I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning

" Remember the time you drove all night / Just to meet me in the morning? / And I thought it was strange you said everything changed / You felt as if you'd just woke up." - Bright Eyes (First Day of My Life)

As I was watching BYU's production of The Seagull last night (which was incredible by the way, and I officially heap praise upon all involved), I had a most interesting epiphany. Ever have that feeling like you don't know where you've been lately? It occurred to me that aside from a few notable incidents, I haven't really been where I was for most of this semester. I don't know where I've been going, but it's someplace else entirely. And now I think it's time to come back.

I have the most peculiar feeling, like I'm waking up even though I haven't really been asleep. I'm sitting here in my room, listening to an odd-yet-natural combination of Bright Eyes and Johnny Cash (the hopeful ends of both), and I think I might even be able to get back to really writing again. Which is good, because it turns out Eric is expecting those rewrites after all so he can hold auditions. And here I'd assumed we could both just forget about it and it'd be like the writer's block never happened. Shows what I know.

I suspect that my swearing habit is returning. This is slightly troubling, as my friend base is predominately comprised of conservative Mormons who I believe have a reasonable expectation not to hear unsavory language from the people they care about. I try to censor myself, but in order to do it faithfully (meaning you don't use substitute words when you really mean the real word) you have to reword entire sentences so that the bad words don't have a place anymore. And that's hard to do when you're really upset! On a related note, I wish more people used cool replacement expletives like "flim-flammin'," "consarn it," and "Laws!" How much more awesome would that be? "Zouterkins!" is so much cooler than "Darn!"

Salty language aside, November is already looking better than October. In the first two days I got to hang out with a really cool friend at a grocery store and then fulfill a life-long (okay, weeks-long) dream of playing the Beast from Beauty and the Beast in my stage combat class. Sword fighting + Beast growls + Ryan's Gaston voice = soooo sweet. AND I think the number of people from church who actually know that I exist is rapidly growing. This is good news, because for all that I've always said I'd choose invisibility for my super power, it turns out being invisible is not that great of a feeling. Oh! Oh! And after over two months in my care, I've finally given my Betta fish a name! I now call him Roger Dorsey, and if you know where I got that name from you're officially cool.

Here's a picture of him. He looks very little like the Roger Dorsey he's named after, but I like it anyway. I think it suits him. After cleaning his tank today, I've decided that I'm going to buy him an algae eater. He could do with a friend who'll clean up after him; a Felix Unger of his very own, if you like (I'm just full of extra textual references today!).

So, so far my grand awakening has led me to quote more Bright Eyes; swear a little less even though I want to swear a little more; impersonate a large, hairy man-beast; and give my fish a name. If that's not progress, then I don't know what is!

Update from the last post: I still haven't figured out how to draw Brenda, nor do I know how Chester will evolve from a cow, but I did draw some sweet-looking leaves with my oil pastels so I feel a little satisfied for now at least.