NaNoWriMo, school, and getting behind....(quick post)

    I looked up on the 30th and was shocked to remember NaNoWriMo was fast approaching. I won't get into what NaNo is or why you should do it, you can do that here. I haven't the slightest idea about how I'm going to do this. I've done zero planning. I'm going to bring my laptop to school on Monday, then sit in the Orchestra room and thresh out my 1,667 words during lunch. I'm really hoping I can make that work because mornings are impossible, and with me working I need all the time I can get for homework.
    I'm just dreading tomorrow. I guess I've been lazy recently and have gotten behind in everything and now I'm hurting. Tomorrow a playing test, and a reading quiz in english, and a private lesson, and work after, and work out before work, and math homework I didn't do, plus a math quiz I haven't studied for. All that and I'll be running of less than 6 hours of sleep.
    It's a wonder I'm not bent over the toilet with how bad I'm treating myself. There's no sleep, no quality food, and I haven't run in almost a week now.
     Things are just bla and I don't want to deal with any of this except my nonexistent book this month...
 Follow my first ever WriMo experience at my Twitter or my WriMo account.

Cool People

     Role Models. Sure there are the Celebs and people of those sorts, but I'm talking about the guy in your english class who's not scared to say he went to the gay pride parade over the weekend, or the girl who's dad's in the hospital but still shows up to your book club meeting, those people who just inspire you.

    Being in school I've gotten a chance to get back around people my own age. People start to take on this sort of norm, a blank face in a crowd kinda thing. They all start to act the same, just people at school. But there are those few people you get to meet in your high school experience that just stand out among the rest, and not in that "Academic Excellence" kind of way. I mean in that wholesome I know who I am kind of way. I have two people in mind, and when I met them I knew I wanted to get to know them because they seemed like the kind of person I want to be.

     The first is a girl in my journalism class. She's this tiny thing and she's an amazing drawer, but she's awful shy. She's alway modest about her drawings. Once I asked to see her sketches and they were amazing. Period.

     Sometimes I feel like I'm a different person online than I am in the real world. I don't sit around talking about classical books, or understand references to underrated movies, or even drink as much coffee as I make out to. That's what's different about this girl. She seems to know what she likes and lets herself like those things wether she's with her friends or if she's putting things up online. She doesn't tuck away her hobbies when she's around her friends like I know I do. I wish I could be like that.

    The second girl is a senior, we're in three clubs together, and she's an english major. She's one of those bubbly girls that you just want to be around, but she's never annoying about it. I will admit my respect for her may be a little more fabricated because I don't really know her as well, but I don't think we should ever know our heros completely, that's what makes them heros. I'm pretty sure she's involved in almost every intellectual club our school's got to offer, has amazing grades, and looks adorable every day. (I don't really know about her grades but I imagine so)

     For me I have my spurts of awesomeness. One week I'll be all about my writing, then the next I'm all about my wardrobe, or this club, or some other thing. When I focus on something I do it well, but my problem is I have such a short attention span that I change my goals every three days or so. She's not like that. She seems all the way focused all the time. This girl knows what she wants to do with her life and I see her doing exactly that in a few years. I think I could be like that, joining all the clubs I want and things I want to do along with work and school and looking good, but it would take a painful amount of planning and probably more self control than I have.

     I look up to these girls for very different reasons, but I know I want to be like both of them in some way. Seriously whenever I get a chance to be in a group or walk to class or chat with either of them I try and take it.

    Talk of role models has been wrung dry, but I think there is one little bit of advice left to give. Our role models shouldn't be these nameless, abstract people like Oprah, or Natalie Portman. They should be people we can meet, talk to, observe, have dinner with, and learn from.

First day of Editing

   So I've been feeling like writing recently, and today I opened up my first manuscript that I had put away until October and oh my goodness this thing is AWFUL! I don't see how I was ever proud of this thing, it's to short, it's choppy, its boring and all around bad. I have no clue how to go about editing this stupid thing. Do I even need to edit this thing? I mean I don't really plan on sending it off for publication any time soon. Besides, the story is so bad plot wise I would practically be rewriting the whole thing if I did decide to get it ready for publication. I wonder if it's been to long enough to start editing my second one. It's been a few months and I'm not really thinking about it anymore.
     I'm realizing how much November is going to kill me. I haven't been writing at all. None. NaNoWriMo is going to take some serious planning if I'm going to pull this off...

The Writing Community

         I've decided I want to join the United States Marine Corps after I graduate High school. There are a lot of reasons for me wanting to join but that's a whole other blog post in itself. In my getting ready for bootcamp I've gotten into running and health an fitness. Anyway the point of me tell you all this is because yesterday I was reading a magazine called "competitor" that I get for free from my gym. There was a except from John Bingham's new book An Accidental Athlete about Bingham's firs marathon. Half way through I realized something. People like love to write, and people love to run, and there are people out there like Mr. Bingham who are writing about running! Seriously I stopped reading and wrote that down because I didn't want to forget that. I've got these two budding loves and I can combined them into two things that feed and grow off each other. 

         I started digging into the running world, and found all these really amazing people who love giving advice, and love sharing tips, and their stories, and their goals. There seems to be this big family sense in the whole running world, we share similar hurdles and have similar goals, and that brings us together. Writing is the same way. I can think what I was like writing bits of stories in purple pen in the back of my science notebook, and I've found tons of people willing to help me get better at writing. 

         I never imagined these two entirely different things could have the same roots. It makes me wonder about all the other hobbies out there. What if I wanted to get into cooking, or scrap booking, or gardening, or surfing. There's something wonderful at work when you can take tiny parts of your life and line them up into who you are.

         My point of this whole post is this. If there's something you want to learn we're at a point in history where we've got the resources, ability, and support to better ourselves and learn everything there is to know about that thing. We've got nothing stopping us from finding out what we like, and learning about it, and getting better at it, and there's enough voices out there to drown out the discouraging words from those who think it's weird. In the words of Babe Ruth "Never let the fear of striking out keep you from coming up to bat."