The Days After a Long Trip

are always really weird.

Okay. So. Here we go with the wrap-up.

I left from my house to drive (well, ride, technically since Mom was driving) an hour to a bigger city where we could then catch the train for about an hour and a half to Seattle. They recently redid King Street Station with a lot of detail:

That's part of the ceiling.

I know, right?

I killed the time which was not spent gawking at the impressive detail work of the Mad Fretworker of Seattle by reading this charming little thing:

which ends on a very unexpected note, which I will not spoil here. I can only say this: Impulsive, dumb gay vampires. This series is full of them. And I love it.

Anywho, we sat there on these cool-looking but hella uncomfortable benches for a while until our train pulled in, at which point we were required to lift about 20 pounds of luggage (mine being split unevenly between a backpack and an overnight bag) and shag our asses up these twisty, narrow little stairs (up two and turn, up four and turn, up three and turn) into this passage that wants to be a hallway when it grows up.

Thankfully, this did not result in injury and hence did not result in a lawsuit, which meant that the trip could continue uninterrupted.

Our car attendant on the trip up was a distinctly average-looking man who made a career out of doing the bare minimum of work required to keep his job. In spite of this, the trip was fairly pleasant so long as one could ignore the frigid temperatures and the fact that the heat in our room was less of a 'heater' and more of a decorative plate which at times felt warmer than the air in the car only by virtue of the fact that it was sitting directly in the sun for most of the day.

This was taken from Minot, ND. As you can see, Minot is scenically located on the rim of the Ninth Circle.

Arctic conditions aside, all was pretty quiet on the ride up. Union Station at rush hour, on the other hand - not so calm as a private sleeper car on a three-day train trip.

Luckily, the people we stayed with (who we now all consider to be family - seriously, we all kind of fit together like puzzle pieces) are beyond awesome and they have a super-cute dog:

I dare you to look at that picture and not smile, even a little bit.

Now... a lot happened over this trip but I'll try to break it down a little more so I don't get all confused. One of the first things that happened was Shedd Aquarium:

And a whole bunch of other awesome stuff. Because that place is huge. Like 'five hours spent in there' huge.

Really, we went a lot of amazing places. The whole trip is kind of a blur but I distinctly remember an antique store (where I found the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles book Blood and Gold), two bookstores - Half Price Books and Unabridged Books - where I found more Anne Rice, a Stephen King book, a bunch of stuff I've been wanting to read and even a couple proper quitter strips, and then a place called The Alley (where I found this stuff):

all of which are awesome. The shirt says 'Keep Calm and Kill Zombies'. I mean, come on. A good binder, that shirt, some like cargo pants, maybe some boots, and basically this hair and makeup thing:

essentially equals 'my current aesthetic'.

And all of that is to say nothing of the food. The food was pretty much amazing across the board. Like, look at this thing:

Just look at that. Yep.

The whole trip was like... really surreal in a weird way. Like, one of the things you have to know about me is that I don't do a lot of things. I don't talk to checkers in stores or really even go through lines myself. I don't often order my own food. I don't stay off-line for days on end to go walking around a huge city in the gently falling snow and visit bookstores with Darling, her family, and my mom.

But I did all of that. Easily. It was even fun.

I don't even know.

But I'm trying to hold onto that feeling I had in that city. It was something like endless creativity marked by this odd sense of calm. I liked that feeling. That feeling was like being able to handle things. I like being able to handle things.

So, this post has taken me way too long to complete and it's going up before I go to bed regardless so... Tomorrow. Tomorrow will probably be spent reading and writing a bit, which is quite possibly the best way to spend a day.

For right now though, it's getting late and I have to be up at a reasonable time to go hang out with my grandparents so, I'm going to wrap this up and go try to sleep.

Good night, and I hope you all have a really great day~

The Dangers of Many Things

Namely, the dangers of staying up late, the dangers of writing, and the dangers of reading.

Which, upon closer inspection, sound like a series. Like 'And next on my list is Rabbit Hart's 'The Dangers of Many Things' series. I have the first three books here - The Dangers of Staying up Late, The Dangers of Writing, and The Dangers of Reading.'

Anyway.

First order of business: I have found a site I truly love. And it is this site [right here].

(For those of you who don't want to click that, it goes to a site called the Book Depository, which is great and you should go there. That place makes me feel like I need to set aside a 'book budget' each month just for this place. It is a beautiful thing.)

Secondly, I am planning.

I realize that I plan a lot and not much seems to come of it most times but I feel like being serious for a while here.

I am planning on using Camp NaNoWriMo (in July) to revamp a story of mine that I'm still a bit in love with but that I hadn't really gotten around to, you know, fixing. And I'm like unusually focused about this right now. I even bought a book (which I'd kind of been wanting to read for a while, honestly) off of a gift card just so I could write the main relationship correctly.

You know, it's weird: that trip to Chicago really kinda shook things up. (A longer post about that trip is coming, by the by, I just haven't finished it yet.) I guess it might have made me realize that A) there's way more to life than just this little logging town and the comfortable rut Mom and I were essentially living in, at least mentally, and B) a lot of my productivity is tied to how much I'm reading. As soon as I finish a book, I want to do two things - pick up another one, and go write one myself.

So.

I'm going to hang out for a little bit longer. Maybe finish reading Marley & Me. Tomorrow will probably be spent figuring out just what the hell I mean to do exactly, watching The Venture Bros., making awesome food for dinner, and writing things.

I'm oddly happy about that simple prospect.

Three Points About Me (That Need to Change)

1) I self-sabotage (and I'm pissed off about it)

This first point I noticed because of the Seattle Seahawks. Namely, them losing Super Bowl 49 (not bothering with the Roman numerals right now) because of a single bad call. As a result, I had a minor break down (I say 'minor' because it only involved crying and shutting myself in my office for over an hour rather than breaking things). My mom actually figured out what was probably the cause of this: They were probably one call away from a win. And then someone screwed it up. Much like how I tend to get fairly far when I'm actually committed to something but I'll never win because when I'm close to winning, some part of my brain tells me 'You don't deserve this.' And then some other part goes, 'I agree.' So I screw something simple up. And I never get anywhere.

Seeing that on a grand scale is really fucking annoying, and slightly soul-crushing, hence all the crying.

So, an honest thank you to the Seahawks for helping me figure myself out. Now get back out there.

2) I act mostly under a false idea of how others see me

This is really a shorter, more general statement but I've caught myself doing things/not doing things/backing down from ideas, just because I was pretty sure that someone would hate me if I did something a certain way, even though I had no real evidence of that. It wasn't ever really a conscious thing but it was enough to mess me up on multiple occasions.

Not productive at all, what I'm doing.

3) I'm insecure.

Sadly I had to notice this because it usually took me at least a week to respond to a friend's emails even when I know being left hanging is stressful for her. I never mean to cause her to feel wounded or like she's being ignored (she's my friend - I mean, who would do that kinda crap?) but I just could not get myself together enough to answer. We also had an RP idea we were going to do. Been talking about it for a while now. Never happened. Why? Because I'm surprisingly insecure and have issues with envy.

[Quick vocab lesson: Jealousy is when you're afraid someone will take what you have. Envy is wanting what someone else has. What I feel is 'envy'.]

She is a very good writer, from what I've seen. She also has some of the most interesting and original ideas I think I've ever seen. And I wish my mind didn't go blank when I'm trying to talk about simple things like fandoms and AUs and headcanons with her because I'm just dead-set convinced that pretty soon she's going to realize that all my ideas are terrible and have been done a million times in better ways or else just aren't that interesting, and hence will leave.

Obviously, I don't want this to happen being that she is, as I've stated earlier, my friend.

Bottom line: I feel so wretched and uncreative next to her it makes it extremely difficult to focus on anything else. And that really sucks because she's super nice and I sure as hell don't want to lose out on a good friendship because of my own low self-esteem.

So, this concludes the short list of things I need to be working on.

For right now, though, I think I'm going to go finish a book I've been hacking my way though. I really need a few more quitter strips (by which I mean 'bookmarks'). I've just been using an index card lately.

'Poor Kid's Quitter Strip'