Shattered

Good morning/afternoon/eveninggggg...so let me just tell you that a few minutes ago, I SHATTERED MY IPHONE. SHATTERED IT. I have dropped it somewhere around three thousand and twenty six times in it's short little life, and this time, well, it just got sick of my shit, and decided to shatter like a broken window on me. Just when I was about to start in on Apple and how they should really start installing bullet proof plexi glass on the damned contraption, I plugged it in and...it works. I can barely make out the letters as I type them, but IT WORKS! So Apple, I am impressed with you and the quality of your iPhone.

In other news, school started up again. And with school, of course, comes the feeling of complete and utter distaste for myself and my studying/studious/general attention paying abilities. Oh sure, if you present me facts on a slide, I'll take notes if I happen to have shown up that day, but in me there is just a lack of...scholastic ambition. It's so tempting to be put out with myself about it. I seriously was yelling at myself this morning, thinking, "Amber...seriously, we all know that the number of degrees on your wall indicate the level of respect you deserve in this world. You know that being a student and learning your letters is the second most important thing to Americans, so WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Why can't you just want it like everyone else does? Why can't you just for once make life easier on yourself by assimilating?". And I'm honestly not using the word "assimilate" to make myself feel like a unique and inspired martyr. I am usually carrying around an immense feeling of guilt and heart sickness over this very matter. I call myself useless and spoiled and unmotivated. Don't tell your friends, but sometimes I even cry about it.

Back to the yelling. So this morning I was really laying into myself and at one point I was yinking (thinking in a yell, you see), "SERIOUSLY, YOU JUST TAKE SO MUCH JOY IN WANDERING AROUND LOOKING AT PEOPLE AND LOOKING AT THINGS AND IMAGINING ALL SORTS OF BULLSHIT, YOUR HEAD I ALWAYS IN THE CLOUDS!!!"...and then I stopped. I realize that in every single last mind in America, a head in the clouds is a bad thing. But you know what? I realized that that is what I really respect and like most about myself. My imagination is always on fire. I walk around the quad and see so many faces and hand movements and I make up so many stories for every person I see. I'm almost positive that to most people I look extremely drunk any time I'm out in public because I am seeing so many different things, interpreting so much data, visualizing so many random things. What if a dragon came swooping out of the sky? I see classrooms turn into space shuttles, I imagine what's going on in the lives of the people around me by the way that they carry their bodies and how their facial muscles are set.

I think I didn't discover that this was actually a good thing a little sooner because I have so many things going on inside of my mind, and no way to funnel them into something productive. So I end up stumbling around the quad, looking like a drunken fool with nothing to show for it. All of my ideas...they get backed up in my mind. I had a friend once say that he usually has so many ideas and images in his head about what he should do, that he usually ends up doing nothing at all. I definitely relate to that. I tell myself a thousand different stories every day, but I don't know how to write a book. I realized that I am,at heart, a storyteller. When I was a girl I would try to guess my friend's biggest wishes, and then when we were going to bed I'd weave all sorts of stories where they got everything that they ever wanted. I'd stay over night after night and continue the story as soon as the lights went out. I count the value of my days by the number of stories I have. If any of you know me at all, you've already heard all of my most epic stories, Chelsea the blind girl on roller skates...Chester the Molester...and a few stories that I made up as a kid that I didn't know WEREN'T real until my mom told me.

I had to stop writing this post a few paragraphs ago and came back to it. My voice was a lot more distinct in the begining, now I can't seem to force my personality out of my words. They seem empty. But I do know that I have been wanting to write a post about so many things that I'm just going to continue typing anyway. It's like a fever. My mind is all clouded, and I won't be satisfied with the end result, but I've got to spit it out anyway.

I need a mentor. I need an author to show me what to do...the method, the process by which I can create something emotional, deep and exciting from all of the insane ideas that I have floating around in my mind. It's a good thing that authors/mentors are so easy to come by, right? Practically one around every corner just dying to help. What do I do, Craigslist?

And then it hits me. I go to college. HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I probably couldn't walk into the English building without tripping over someone who would enjoy helping me. The only question is...do I have the drive to do it? I mean, it's an awkward thing, and not something that is usually done in this modern day and age. Professor's teach, then go home to their families. They don't necessarily live to serve and guide like they used to. People have become less personable. Less willing to help each other. I'll think about it. It's always huge step for me, socially inept as I am, to reach out and touch another human being. It's not something I do naturally. I'm pretty positive that if I let my instincts rule me, I'd be a hermit...an unhappy, unsociable hermit. But I don't want that for myself. I want to have a network, I want people to talk to, to bounce ideas off of. And I want to be that person for other people.

I recently tried to rekindle a few relationships with some old friends...it just didn't work out. We went to dinner, things felt just like they used to for a brief second, and then it collapsed once again. For once in my life my paranoia actually proved correct! Too much time had passed, they had learned how to live their life without me, and I had learned how to live mine without them. It was too much to ask to try to rework me into the plans. I definitely understand that. It's unfortunate, but I messed up big time, and you can't always fix the things that you broke. That's just the way it is, I guess. I'm at peace with it, and I'm also glad that I did take a step out of my comfort zone to try my best to re-connect. Now all I can do is look forward and look for other opportunities.

I want to write for a living. Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love and now recently Committed) has really inspired me in that direction. I feel like she has a similar writing style. It seems like we both have almost too much personality to contain in a single body, so some of it has to spill out into other areas of our lives. Namely, the things we write down. I have a unique view. I have a unique voice...although you can't really tell right now because my creative cavity is stuffed up and I feel like a zombie. I want to interview. I want to talk to people. I want to understand them, and in turn make the rest of the world understand them through the things that I write.


This bitch is so long that if you've somehow made it to the end, I'll give you $5. Just comment your name/address.