All right.
Here it is. A new blog. Don't judge me. This blog will be a useful resource to me. I realized recently I spend too much time on sites that dumb me now as I waste away many hours, flipping, scanning, looking through them, changing them up, focusing on the aesthetics of the sites, when it does not even matter. Because these sites were created to consume time away and there is no intellectual growth. By maintaining these sites, I maintain some kind of cool pop culture image. I am so sick of it.
Why a new blog? I don't journal online so much anymore and I need to keep my writing fresh, and be able to express myself in the written word. Some say that's an artistic strength of mine. With my old blogs, it's too image-oriented, as I know that if I write a journal entry, my friends who use the same will possibly give me feedback, and it's come that, I don't write for me, I write for them.
Off to reflect...
Normalment, Wednesdays are exhaustive days. I have stuff going on from 9:30am-5:30pm. That's equivalent to a full work day. Today was somehow different. I was in a good mood. I have this mind set, see. When I'm in class, I always am either kinda paniced, or, apethetic (because I just would have given up). I'm supposed to be studying stuff I enjoy, right? Well, it doesn't always turn out that way.
I take intro to tech theater this semester. Now, if you have ever talked to me for longer than 5 minutes, you know I have absolutely no left brain. I don't do mathematics, logic, or even reason. I also have no street smarts, and have long struggled with social awkwardness. So, therefore, tech theater is not exactly compatitible with me.
The first time I tried to build an individual flat for a project, I cried, for the failure of pretty much 5 attempts to build the cursed flat before completing it. I spent 5 hours trying to create something that is basically 4 pieces of 1x4 wood glued and stapled together. It took most people only one session of scene shop to complete building them. I took 2, plus an hour overtime. My professor asked me if I had a learning disability; the entire experience was horrific, especially when I tried to cut a piece of wood where the screw was. The screw went flying through the room, and could've killed someone's eye if they were in the way.
For tech theater, I not only have class 2 times a week, but I have to work in scene shop 4 hours a week. This adds up to 7 hours a week, 7 hours to class I don't generally care about.
Our lecture class is nothing exciting. It's 1 and a half of my professor, (who is a cross between the boss from the office space, Coach Z, and a carpenter you'd see on those deathly boring home improvement shows. Not the more recent, "exciting" ones like Trading Spaces, but one from, oh, the mid-80's maybe.) going off into tangents and not providing clear explanations to what we're doing. I have basically stopped paying attention, and normally write notes to Bekah the entire time.
Today I had that, and once again, was consumed in drawing loopy holes in my notebook and writing notes about boys to Bekah. She is my old roommate from last year, and the two of us get so busy that we actually catch up with each other sometimes during tech lecture.
Next theater class of the day is the classical impulse. I like my prof in this class except that she always seems to be somewhere else. We also frequently get into long tangents that have nothing to do with classical drama. Today we watched a movie, Stage Beauty, with Claire Danes and Billy Crudup. I left the class, slightly disturbed, but also intrigued by the movie. A basic summary thus far, it's English restoration period and male actors are still playing women, but women are beginning to break onto the stage. The Actor(played by Crudup) who is known for all the women's roles, I could not tell if he's homosexual or gets typecasted into them because he's a pretty boys. Well, come to find out, he has a homosexual affair, but still gets off from women. Claire Danes' character seems to be in love with him. This whole confused sexuality is what really disturbed me. Being in theater, I'm pretty used to homosexuals, and I don't think anything condemning about them. It's just when people switch it up all the time, and play all fields and that throws me off. Greedy, just greedy and I just find it, not too tasteful.
We did not finish watching the movie, and so I don't know for sure where's it going...more later.
I ate lunch with Jessie Gambie at Harbor, and I vented to her about how that kid (I refer to love interests as 'that kid', most often) really kinda annoys me, and I just want to give up on boys because they wasted too much thinking time. She asked me to become a lesbian who is not attracted to girls with her. So here I am now, a lesbian not attracted to girls. Slightly contradictory, but that's the whole beauty of it. We had a pretty good lunchtime chat, the two of us, and the food wasn't too horrible today.
I headed off to acting class, which I was kind of nerved up about. Scene presentations today, and I don't think mine is very good yet. Our prof did not make us go though, so I will suck on Monday instead.
From taking acting classes at CNU, I have come to realize that I'm not a very good actor. Acting is about impacting other people, and I just don't normally care to in real life. I'm not active, I'm passive-aggressive. In high school, I did drama and I never thought about impacting other people, I just emotionalized and characterized everything, and come to find out here, that's not good acting. That's hardly even acting. It's really hard to get out of that and make what I do more truthful. It's also hard, because I'm always "on". When I feel like shit, I don't like to engage in any sorta action or communication. I really think that to be a performance major, you need to be always on and ready to interact and pay attention. Good thing, I'm not performance.
I'm directing and dramatic lit, and I pray to God as I take more of those classes, that they'll yank my interest. Cause right now, I've become pretty apathetic about all my classes. Next semester is playwriting. I'm superpsyched for it. I always have ideas for plays and screenplays running through my head. I am a natural born writer. It's where I have some ability that others recognize. I always have scenarios playing in my head. I am nervous because I have never attempted a concrete stab at writing a play. What if what I'm trying to communicate doesn't show? What if there is no action to them? What if the language feels fake and untrue to life? I so easily feel like a failure that I always seem to give up faster than I start.
I spent the rest of the day, painting and waiting for my paint to dry in scene shop. In midst of waiting, I had awesome conversation with this girl in my class. We talked about God and how the church drives people away. In scene shop today, I had a renewed energy I wasn't feeling earlier that day, and it's not a normal energy I have by scene shop. Usually, at this time I am worn out and socially awkward. Today, I was alive and vibrant and did not feel as awkward. I was excited to paint, and Tanya Sweet, the main tech prof (not Coach Z), was in amazement that I was because it's been apparent to her that I rather hate being in scene shop. From that moment today, I felt our relationship as student-teacher grew. I wasn't being a drag or a burden to anyone. It felt nice.
I promise, most of my blogs will be kept much longer.
All be well,
Janelle
