Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Anxiousness Isn't Fun

     There's a San Jose-Minnesota hockey game on quietly for background noise, but this just isn't a productive day. At all. I'm not sure why. The storyboard presentation this morning for Pop Market went fairly well, considering that I can't draw very well, and don't especially like speaking in public. (Acting is different - that's great.) It was for a short story that was due a couple weeks back.
     Tried to take a nap this afternoon, but that didn't work. Got four hours sleep Sunday night, and then overslept this morning (on six hours), waking up at 8:13 for an 8:30 class. Lots of aimless walking just to be doing something.

     The Thunder were destroyed by the Monstars Warriors last night, which didn't help yesterday, either. There was a fight, and lots of "accidental" bodychecking on our players. Which made Twitter more entertaining, at least, seeing Elizabeth and Daniel P. both going berserk. Yesterday was maybe worse than today. It's hard to tell, it's just been a very bad stretch of days.
     I think I bombed yesterday's psych test on theories of criminology. (Update: just found the grade - 82, which is frustrating because most of my wrong answers were just stupid mistakes.)

     The capstone project is due in like two weeks and it's not going very well at all. I was talking to Lauren in the hallway this morning, and we agreed that Capstone feels like that point in working on a novel where everything looks far too crappy to bother with finishing, but where you're too far into the project to give up completely. That's not a good place to find your writing in. But it's where all of mine seems to be, more or less, for the last roughly six months or so. And so your confidence is shattered all to pieces, which continues everything else schoolwise into a downward spiral. Writing is what English majors do. So if that's not working....uh, anxiety spikes up even more than usual.
     It seems like I've been flickering between "extremely stressed/exhausted/despondent but still capable of decent work" and "unable to function" all of college, really, but more so as time's gone by, and since coming to Eagleton Claremore this year. More especially this semester.

     Of Gothic Film and Lit stuff, I think the only things I'll probably ever come back to are Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Stephen King's Shining, because they're both written extremely well. (An occasional dose of King is helpful when studying how to put sentences and paragraphs together, and looking at how word choice give insight into characters, because while the man has a twisted imagination, yes, he knows his craft extremely well.) This week's book is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which has that Shirley-Jackson-sense-of-indefinite-wrongness for sure. And there is a house fire that is described far too well - that was unpleasant. Panic attacks aren't fun.
     Been rereading L.M. Montgomery's The Story Girl to counteract school stress. I don't like it all that much, but almost any Montgomery is well-done and has noteworthy quotable passages. Also, The Golden Road is the sequel to The Story Girl, and I'm probably going to reread The Golden Road before graduation, because it's that kind of book. And it's one of my three favorite Mongomerys ever.

     Speaking of some of my favorite authors, the RSU Theater Program's play this semester is a fairly-accurate adaptation of Tom Sawyer. Even secondhand and distilled, Mark Twain humor still works very well. I have my doubts about how well it will actually be performed, though - it runs in about three weeks and there haven't been any rehearsals yet, and no one has any details on them, either. They were supposed to start yesterday, and at least a quarter of the original cast has dropped out.
     Mingo Valley is doing The Wizard of Oz this semester, which will be fantastic. Not sure if I'll be able to see it, but Paige plays the Wicked Witch, which sounds like a great role.

     No word of SGYC news, though GBC-Tulsa leaders are scouting possible locations for a new youth camp beginning in 2018. Don't know if I'd even be available to help this year at SGYC, because I don't know if I'll get a summer internship with the Creek Nation. But other than that I don't really have many options available work-wise. Been revising/editing fiction to maybe release on Kindle, and batting around a couple also-for-Kindle nonfiction projects, but that won't make a living, though it would be a place to start from.

     On the plus side, saw Doctor Strange last week (FINALLY), so I'm current on MCU movies. It was weird, but worthy. There was almost no humor, and what there was was excessively deadpan or physical comedy. Trevor loved it, said it was the most hilarious MCU movie yet. (He's wrong. That's Guardians.) Seeing Benedict Cumberbatch use an American accent was very unsettling. Rachel McAdams plays the love interest, which was a good casting choice. There was a ton of Eastern spiritualism, of course, but there were also - maybe more so than any other MCU movie yet - lots of Christian messages, because the director is a very outspoken Christian. PluggedIn has lots to say on this matter in this post. So overall, it feels a lot like most of the books we've studied in classes - "some good, some bad, a little of both," to paraphrase Peter Quill. And lots of room for discernment. (That link talks a lot about Buffy, whose series finale was viewing for Gothic Film and Lit a couple weeks ago. It was a very good way to end the show, though I'm still not totally comfortable with it overall.) 
     The newest MCU Netflix show, Iron Fist, sounds like a horrible idea from Dad's description, and reviews don't particularly care for it at all. I'll probably skip it. Daredevil I liked aspects of, but barely managed to trudge through the first season due to the excessive violence and glacial pace. (One of the highlights in this very bleak and dark tale of a blind lawyer ninja - the villain makes and eats breakfast in one scene. It's almost as terrifying as Jurassic Park dinosaurs. Other highlights: Thought-provoking quotes on vision, and Fulton from The Mighty Ducks is the best friend.) Jessica Jones is a very interesting character, but I've only watched a couple episodes, and haven't seen Luke Cage, either.
     I think I'm going to watch Spider-Man now - it's inspiring and happy. And maybe The Princess Bride or While You Were Sleeping. Or Parks and Rec. Still TWO MORE WEEKS until the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. return, and I want to know what's going on inside the world of the Framework!!!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment