It's Funny to Look Back

You know you changed when you read something you wrote a very long time ago and go, "What the f---?"

I've been on a cleaning spree in my house recently. I love my room now. Everything has this zen-like appeal to it. I spent hours, days even, throwing away old things and shifting things into their proper order. It was like defragmenting my hard drive. After so many years, junk piled up and needed to be filtered.

A lot of people hate being home for so long. They say there's nothing to do. I beg to differ. I love being home as much as I love being in my dorm. I like to think of my home as my secret base, while college is going "back on the field."

I had my hair cut a while ago. My barber said something funny to me. We chatted like always and he grunted, "You know, you're like me. You're an old man."
I laughed. Indeed I was. I've been going to the same barber for years and never once did I stray from the usual treatment. He brought it up. I shrugged and said, "I don't really care." He mentioned how people my age were always so worked up about how they looked and self-conscious. I just wanted to get it over with. That's good enough. Whatever. It's ironic that he too is like that because he's the stylist.

In reference to my first statement, I found that I've done away with a lot of things. I tend to have little to no opinion on things. And yet I can still get fiery when I need to. There's an issue surrounding one circle of my friends. Everyone is making fun of this one couple, and friendships have even broken because of it. Poor girl has almost nobody now except her boyfriend. It's not like he's a douche or anything. The guy is perfectly alright. It's just that no one likes him. What the hell, guys? Whenever someone brings it up I have the tendency to mumble it away or grunt, "Oh shut up." Seriously. I don't care if you're lesbian or gay or if you're going out with a prostitute. Whoever you sleep with or go out with is none of my business. As long as nobody is hurting anybody. And for God's sake, put some protection. As an aspiring virologist, I'm touchy about that.

In a sense though, I feel as though I've always been like this since birth. It was just expressed differently. Adolescence is such an awkward phase after all. It's like a Cold War, paranoid about what others are thinking and therefore doing or thinking something else. At some point, I don't know when, I said, "Fuck it." But the old, angry little man was always inside me telling me, "Go on, just screw it!"

I want to make a list next entry about books I think you should read before you die. Of course, there might be more that should be on the list but clearly I haven't read them yet. Like Catch-22 for instance. I know. I'm terrible. I need to get on that. I'm finishing up the last of the Bond books. Then I need to get back to the Scarlet Pimpernel. Then I also realized Hammet's Thin Man has been on my library untouched for ages.

Bond, James Bond.

I've been on a Bond binge recently because my roommate re-inspired me to read the novels. I read them when I was younger, in high school. They were good books to grow up with. I stopped at "The Spy Who Loved Me." I tend to read things chronologically. It's the little bit of OCD in me.

I'm currently listening to one of the soundtracks, The Living Daylights. I actually really liked that movie, and it's one of my top Bond films. My list is something like From Russia With Love, Goldeneye, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Living Daylights.

My 21st birthday is coming this Saturday. I honestly just want to go to a casino and play blackjack while sipping a Cosmo or something like that.


So to date, I have 20 short stories and 14 novels on my list. Less than a quarter of that is actually written. Well, now, there's no time to waste, is there?

It's weird juggling this science and writing parts of me. I go to school and I don my lab coat. Then when I'm off on weekend or a break, I put on my writer's cap.

I'm thinking of doing a segment for my youtube channel called "Book of the Week." I'm trying to really update my channel. A lot of people like the music videos I have and I keep getting comments. But I want to post other things. I'm also doing it for YWO, the writing forum I've been in since I was in high school.

But anyway, back to the writing bit. I've always felt the need to work quickly. I get the paranoid feeling that my ideas will be obsolete or cliche once I actually publish them and get it out. I saw the Adjustment Bureau yesterday (It's based on a Philip K. Dick story) and I cringed when part of the plot was revealed. Apparently the Adjustment Bureau controls the world to bring humanity to glory. They stopped it at the peak of Roman civilization to see what would happen and instead the Dark Ages came. So they interfered again and the Renaissance and the Enlightenment happened. My major fantasy series, The Lost Legacy is the reverse of that. There's a conspiracy involving a race of beings that have tried to put down humanity and influenced them into the Dark Ages.

But I'm starting with my short stories first. I'm close to finishing the first collection of them. People like the stories. Just need some editing here and there. It's not so much that I have writer's block. I hardly do. It's the overwhelming amount of ideas I get and how I become sidetracked. I write one fantasy story but then I think, "That story about the busboy at the club who unknowingly serves the mafia sounds like it could be amazing." So I go to that and write the first page when I slap myself in the face and go, "FOCUS, FOCUS. Back to the fantasy story first! Then you can do this!"