Today, Crazy Republican Born-Again Coworker said something interesting. He was describing his attempt at converting some teen, using evolution as an example. And he said something striking: “It takes a lot more faith to believe in what you believe in than what I do. You believe there was nothing, and then nothing just blew up and there was something. And then that something kept growing and growing and became everything that there is, all the stars and planets and everything on Earth. I believe that God made everything the way he wanted it. So you see, it takes a lot more faith to believe in nothing blowing up than in one supreme being knowing what He’s doing.”

He’s right, too. It takes a lot of faith to believe in the truth. And you know what? That was pretty poetic, for him. He thinks he’s making a point for the home team, but it just made my day to be reminded of how damn incredible our universe is.

In other news, I’m pretty stressed. I have a huge list of things to get done and errands to run, and very little time to do it all in. I’d do the laundry today, but I just don’t have the time before class, since I had to finish my paper - and I was going to stop somewhere after work but realized I didn’t have the cash for it, plus said paper, so that will happen tomorrow, but I can probably make that phone call tonight… Ugh, when am I gonna have the time to hit an ATM? I guess I can get the one by the mall when I walk home tonight…

The difficulty of writing is figuring out what makes your characters tick and then never, ever putting that in words. It’s almost easier if it’s someone else’s characters; then at least you don’t have to make it up in the first place, just figure it out. Let’s take John Winchester, for example, from Supernatural. Above all else, he’s a dad. He’s a soldier, too, and a hunter; he fights the good fight not to rescue people, not for the memory of his dead wife, but because it needs doing and he’s going to do it. He’s strong, like twice-brewed coffee, earthy and bristly and rough. He feels so strongly it aches, but wordlessly, and without needing to show it in little ways - he just does things, like leaving his life and taking his sons to hunt down The Thing That Killed Mary. He’s driven, driving. He has a mission, and he thinks it matters most, because sometimes he forgets that he has sons and not soldiers, but in the end they’re his boys and he’s their father and those are the only words that fit it. John is grave loam, he’s unshaven beard, he’s groggy coffee-stained mornings in a cheap motel, he’s love left unspoken, he’s gruff and solemn and tired. His eyes are sharp when everywhere else is roughed around the edges; his voice is the low crunch of tires on gravel coming home, touched with warm molasses drawl.

See how long that took? And that barely touches it, barely even begins to describe the depth of it. So as a writer, you have to understand all of that right down in your bones, understand it so deep it’s second nature, and then work it into every word. You have to know how the character speaks, how they look at the world, how they stand and move and interact with things around them. You have to know the intricacies of their relationships with every other character, and you have to know all of this about those characters too. And the best writing, the very best, never spells any of this out. It’s there in every paragraph, underlining every word, but it never has to be spoken. Writing the things left unsaid is, in the end, the easy part. It’s the sheer breadth of knowing that’s damn hard. And yet, it’s so satisfying, to fall into that groove where you’re just riding in someone else’s head, where the words fall onto the screen, where the story is just waiting for you to finish writing it. And it’s so frustrating when it doesn’t come, when you have to push and shove and you know it’s crap, you know it’s just killing time until the story wakes again, and you just want that high back.

Oh, writing. Why, why is this my hobby? I’d die if I tried to do this for a living.

Ear better! Homework in progress! Seasoning cast iron skillet! Marinating steaks! Wishing for a decent oven mitt or at least a pot holder! Thinking about Christmas and money! Digressing! Doing dishes! Trying to figure out where this weird I SHOULD BE DOING SOMETHING WHAT IS IT feeling is coming from as I am doing many things! Trying to avoid the temptation of drawing my MMO character and inisisting stridently that said character is DIFFERENT and SPECIAL even though there are only six different styles of this race to choose from on said MMO and I chose the most popular! Trying to figure out what the hell Gnome and KDE are, nevermind what makes them different! Wondering why spellcheck thought “marinading” was a word but “spellcheck” is not! Trying to figure out if it’s “marinating” or “marinading”! German made me think d=t anyway! JA DAS IST EIN KLEIDERSCHRANK!

P.S. Homework done, and I think I understand X a bit better now. I ended up throwing my hands in the air and loving all over Wiki, since it’s not like I needed to cite the source of my sudden understanding or anything. The differences between KDE and GNOME still baffle me, but I think I get what they are, which is all I really need. I should probably get a copy of SUSE and install it on a virtual console, but I am too lazy. This class saddens me, because it’s not really Intro to Linux; it’s perpetuating the “in order to run Linux, you must already know Linux” crap, which makes me want to scream most days but today just makes me do Fight Club references. But I will soldier on, brave woeful little me, because a possible certification in something may await me. Apparently Linux+ certification just requires that you know what a bunch of commands are, not all the -v whatevers (and oh how tempting it is to insert a long string of what those whatevers are, because v=verbose!) like in some other certification, and I now know what pwd is! And ls, and cd, and… Well okay that’s it off the top of my head. Oh wait, there’s… rm, and mv, and clear, and q, and now that really is it. And mount. I know mount. Not well enough to use it, most days, but I know it. That counts, right…?

So a few weeks ago my ear clogged up when I showered, and I managed to get it to pop open and dry out, and now I have to be really careful not to get any water in or it clogs up again. But this time it’s really bad, I’ve been almost completely deaf all day, with no sign of change. ;_; My only consolation is that I can wear my earplugs and it’s like nothing changed, and also then people will yell so I can hear. I don’t even need an earplug in that ear. It’s scary. I can’t wait until I get medical insurance. D: SOMEDAY. Someday I will quit this job, too. Haet.
Tuesday teacher keeps giving weird assignments. Read these chapters, then answer these question, but the questioned material isn’t in the chapters. Sigh. Gonna have to look up what TANF is online. No biggie, just incredibly annoying. Also have to compare GNU and KDE. Bleh. I have no idea what the differences between them are.

I don’t know if I mentioned, but last week we did a command line exercise and I felt great about it. I kept ls’ing and cd ~ and stuff, and I totally rocked. :D I forget the command to tell you what folder you’re in, though. I tried man woman, but apparently that’s a Gentoo joke.

I need a plan of things to do this week to keep me busy. Tomorrow can be laundry, Tuesday and Wednesday are school, Thursday will probably be a nap, so that leaves Friday hanging. The apartment is clean, I’ll do dishes at some point… Um, maybe grocery shopping? Or talking to assorted college advisors. Or you know, hanging out at the bookstore or the beach or something. Isn’t it supposed to be warm? That would be nice. We have that clean, sharp air that autumn brings, but a late burst of warmth too. The lake is lovely, all sparkling grace with the mountains of another state rising verdant behind it. But it’s cold tonight, with only a nice early morning of work to look forward to.

I have a lot to plan, and a bunch of things that will need moneys, and I’m trying to get over not being able to visit the West Coast next month. An old friend is having a big party, but the plane tickets are $600, and I just can’t come close to affording that. Sigh. Shan’s going. ;_;

Oh. Huh. Manchester to California is looking like about $300 round trip. Well then. Maybe I should find out exactly which airport I should be eyeing. I am not afraid of riding a bus for four hours to get onto a plane for ten with stops in DC and LA. I’m a big girl, see.

Apparently I have a natural talent for writing memos. Huh. Who’da thunk it?

The quiet from me is mostly exhaustion. These classes are taking a chunk out of me, mostly because of fucking with my sleep schedule - I don’t know why it’s bad this semester, it’s the same as always, letting out at quarter past nine. Walk back home, wind down with some TV, sleep until 5am the next morning. It really killed me this week. Wednesday I napped for an hour before my second class, and yesterday I went to bed at 6 or so. Woke up for an hour around 8, wrote the memo for class, sent it off, and went back to bed. I feel a little better today, but I still want to just veg out, maybe nap for an hour. Don’t feel like playing FFXI - it’s not fun if friends aren’t on. I’ll get on next week, when we all have time again.

My Human Services teacher wants a paper that is basically a book report. He calls it an essay, but he wants us to cover four very specific (and mind-numbing) points, with every example possible used, in numbered sections. That’s not an essay. That doesn’t even require actual thought. It is, in essence, exactly the kind of assignment that convinced me nearly failing out of high school was a good idea. I really, really hate this kind of assignment, where the teacher found some boring piece of crap and said, “Well, the summary says it ties into what I’m teaching, so I should use it… Now how to make the kids think about it? I know! Write about the symbolism of the albatross! That’ll get them going!” NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE ALBATROSS. God. Stifling, that’s the word, this kind of assignment is stifling and predictable and so boring and tedious I can’t bear to write it because it’s already been written a hundred times and you know every word before it even hits paper and no one cares. I can make a tedious topic interesting! Just give me enough breathing room to do it! I wrote a paper speaking out against the military’s policy against gays, and I made it fascinating! It started with the line, “The American military’s policy to deny homosexuals the right to defend their country is the best thing that ever happened to the gay community.” TELL ME THAT DOESN’T MAKE YOU WANT TO READ THE REST. Keep in mind it is against said policy! I hate said policy! IT WAS A VERY GOOD PAPER. My whole class gasped when I read that line out loud for my presentation. It was possibly the most affirming moment I have ever had as a writer.
My problem is that I desperately, sincerely care about what I write, and I want it to be the best effort possible. Every scrap or writing I release is like sending out a part of myself, and I want it to be beautiful and engaging and witty and funny and moving. A paper consisting of “Point A is backed up by this. Point B is backed up by this.” is not anything I ever want to write. It disgusts me, it’s a waste of words, it’s… It’s work. It’s soul-crushing, finger-numbing work. Writing should never be work. Writing, no matter the topic or the research or the hair-pulling or how slowly it comes is never, ever work. But I’m gonna do it, gonna buckle down and quote paragraphs of text to back up a point I don’t give a shit about, because I want an A. The paper won’t get an A, because nothing that soul-crushing can ever inspire the kind of joy and exuberance that begets an A, but it’s a grade and there will be others.

Linux teacher still thinks this is a hybrid class. Next class does not meet in person, meets online. Send help cookies. See, the thing with Linux is that in order to use it, you have to already know how to use it. And I thought Intro To Linux would maybe be, you know, an introduction, hey this is Linux, it goes like this, but noooo. The class somehow buys into the whole knowing-Linux-already thing. I am mildly bitter, but I do already know some Linux, so I’m okay - but some of the guys are just lost, and I don’t blame them. It’s not an Intro class, it’s a “chat about Linux and then oh by the way I guess some homework is due but you can read that online kay bye” class. This week we did do some command line stuff, which made me feel accomplished, but I don’t remember the commands or anything. I should read the book on my own, if only to get the Linux+ certification at the end. We can take the certification instead of our final, which is cool. My understanding is it’s a “hay you can use Linux kinda” certification, which is fine by me. We installed SUSE, or however those capital letters work, and it’s - there’s all this extraneous stuff that bothers me. Some of it doesn’t even work! Why would you have this clutter! Oh Gentoo, your sparsity makes me happy.

I hate it when teachers decide to spice up a boring topic by telling their students to come up with, say, “three inventive ways a school social worker can reach children about to start drugs.” Okay first, what does that actually mean? REACH OUT YOUR HAND. Also, if your school has its own social worker, you have bigger problems than drugs. And lastly, inventive? Please! Everyone knows social work is about well-meaning people helping to screw over people who can’t afford to be screwed.

I can’t wait to change my major. And yes, I came up with three inventive ways. One was a “die-in”, which amusingly enough I heard on Republican Radio - I mean, Fox News Radio. Kids would love that. “Okay everyone, let’s get out of class and scare passersby by pretending to drink the Kool-Aid and keel over!”

Did I mention my Human Services teacher is blind? It’s really cool, since I don’t have to pretend to make eye contact. I learn better if I’m staring at an inanimate object, unless the teacher is making gestures or using a visual, but he’s blind so he doesn’t even think of that stuff. I’ll see how it goes and then maybe catch him and suggest a few things to help visual learners take his class. It’s nice to have a teacher with a disability - that sounds so weird when I say it, but it’s true. Normal people (and stuck-up disabled people) insist that the handicapped have to be treated like fine china, but in reality, they’re just people. So much of human interaction boils down to that - they’re just people. I had to learn to distinguish black people and white people, you know that? I remember being small and trying to point out my new friend across the playground. I kept trying descriptions, thinking She’s the only one wearing pink, why is this not obvious yet? and finally stumbling across, “She’s really tan!” “Oh, the black girl,” the person I was talking with finally said, and right there is where I learned to describe really tan people as something different. Words have a lot more power than people think.

So anyway, liking my classes, although in a twist of fate I should have predicted, it looks like my Linux class is 50% online despite not being an online or hybrid class. Sigh. There is a reason I don’t take online courses. I do not have the discipline to learn from home, and also the second I touch a computer I am having fun time, not work time, unless it is writing and then it is work time. Reading syllabi and class discussions? Not fun time, thus not happening.

On the other hand, I’m back into FFXI and not only have my original character (Oh Vy, I missed you so!) but also Zul, who is making her way through the Dunes. This means nothing to you. Be glad. Nothing can describe the horror of the Dunes.

I really don’t know what to blog about. I’ve got some stuff going on, but I’m sending out letters to family detailing all that, because it really doesn’t belong on a blog yet. Oh, don’t jump to every dramatic scenario possible, it’s nothing like that. I’m just being cryptic because it’s private.

Did some overtime today. Wasn’t so bad. Just the normal grind, really. Insert parts, pull lever. Insert parts, hit button. Insert parts… you get the idea. At least they let me set up my own job this time - sometimes they do, when it’s not on one of the big expensive machines. But I managed to smack up my thumb, and it bled like mad without me noticing for a while - so I’ve got a big arc of blood on my pants. It looks like the oil we use in gear hobs, and I bet the All will get it out, but it’s annoying me.

No food. Hungry. Hungry and tired enough to be shaky. I should get some groceries. Well okay, there’s food, chicken and pasta and spaghetti sauce - actually, that sound pretty good. Maybe I’ll make that.