No Love For Nothing

Okay.  I'm writing a novel.  This will take years probably, and I'm not sure how to fit it in with all my book lists and coffee brewing...but it feels organic and right to me.  This will be non-fiction and will be roughly 80% autobiographical.  Or maybe 77%?

Exciting.

Generation Why?

Echo Boomers.  The MTV Generation.  The Millennials. 

Not friggin' even.

I have come to realize something.  Something rather serious.  It started as a question, a feeling that started (I think) early in high-school.  Now, I realize a lot of people have a lot of questions that start (they think) early in high-school.  But this one has only grown, and become more concrete over time...

And now, I know the answer.

I have always felt that I do not relate to my peers, my people.  Not just on an "interests/activities/about me" level.  On a way deeper, essence-of-my-being level.  This (I have smartly deduced) is because we belong to the first generation to have no true, unifying identity.  Think about it, since at least the beginning of the 20th century (and definitely far beyond that, really) every decade, every generation of people has  had a general identity.  Something to be known for.  The60's with their free love, and the 80's with their free drugs.  But not us.  Sure I was born in the 90's.  But I was not a part of the Seattle movement.  Or the Spice Girls.  Or Titanic.  My coming of age years belonged to a time where all we have is terrorist attacks and qwerty keyboards.  Obviously we have advanced on other generations' antics and achievements, but we have nothing to call our own.  Nothing new.  Nothing specific.  Just filtered re-hashings of times long passed.  Trends designed to to make us feel nostalgiac for things we never we were never even a part of the first time.  

We need an identifier.  Something to tie us to each other.  But for now we are just twittering along, updating our lonely, unrelatable statuses as we go...

Book List 2010

This is a New Year's resolution, to read all the books (in no particular order) on this list by Dec. 31st 2010. 

1. Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Lives by Chuck Klosterman (finished)
2. Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman (finished)
3. Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman
4. Love Is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
5. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
6. Polaroids From the Dead by Douglas Copeland
7. Paint it Black by Janet Fitch
8. The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
9. Crank by Ellen Hopkins
10. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
11. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
12. Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir by Janice Erlbaum
13. Cobain by Rolling Stone
14. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
15. Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath
16. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
17. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
18. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
19. Junkie by William S. Burroughs

This list will probably be added to at least a couple times before the new year begins, and I'm allowing myself to remove only one book during the year that I can't get through or don't like, but if I do that then I have to fill its gap with another.   And none can be re-read until the others are finished.  Those are the rules.

                                    

Heads Will Roll

                               

New job, new leather jacket, new inspiration. 

Good things come to those who wait.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGxBTsmuRIk

 

Luck

It's easy to let little things cloud one's perception of the bigger picture sometimes. Trivial things seem to pop up or intercept what your focus should really be on. I try to weigh the importance of things that I get caught up in against what is of constant importance in my life. It becomes necessary to let a lot of those trivial little things fall by the wayside. Negative people or comments, the nagging feeling of how people perceive you at times. If you let it, it will eat you alive, and I want more from my life than that. I've come to have the support that I need. I have a connection to someone that I find fantastic in so many ways so much of the time. And I've learned the importance of family. I'm really lucky, underneath.

Lepers To Feed The Lepers

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the mob mentality people adopt when they're too scared (or stupid) to form their own opinion. I haven't always been exempt from this, but after my share of social crucifixions I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two about going with (or against) the crowd. Don't fucking do it. It's so bullshit and unoriginal. I'd like to think people outgrow it, but the truth is it's so much easier (and much more socially acceptable) to be a faceless shit talker based on second (or tenth) hand information. Maybe it draws attention away from your own short-comings...maybe it feels really good to just tear someone apart. But there's humans and hearts at the center of it. Humans and hearts who have made mistakes, or chosen to go against your grain. Instead, spend your time on the things you love. Find a hobby. Get a paper route. Just keep your uneducated (or unappreciated) opinion to yourself.

Flood

Top Ten Things I Want/Need:

1. My own digital/traditional cameras.
2. A job I can stand...and possibly even love.
3. To be a photojournalist/write for Spin or Rolling Stone (or something else equally cool).
4. An iPhone.
5. A new leather jacket.
6. To move out with my boyfriend.
7. A huge music/book collection.
8. A record player.
9. To realize the lessons that I am being taught by life (and there are many..fuck..)
10. To figure out my post secondary school situation within this year.


All of these things are totally attainable if I can get out and hunt them down...maybe not in that order, but still attainable. I'm posting photos from my ever growing portfolio soon.

Scatter

Things I've learned in summer '09:

-trust (almost) no one*
-you can never have/read enough books
-mooching money (or anything else) feels cheap no matter what
-never turn your back on your life lines
-Chuck Klosterman is a genius (read Killing Yourself To Live, so good!)
-being an asshole is basically never a good idea in the long run

...and the grand finale..

-don't take anything personally, IT'S GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU!


*there's usually one or two key people in one's life that are exempt from this