In the middle of the living room floor, there is a box. It really shouldn't be there; I keep meaning to throw it away, but I tend to forget when I'm standing up. There is bubblewrap overflowing from the top. I feel guilty when I look at it for too long. It contained the Wii U that I bought on impulse this weekend with money I was supposed to be saving. Maybe I am leaving it there to remind me of my mistake. Or maybe it is just pure laziness.
When I showered this morning, all I could think about was waffles. I didn't want to forget my waffles in the toaster like I did yesterday morning. I hate leaving my breakfast because I was in too much of a rush to get out the door. Those were my waffles that I carefully toasted twice, and I didn't even get to enjoy them. My every thought was consumed with shampoo suds and the highly focused desire for carbs.
Falling asleep last night was hard for me. I could hear my roommate Nash in his bedroom across the hall quietly talking to Emma on the phone. Normally I can fall asleep even if he is loudly laughing and stomping around, but knowing he was talking to his fiancee made me lonely. My best friend in the world has someone who he cares more for than I. I couldn't sink into unconsciousness until after his whispered, "Love you, too; good night."
School has never been something I've enjoyed. Perhaps the closest I have come to true enjoyment of a class was the ballroom dance course I took in high school. I felt uncomfortable dancing around my peers, but the way my body moved to the music once I had learned the steps sent a thrill through me that satisfied my synesthesia and made my hair stand on end. I took the class again, but the thrill was never quite the same the second time around.
I feel like I fight a lot with Rinne, the resident female in our apartment. We argue ceaselessly about the dumbest of things. Last night we argued about the Wii sensor bar atop the TV. If she would just reach around the tv instead of over it, I pleaded, it wouldn't fall off and require re-taping. She snapped that it took too much effort to lean around the flatscreen, which I hardly believe since that's always how I do it. She left in a huff. When I greeted her this afternoon, she did not reply.
My stomach is in a small knot right now. I am dreading going to work tonight. It has been three days since my last shift, so I am sure the cat urine-soaked "pee-disks" have been cleaned. Still I am afraid that the precariously-stacked games still remain at my workstation with a pair of blue rubber gloves and a bottle of disinfectant spray. I love my job, but how does one get cat pee on 56 video games anyways?
I am still not used to the neighborhood that my apartment complex is in. We have been here almost 3 weeks, but I still get lost just trying to reach the highway 2 blocks away. My family is almost half an hour away. The only people I know are Nash and Rinne, and Rob from apartment 255, who admired Nash's car the night the fire alarm was pulled and we all had to stand in the parking lot for over an hour. It is a place of anxiety for now, until I can figure out how the winding streets connect and memorize the placement of the too-many speed bumps.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Monday, June 8, 2015
Blog 1: Introduction
I am Skylar Wendel, aged 19; a sophomore at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. I am an actuarial science major with an interest in minoring in Japanese and video game design. These short sentences are mere facts about myself, the kind you would likely hear on the first day of class or in an interview. You probably aren't even sure what the person behind this computer screen is like with so little information, but I can remedy that. You can learn quite a bit about a person just by listening to what they have to say, or in this case, reading what they have to write.
You could say that I consider myself a "writer." In high school I took AP Language & Composition (and it was one of my favorite courses of my high school career). Science Fiction Lit was a fun course as well; I got to write a 35-page short fiction story about superhero teens, and that was great. But academic writing is far from my favorite type of writing. Since I was old enough to hold a pencil I have been creating fictional worlds left and write (and abandoning them almost as quickly to replace them with new ideas). I have journals full of messy scrawls about vampires, cyborgs, aliens, and even gods of death. Writing fiction is one of my passions, and I am no stranger to the world of fantasy literature.
For me personally, writing has always been a way to discover and explore worlds that we cannot physically visit. I write to create new life that I might share it with interested readers who also seek to escape their mundane lives. Of course, I do also respect academic and journalistic writing. Since awakening to the world of politics in my high school Government & Politics class, I have used writing to express my views on controversial topics and to try to spread moral rightness in a prejudiced world. Being an eloquent writer on topics such as race, sexuality, and violence is the best way to open the eyes of people who would otherwise turn their backs. I believe that the internet journalism movement often called "social justice" is one of the best uses of writing in this modern-day society. Increasingly I am becoming of the opinion that writing can be used to change the minds of strangers and move a nation.
Writing something so monumental is not something that most people think can be done without careful revision, but I find that my writing process is rarely a "draft, draft, final version" process. I spread my thoughts as they come to me and edit as I go along. If something doesn't seem right as I am writing it, I change it before moving on. I have never understood the academic compulsion of creating a draft that has many issues, only to edit it in its entirety later. As a self-proclaimed-perfectionist, I cannot move onto the next sentence without ensuring that I am satisfied with the one before it. My idea of a "draft" is a final version that has not yet been spell-checked. Rarely do I make large changes to a document after it has been composed. I am a writer who knows what I want to say, and the way I say it the first time is the way it is going to stay. You can't take back the words you speak, so neither do I like to take back the ones I type. You only get one chance in this life to say what you have to say, so I choose to say it as I feel the first time.
You could say that I consider myself a "writer." In high school I took AP Language & Composition (and it was one of my favorite courses of my high school career). Science Fiction Lit was a fun course as well; I got to write a 35-page short fiction story about superhero teens, and that was great. But academic writing is far from my favorite type of writing. Since I was old enough to hold a pencil I have been creating fictional worlds left and write (and abandoning them almost as quickly to replace them with new ideas). I have journals full of messy scrawls about vampires, cyborgs, aliens, and even gods of death. Writing fiction is one of my passions, and I am no stranger to the world of fantasy literature.
For me personally, writing has always been a way to discover and explore worlds that we cannot physically visit. I write to create new life that I might share it with interested readers who also seek to escape their mundane lives. Of course, I do also respect academic and journalistic writing. Since awakening to the world of politics in my high school Government & Politics class, I have used writing to express my views on controversial topics and to try to spread moral rightness in a prejudiced world. Being an eloquent writer on topics such as race, sexuality, and violence is the best way to open the eyes of people who would otherwise turn their backs. I believe that the internet journalism movement often called "social justice" is one of the best uses of writing in this modern-day society. Increasingly I am becoming of the opinion that writing can be used to change the minds of strangers and move a nation.
Writing something so monumental is not something that most people think can be done without careful revision, but I find that my writing process is rarely a "draft, draft, final version" process. I spread my thoughts as they come to me and edit as I go along. If something doesn't seem right as I am writing it, I change it before moving on. I have never understood the academic compulsion of creating a draft that has many issues, only to edit it in its entirety later. As a self-proclaimed-perfectionist, I cannot move onto the next sentence without ensuring that I am satisfied with the one before it. My idea of a "draft" is a final version that has not yet been spell-checked. Rarely do I make large changes to a document after it has been composed. I am a writer who knows what I want to say, and the way I say it the first time is the way it is going to stay. You can't take back the words you speak, so neither do I like to take back the ones I type. You only get one chance in this life to say what you have to say, so I choose to say it as I feel the first time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)