End of an Era

I feel like I've used that title before - maybe not. Maybe O'm just going crazy, but for once, my title relates partially to my message... blog... post. This past weekend in Indiana was one full of mixed emotions for me. On one hand I was determined to kick ass as it was my last xc race of the season. And now that I think about it, there was no other hand. I was determined, like a dog after the bacon covered post-man. But what happened was short of shocking and to say it was embarrassing would be one of the biggest understatements I have ever uttered.

I don't know what to say for my last race - I wasn't sad that it was all over like I thought I would be - I was just a little mixed. I was surprised that I didn't tear up at least a little bit cause I've always been one of those sentimental saps that cries. I refused to read the last HP novel cause it would be admitting it was over and I probably would have cried... That's just how sentimental and emotional I can be.

I'm assuming that it hasn't hit me because I'm still coming back next year to be undergrad assistant - maybe but I still wont be able to race.

Let's start at the beginning. I've been running cross country since I was in high school - 8 years. The accumulation of an 8 year relationship ended in flames. Not the good kind either. These weren't the oh, this is so toasty and warm and niiice flames. These were the holy fuck I'm on fucking fire and I think I'm in hell flames that the bible warns you about.

Oh yeah, my failure this past weekend was in biblical proportions. But as my favorite quote tells me - Never let a win get to your head, or a loss to your heart. It's easy to bounce back from a win - it's easy to tell yourself to calm down, but when you feel like your heart has been ripped straight from your chest... yeah, it's not that easy to bounce back from such failure.

And it's still easy to do that if you still have a year or more to come back to. You still have that cushion from the blow. But as a senior, there was no pillow of next year to stop me from crushing all my bones when I fell. I'm laying in the bottom of a ravine with bones coming out my ears, staring up at the sky and wondering where the hell the years have gone.

Where have I gone? I'm 21 years old and I still don't know which way is up in the world. I still have problems figuring out what I'm going to do with my life, what I want to accomplish. I have a strange fear of being forgotten and with my final years coming up, I have no idea how I want to leave my mark in the world. A lot of people are satisfied with being comfortable, with being good at something, with being average. But I've been average my whole life and I feel like I need to find something I am great at. I'm so sick and tired of being average, of being passed over, looked over underestimated and forgotten... and there is nothing, nothing so heartbreaking as finishing such a long career in such a horribly downward spiral.

Where has mu love of running gone? More and more these days I'm feeling indifferent to it, there is no more passion in me at times and it scares me. I go through phases and it's the phases where I jump out of bed already in my running clothes that I'm longing for - it's those phases I wish time would slow down for.

But time sucks ass.

That's the moral of this story folks.

Tea Can Salvage a Semi Eaten Soul

I've been drinking English Breakfast tea all weekend with milk and sugar like a real british person. I also went to Borders looking like a proper artist; black leggings, combat boots, black dress, glasses - and my laptop thrown into an overly large stylish bag.

Once I got there I found a nice corner and nestled in with a cup of coffee and a whole wheat pretzel. The writer in me has found it necessary to describe every single thing now - writing 50k words makes that necessary and it's a habit I'm not likely to drop till the end of november. Bear with me please.

I joined some rat races on some forum I'm a part of and padded my word count with some gibberish and added an extra 2000+ words. I'm 3 days ahead of schedule, but now I'm at the point where I start skipping around - cause I can't stick with one particular scene for too long. I've gone from page 25 - all the way to somewhere in the middle of the whole thing. My characters are also starting to get minds of their own and not doing what I want.

Oh, but Margaret! I hear you all say, How can a fictional character of your own imagination not cooperate with you?

Alas, I wish I knew.

NaNo has eaten my soul

This is more proof of my inability to stay with one thing for too long. NaNo started off great, as of yesterday I was a few hundred words ahead of scheduel - which was good. I was flying. My plot was flying. This was going to easy.

I was going to win this.

But then came the part where I had to describe the setting of the novel, cause if I didn't much of the stuff I had already said wouldn't make sense. I wrote and re wrote that damn scene so many times I think my brain might have stopped working. And each time I wrote it I realized how completely impossible my setting was. My science brain decided to take over and criticize everything I wrote.

How would it revolve around a sun if it's so small - would a day be really long? Like a year long? How does it have two moons if it's the size of an island? Why are there polyurethane trees? Where the hell did those come from!?

So my plot decided to stop working for me. It made sense at first, but when it got down to the nitty gritty details I was in the middle of a bird infested forest with no more bread crumbs and those damn crows ate my trail.

That's how lost I was.

That's how lost my plot was.

I'm stuck and I'm 5000 words into the novel. As of today I am 4 days behind. Do you want to know how horribly behind that is? 1667*4 -- 6668 words. That'a a lot of words and I'm behind.

My plot has changed to steampunk-ish. I don't know how to write steampunk. I'm screwed. Thankfully I have a whole weekend to work on my 6668 word gap.

UGH.

wish me luck.

NaNo is way harder than I thought it was.