BEDA #8 (7? I dun know) - The Bold, Totes Pathetic Tale of Emily

[Post I wrote yesterday on the 7th which I'm only posting now not because I feel completely comfortable with it but if I didn't there'd be no post today. Whoop.]

Bad, panic-y, anxiety-filled day. I had a mild anxiety attack today at rehearsal. I know a lot of people suffer from bad panic attacks and I'm very fortunate that mine are more minuscule and can be controlled with fresh air and breathing, but they're still hella scary.

I'm in a production of The Secret Garden and today we worked on the largest dance number in the show (there aren't many). It's not that the dance moves are hard. And it's not that I can't do them. It's just when everyone is around me and we're all doing different things and the music is swelling, I freak out. The song has a very tribal feel to it; half the cast is chanting in Hindu and we're all doing this vaguely African dance. And there's a moment where everyone just screams at the top of their lungs. It overwhelms me. It frightens me. I close up and I can't move but I have to get away.

The worst part is always when I'm standing in a corner, breathing heavily, and someone comes up and asks me what's wrong.

"I have a headache," I say.

"Oh, I'm sorry." And they stand there a while because they don't know what to say. Then they leave, and I started breathing again.

It's stupid, right? That I'm terrified of a song? But it happens every time. I know that if I explained to the director what was happening and asked to be pulled from the number, she'd let me. I don't want to force myself to do something that's unhealthy, but I also don't want to give up too easily. I just have to be braver (ugh I sound so ridiculous) and try harder.

THAT'S IT FOR TONIGHT KTHANXBYE.

BEDA #7 - Do we have any ships in sector 47?

I just wrote a very long post about anxiety but felt too nervous to share it and wrote this piece of crap instead. Here's a picture of a lighting fixture (or alarm thingy?) that looks like Admiral Ackbar.

BEDA #6 - All the Cool Kids Write Not Goodly.

Popping in for a quick post today. Honestly, I had a pretty nice day. I woke up, worked out, actually did some of the homework I was assigned over break, and sung along to The Book of Mormon soundtrack with my brother. There was, however, one moment of disturbance.

I feel like you may have already suspected this judging from BEDA posts 2-4, but my NaNo novel is in bad shape. Really bad shape. Like if novels had human forms, mine would be obese and have diabetes. And I thought I was okay with this. I realized that everything I wrote wasn't going to be perfect or even very good, but that wasn't the point. The point was simple: write and do nothing else. So that's what I did. And as I was finishing a 30-minute word sprint, I wrote... a bad sentence. Not just a not good sentence, I mean a truly terrible sentence. As I was writing it, I thought to myself, "Dear goodness, Emily. That is garbage. And not even amusing garbage, that's like bad fan fiction garbage. Don't write it, don't write it." But alas, I did. And of course... that is the sentence my brother read when I left my word document open.

I don't know if you've ever left a diary open or anything along those lines, but there's a moment of utter mortification and if you could control things with your mind, you would destroy all human existence in a burst of nuclear destruction and hellfire. But I am not Carrie, and all I could do was tell him how upset I was, and ask him to close the document. Of course, being my brother, he cared little about the novel and my feelings, so I know it shouldn't be a big deal to me and I should just shrug it off, but I can't.

And now I'm trying to work on my book but I'm too afraid to let myself be awful. JUST BE AWFUL, EMILY. AWFUL IS THE BEEEEEST. kseeyoutomorrowbye.

BEDA #5 - Nothing To Do But Smile

Hi again. I feel like a regretful 5-year-old who's come crawling back to his mother after a large tantrum seeking forgiveness. What I'm trying to say is, sorry I got all Secret Life of the Despondent Teenager on you there. I try to act like a rational person, I really do. It's like my mind is a pair of fraternal twins on a cartoon show--one is completely cool and collected while the other is a crazed psychopath. I'm hoping this is what all teenagers go through and I'm not actually severely damaged or anything.

So, I'm in a better mood today. And for absolutely no reason at all. Nothing about today was different from any other day. In fact, I spent most of the day in the same state of perpetual gloom that I've become accustomed to lo these many weeks. I woke up and I was grumpy.  I didn't write my novel and I was grumpy. I filmed a video and I pretended not to be grumpy. I worked out and showered and went to rehearsal. Then I came home. I sat down at the computer and logged onto blogger and, I don't know, I just felt better. Like, what was the point of being so down? Maybe if I cheered up a bit--changed perspectives or looked at things through a different light--everything would lighten up.

And now I'm writing and the world seems so not horrible I want to sing. Is that weird? Am I crazy? Who am I kidding, the answer is yes. But I can't help being crazy. And even if my crazy sometimes makes me feel blighted and broken, well, I guess I don't mind as long as I get to feel like this afterwards.

BEDA #4 - Why aren't I Ernest Hemingway?

You always hear about these writers who have just terrible lives. Pretty much every successful author from the 20th century was an alcoholic whose parents didn't hug him enough. But they were amazing writers. Even though their lives were complete crap, they wrote brilliantly. So by some kind of mysterious law, my writing should be so mind-bogglingly prodigious that you should be crying right now. But you're not. Because this is crap. 

I'm watching some cheesy romance movie right now with Anne Hathaway who's sporting this terrible English accent like she's in a community theater production of Mary Poppins. It's called One Day and the plot here is she's friend-zoning this overly-confident yet sensitive flirt and they keep using odd British slang. I can't even count the number of times they've said "have a wee" instead of piss. It's getting unbearable. But I'm going to keep watching it because I like the way they look at each other when the other's not looking and the way his voice trembles when he's phoning her and he just wants to tell her how much he misses her but can't because he knows they'd be hell together. 

I should be working on my NaNo novel. I'm only at 2,600 words when today's goal is like, what, 6,000? Shit I don't even know anymore. Oh and look at this, Anne's character has got bangs now. It's that just dashing? I'll work on the book after the movie.

BEDA #3 - Why Am I Still Trying?

I really don't understand what is compelling me to keep writing these. Especially when there are so many weights insistent on keeping me down. (All weights self-inflicted, I might add.) Like today I my friend emailed me an English assignment because her printer was broken and I asked if I could read it and she said yes and holy crap. It was beautiful. It was an historical fiction assignment where we were supposed to pick a decade and write a 5-page short story. My friend chose the 1960s and wrote this amazing story about a French girl who meets The Beatles in a cafe in Paris. Her writing was so gorgeous--it had impeccable flow and every bit of dialogue made me squeal. But the whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking "this is so much better than mine."

I'm not good at a lot of things. Or at least the things I want to be good at. I'm not good at studying. I'm not good at focusing or socializing or any "talent." I'm a good singer and a decent enough actress, but I don't find those things as much fun as I used to. And every time I failed miserably at something I would always tell myself the same thing, "It's not your skill set. Everyone has things they're good at and things they're not. You can't expect to be good at everything." Then I'd think about my writing. And it made me feel so much better to know I had something I could succeed at.

 I thought I could succeed, but recently, (and especially today while reading my friend's paper) I've felt... not my best. Not anywhere near my best. Not even close to my good. Take this post for instance--it's a mess. I have no clever jokes and my wording is poor. Every sentence screams mediocrity. (Okay, I'll admit that one wasn't too bad.)

Maybe this is just a slump. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow or two weeks from now and start churning out brilliance that will made my readers (lol) weep.

That's probably it.

I just hope I don't give up before then.

BEDA #2 - Nonsense

Further evidence for the theory brought up in yesterday's post has arisen. Well, it's not really further evidence because it's the exact same piece of evidence I talked about yesterday which is: this girl be cray. And not in the fun "look at how upbeat my dance moves are and how floppy my top knot is" cray. More like "I'm tired and if you try to talk to me I'm going to literally eat your face" cray.

Today I did four lessons of Algebra II, and then went to a 4 hour rehearsal for the show I'm in (Secret Garden). You know what, let me rephrase that: I should have gone to a four hour rehearsal except I was half an hour late because my car pool decided to take some weird back roads-y way that took forty minutes to get there AND SHE STOPPED FOR GAS. WHAT EVEN RAAAAAAGE.

And now comes the time where I'm forced to wrap things up here because it's 10:55 and I haven't written any words for NaNo at all.

CHEERS FOR BURYING ONESELF UNDER A MOUNTAIN OF OBLIGATIONS.

BEDA #1 - I'm Crazy

Really though, I am. Here is a brief recap of what I already have going down in April:
I'm in a musical that rehearses 5-6 days a week for an average of 3 1/2 hours every day PLUS tech week which is the emotional equivalent to... I don't know, Mega PMS. Like if PMS had the powers of a comic book super hero, that's tech week.
April Session of Camp NaNoWriMo with a word goal of 50,000. Why? Why would I write a blog post every day if I'm already cranking out a daily 1,667? (Please refer to title for answer.)
And the cherry on top of the apocalyptic sundae of my life: school. (I don't even want to tell you how far behind I am in Algebra.)

But even with all that crazy, I still decided to do BEDA. And it's a very recent decision. One I just made less than 10 minutes ago, in fact. What happened in the last 10 minutes to compel me to take another step closer to the Cliffs of Insanity you ask? Why, it was my YouTube subscription box of all things. Of the last 26 videos uploaded in my subscription box (which is really more of a list, but I won't go too much into that right now) fifteen, that's right, fifteen have been from creators participating in VEDA. When I sat down in front of my computer today, I logged on to a stream of creative endeavors and I was overcome with jealousy. I wanted to be making things too. I know I have Camp NaNo going on, but it somehow didn't feel like enough. I saw people anxious and excited to be creating. They were eager and ready. How could I just ignore that?

Maybe my reasons for doing BEDA aren't very well thought out. Maybe this is the tip of iceberg of mental stability, but you know what? I'm really okay with being a little bit crazy.