Road Trips

So I've written on here about college road trips, but I've never written in here about road trips in general. Short answer: They suck. The longer they are, the worse that they are. Seriously, I'd rather take an airplane trip to a road trip any day and that's saying something. 

 

It's great once you hit the actual destination. I'm sure an actual full-on road trip is fun, because there are multiple destinations along the way. But the actual time in the car is absolutely awful, especially when you have a lot of stuff and a lot of people (i.e. your family) in the car. My family just spent a week in North Carolina, which was great until we had to go home.

 

It takes about ten hours to go one way, although, considering all the stops we take along the way (and how lost my dad got), it took us about thirteen hours each way. 

 

Being stuck in a car for that amount of time is enough time to drive anyone a little mad. You're stuck in an enclosed space and you can't move. I can't even read in the car for that long without being sick. I suppose I could suck it up and deal with the car sickness reading in the car gives me (I did towards the end, when I was especially desperate).

 

Road trips make you desperate for entertainment as well. My activities were not that varied. I slept, wrote in my journal and took pictures out the window. From time to time, I looked out the window, which was either highway or Southern landscape depending on where I was.

 

By the time I'm done with every road trip, I practically run out the car. My legs feel very stiff and very tingly and it takes a long time for that to change.

 

Overall, road trips suck. I would prefer any other mode of transportation any day.

Random Thoughts #1: Mostly on Inspiration

 Author's Note: I feel like this blog needs some freshening up. I feel like things have been really dry lately with the same old, same old. It occurred to me during an excruciatingly boring car ride that perhaps I could write some things off-the-cuff, a more informal type of deal. I'll summarize them on the main topic of conversation if there is one. More to come, as I wrote a few in the car. 

I don't really know what to say. It's hard to write off-the-cuff, harder than it was in the car. I guess boredom has a way of doing that, freeing up your mind of anything else. It's weird when inspiration strikes. It rarely does, but when it does, it's pretty awesome. It's like, "YES, I'M INSPIRED". So when I was on the road trip, I was pretty inspired for some reason, even though it was seriously cramping up my hand since I had to write with pen and paper. 

It's weird the sorts of things that inspire me. Just a person or a photograph or whatever can get me thinking about this thought and then I start building on that thought. Sometimes to the point of a novel, sometimes not.  The Fault in Our Stars sort of inspired me because I was like, "Shouldn't we write about a disease other than cancer?" So I got inspired to write a novel about a girl with cystic fibrosis, but it won't be a depressing love story where she dies at the end. 

Anyway, I actually ran into a lot of inspiration on the road. I mean, the route we took home was mostly not highway because my dad was trying to avoid this highway so we went past a lot of houses (and a lot of churches too. I mean, it's the South). 

A lot of the time things that bother me inspire me. Like all the damn Confederate flags in the South (I could write a whole post about that. Actually I will. Inspiration right there!). I write rants about them or I write short stories or even novels illustrating its problem. 

It's funny how that works.

The "random thoughts" thing was so much easier when I had inspiration. I wrote one on the road that I'll have to type up later and write here; I personally think that was better. I know this first random thoughts thing probably is going to be a bit rusty at first, but hopefully I'll get better. I hope my writing gets better when I write more of these too. 

My Clutter Touch

I seem to have this massive problem with clutter. It seems to sprout from everything that I touch practically. I don't have the Golden Touch, but I certainly have the Clutter Touch. I seem to produce clutter in every place that I inhabit. 

This has been the case ever since I was young. Organization has never been natural to me. In fact, I can never remember a time when I was neat. It has been a constant note on my report cards and certain teachers have tried to help me, but to no avail. The ability to successfully organize things seemed far too large for me, and it was safer to stick with what I already knew. Every once in a while, I would throw papers away, but most of the time, it was too hard for me. What if I needed it later? I always came up with an excuse not to throw things away and so they took over my binder, my desk, my locker, etc. Sure, it was harder to find things, but I was able to work around my Clutter Touch to organize things in my own way. It may have been inefficient, but I learned how to work it. 

Even during the summer, clutter is a problem for me. My clutter has taken over my bedroom and now the office of my house. It's getting to the point where it's getting hard to manage and I'm actually having trouble finding things now. I'm also feeling a bit claustrophobic from all of the clutter. 

At this point, I have to admit that it has become a problem. I'm not really sure how to change it, though. It seems far too exhausting to. So I'll live with the clutter.

 

 

 

Hackers and Malicious People on the Internet

Hackers suck. I mean, every once in a while there are the good hackers who are hackers with the intent to improve a company's cyber-security or find out really important things the government or corporations have been hiding from us, but mostly, they suck. My email was hacked recently and it has been the worst. Luckily, the damage has been minimal for me, mostly just annoying, but others have not been so lucky. 

I know there's a lot to be gained from hacking, I suppose. Dumb people are easy to take advantage of, and especially easy to milk for cash. If you work hard enough, you might even get otherwise smarter people. But it's hackers who bring down the Internet and make it the dangerous place that it is. 

Seriously, if you get rid of hacking and mean people who send out viruses, the Internet would be totally awesome. You could go wherever you wanted without that fear of viruses looming over your head. You wouldn't have to worry about having anti-virus software. Yet, of course, life is not so simple. There's always evil Internet people, though. 

Oh hackers!

The Feeling You Get as You Wait for School to End

Right now, I'm getting that feeling I get as I wait for school to come to a close. I know, I know, after today, I only have three days of school left and then a few days of finals after that. In my public school days, I would have had about a month left, so perhaps these feelings would be more legitimate. Now it's just pathetic. 

 

I mean, of course, I'm happy and grateful that I'm getting out so early. I definitely can tough it out for three more days. And yet...
 

These past few days have been going by so slowly. The clock seems to go by more slowly, as if just to smite me. Homework seems to have become more arduous (this is because it actually has, since all of the teachers are dumping extra homework on us now). 

 

This feeling is inevitable. I have felt it practically every year. It sets in around the beginning of May and it doesn't let up until school ends and I know with certainty that school is finally over. 

 

So this is the feeling that most people get as they wait for school to end. It's this weary feeling deep inside. It feels like you need more effort to wake up in the morning and to do schoolwork. Everything inside of you just wants to go on off mode and slack. You lack the energy that you had before. It feels like school should just be OVER already, and your brain, body and soul all scream for it to come to an end. Nothing can motivate you. You have two voices inside your head, the one telling you to keep on working and the other telling you to give up because you don't have much time anyway. 

 

Sure, this school is definitely better than my other school. Yet this is the weariness of actually having to do work. It's even more difficult because this is even more work than I had when I was at my peak. But I can do this and keep up my work effort too. 

Giving Blood

I donated blood today for the first time EVER. Being as I was seventeen, I didn't have to ask parental permission, but I was just able to go ahead and do it. 

I thought it was just going to be like having my blood drawn, but in a greater quantity and with more precautions with it. 

 

So I walked to the gym of my school (where the blood drive was happening) with my other friend, who was also planning on giving blood. I didn't know what to expect, so I was pretty nervous, but I pretended not to be. 

 

My friend wasn't able to donate because she didn't weight enough for her height. I certainly didn't have that problem, so I was able to go on to the next step. 

Then my finger was pricked to make sure everything was alright, and I had to show my arms anyway. My iron count was a little low, so I had to be pricked twice. It didn't hurt as much as I thought that it would; there was a sharp twinge and I was fine. 

 

What followed was an extremely detailed questionnaire about where I've been in the past year, my sex life, etc. This was the stage where people were turned away for extremely stupid reasons, like getting a tattoo or piercing, travelling or being a sexually active gay male. Luckily, I passed that test too. 

 

So I was able to donate blood after all. There was a table for me to lay down on, which fortunately meant that I didn't have to see the blood fill the bag. The volunteers said I could listen to music, and I did, but my friend tried to distract me as well. 

The phlebotomist disinfected the area she was going to inject me with and then I felt the sensation of the needle entering my skin. Needles are usually more painful in thought rather than in action, but she kind of jammed it up there in a way that really caused a sharp, excruciating pain.

It wasn't all that bad as the blood was being drained. The presence of the needle wasn't painful, but uncomfortable. I wanted to rip it out the whole time, but resisted the urge. I stared at the ceiling and kept gripping the foam ball to help with circulation. 

When I got up, I did feel pretty lightheaded, so I had to lay down on the floor and drink some water. One girl felt so lightheaded she had to drink multiple bottles of water.

I feel pretty good about what I've done, knowing that my blood will help someone (whether directly or indirectly through research). It's a pretty empowering feeling. All in all, it wasn't nearly as dramatic or terrible as I was afraid it might be. 

Blood donation is so important because it impacts the lives of so many people. All sorts of people in all sorts of situations need blood, people who have a variety of different blood types. That's why blood donation is so important. I'm so proud to be able to help with that. 

Mean People

 

 Mean people always have to ruin things for everyone. They're miserable, so they have to drag everyone else down with them. And thus, they plague humanity as they have for hundreds of years. Dealing with mean people is a common conundrum that most of us have to face in our lifetime. There's always that person that just won't be nice, who has that sour demeanor that just won't go away. 

It's always a difficult thing to deal with someone who always tries to bring you down. It's difficult to deal with nastiness, sly blows, rude behavior, etc. Logically, it's easy to say that the problem exists with that person, rather than with you. But still, it can get to you, especially they display constant rudeness.

Of course, mean people can include bullies, but sometimes, mean people aren't necessarily bullies. They're just mean. They're rude, grouchy, and will snap at people. They're negative people to be around and you dread being in their presence. There's always that one person. 

The only thing you can do is lift your head and move on, pretend like it doesn't bother you. Because really these mean people just aren't worth your time or your energy. Yet that's easier said than done.