went for my walk with my camera. That’s something I would love to have in a single, still frame; just a spider in it’s natural habitat, the thing I fear the most at it’s most comfortable and perhaps most vulnerable. It takes away some of my fear. They’re just trying to live as much as I am.
MentalTruths 