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[ToonyMan]

Hahaha how funny Jack.

How funny.

Hhahaaa

[Vector]

Well, fun.  A reasonable day has gone downhill into bad day.  Not as bad as Duke's (my condolences, man), but pretty bad.  The creative writing class made me want to stab people--it's full of middle-aged women writing their memoirs and young men who want to forget that they have miserable pointless jobs.  Apparently the entire class goes drinking after they're done.

Peachy.  At 20, I'm probably the youngest person there by at least 5 years.

Then, we're apparently supposed to write a couple of paragraphs (must be actually true) about the worst thing we ever did.  I don't have a worst thing.  Yes, I have a bad temper, and I snip at people, and instead of backing off when my boyfriend was being troublesome I might have argued more than I strictly should have.  We're supposed to write a novel about this.  Really?  Is there really a novel in "once there was a young woman who wanted to be a great mathematician, and argued with her mother rather a lot, which made her mother very, very depressed, so the young woman was very, very bad and morally irredeemable."  Or maybe I'm supposed to write "Once a young woman fell in love with the wrong man, and when she stopped saying 'yes dear' and let him know that she sometimes felt alone and miserable in this trying world, he couldn't take it.  Rather than understanding, she thought it was a communications problem and, in her attempts to communicate, hurt him."

Spectacular.  Those sound like exactly the sorts of novels I want to write.

So I'm sitting in the back of the class, thinking about how Thyme goes out drinking and lives it up, and how maybe she should be the one in my place--not because she's done anything wrong, but because her (realistically rather tame) life might be at least slightly more libertine than mine.  She has a boyfriend and a group of friends who are familiar with drugs and alcohol, so she has some chance at a debauched lifestyle.  I'm also sitting back there being miserable because the entire class session can be distilled to "write what you know" and "have rising and falling action."  I'm really bored, in fact, which is why I'm busy thinking about Thyme being debauched and how I'm not sure if I have a worst thing I've done or not.

Class is dismissed, and as I'm leaving the teacher puts his hand on my shoulder and says "Don't be sad."

Curses.  Nice to meet you, too, mister.  Next time I'll be sure to mention that you're balding and really short, since everyone likes those sorts of things put on display on first acquaintance.

Right around then is when I leave and, since I'm being picked up by my mom, end up telling her the whole spiel.  At some point, I tell her that I don't have anything I feel particularly guilty about--no stories I need to get off my chest--and she tells me I should feel guilty for having occasionally hurt her without apologizing in the past (i.e., when I was 16, 18, whatever).  Guilty.  Eaten.  Then we move on to discussing a different assignment, which is apparently supposed to be some sort of argument between a man and a woman.  It's the framework for what's supposed to be an exercise on freeform dialogue.  Onwards to a rant about how things used to be more simple.  They were better.  The women stayed home with the kids--no, they didn't get jobs.  That wasn't how things were.  Women stayed home with the kids.  I attempted to intimate that perhaps I wouldn't like to stay home with children, and maybe I would like a job, and maybe I would be miserable if I had to waste what I am on raising children.  I am good at numbers.  I am bad at children, so help me.

Well, she doesn't like that answer.  She likes the times back when you pretty much only saw white people, and women didn't have jobs.  No gay marriages.  Good American white-bread families with a mother and a father and two kids, and dad goes off to work in the mornings and mom stays home to raise the children.  Picket fences.  Soft women and strong men with manly jaws.

I am not a soft woman.  I am not a particularly nurturing woman.  I do not want children or a husband to tell me what to do.  I may never get married.  I will probably never have children, adopted or otherwise.

I am tired of listening to her rants about people of color, homosexuals, people with disabilities taking money away from those who deserve it, and her prods for me to go find a nice man, get married, have children, and stay home with them.  She doesn't know that I was diagnosed with mild autism twice, or that I'm bisexual.  She doesn't know that I don't really identify that strongly with either gender.  She doesn't know that I do sympathize with marginalized groups of all stripes, and that I don't actually care that much about them [whatevers] coming and stealing our American jobs.  I am not scared of the Mexicans or the Chinese.  I do not worry that much about the fluoride in the water.  It is not just because I am young.  It is because sometimes there will be a sucker, and I am not necessarily the main character of this story.  If I lose and others benefit, then that will be the way it went.

Neither she nor my father will know any of these things.  I am too busy being the dutiful daughter.


tl;dr: I may be dropping my novel-writing class, and my relationship with my mother is as turbulent as ever.

[Duke 2.0]

Neither she nor my father will know any of these things.  I am too busy being the dutiful daughter.

Can sum up my relationship with my dad if you flip the gender roles. My condolences.

 And yeah, made up with my friend. They were just iffed that I left my status as busy the whole day and they thought I was ignoring them. Cleared that up.

 And yeah, that isn't the first time I get a bunch of scratches on my wrists and have people suspect me of cutting. I remember telling a story a few-hundred pages back on how I scraped my wrists up while climbing a tree and had a professor try to council me about cutting. Why is this the first thing people suspect from me?

[ToonyMan]

You know what will make everything better?  Youtube wuth your bbb.

[Cthulhu]

I feel weird about telling this because it seems minor compared to all the srs floating around, but here it goes anyway.

I am in trouble.  Specifically, sectoid trouble.  Base invasion, lots of sectoids, not a lot of equipment because of the 80 item limit.  If I don't sell all my excess ammo I have to defend the base with an autocannon and mangrit.  That'll get me far (Specifically, through the lift and across the first hangar) but it won't get me all the way through.  Now that I've sold everything, I've found the game is going wonky with item distribution.  Some people are dual-wielding laser rifles (Still working on plasma), while others have nothing, or even better, are packing heavy plasmas they don't know how to use.  As I don't have plasma, I don't have plasma beams, and I don't have firestorms, which means I can't just shoot the battleship down.  I've gotta do this.

It makes me sad, because I'm going to lose a lot of good men.

[Jackrabbit]

Know that we're behind you, Cthulhu. Godspeed.

[Heron TSG]

I, too, had a saddening experience with a college class today. I got my Interpersonal Communications handbook, and was told to read it. Now, I'm only in that class because it was the only online class left open because the college staff forgot to process my paperwork four months ago. I am now more mad at them. The moral seems to be this: "Because you're white and from the West,* you don't understand diversity so this book will teach you about diversely communicating with diverse people with diverse words. Diversely."

^{*How did they know! These psychology majors must know something!}

[Gunner-Chan]

and I don't have firestorms, which means I can't just shoot the battleship down.

Never works anyway. They just keep sending them until one gets through.

[MaximumZero]

I just got chewed out because someone left an open bottle of water on the nightstand, and my wife subsequently knocked it onto a power strip. I silently cleaned up the power strip, made sure everything worked, and left the room, thinking:

"I don't drink bottled water. I can't stand the taste."

Also: I drew a blank when figuring out volume of an area and had to google it. *facepalm*

[nenjin]

The Crimelike forums are down

[Cthulhu]

Floaters are terrorizing Washington DC.

Be safe, Duke.

[Duke 2.0]

Floaters are terrorizing Washington DC.

Be safe, Duke.

Feel sorry for the poor alien SoB's that think they can try anything over here.

[nenjin]

Creative writing class

At least you didn't have a class that wrote several alike stories about getting drunk. Asked to write fiction? 5 stories about "things that happen to the character while drunk." Three stories about fictional relationships. Two end in dream sequences. I'm the ONLY one who wrote something...fiction fiction. The only other person who did wrote about a girl's tattoo that has a personality and life all it's own, which doubled as a fictional romance. She's also the one that wrote a poem about menstruation.

Creative writing was really liberating for me personally. I tuned out the teacher half the time because she was teaching at the level of a few students who were fresh out of high school, and could barely write a coherent, flowing narrative. So when she started talking, I just started thinking about writing. And trying to encourage the people who were really trying, and trying to give them good, positive, critical feedback. I found that pretty rewarding actually, despite the fact everyone thought I was crazy for half the stuff I wrote.

Some of my non-fiction pieces left people staring at me slack jawed. In the end that class was worth it for that alone, just to see the look on people's faces as they wondered exactly who I am, or what I'd been through. A moment of guilty pleasure, but it was fun. And fun to write.

I dunno about your envy issues though. It sounds like you both hold in contempt yet want the same things, i.e. someone else's experience.

[Solifuge]

@ Duke: Bad days suck, and sounds like you had the mother of them. Bus stop panhandlers trying to bully you into charity sounds especially unpleasant. It seems like there was a lot of guilt happening throughout the whole thing though... if you're ever made to feel guilty for things, remember that you can't do anything for anyone else unless you take care of yourself and your own needs first. Your family and close friends come second, and then passing friends and acquaintances, and then moving on to strangers. Just make sure your needs and well-being are coming first... and you should never feel guilty for taking care of yourself.


@ Vector: If you're not finding inspiration with the given prompt, talk to your Creative Writing Prof. about it. Maybe mention that you think the prompt is too limiting, or isn't what you had in mind, and see if they'd like to brainstorm another subject with you. My Creative Writing professor loved that sort of initiative, and was happy to work with students on things like that... unless you don't think you'll get much out of the class even with that. Even so, you might want to give talking to the prof a shot first.

In regard to the Mom thing... when she starts getting opinionated and ranty at you, have you ever just mentioned that you may be of different opinions on the subject? You can mitigate an argument by saying that you feel it's fine for her to have a different opinion, but that you'd rather discuss something else. It's not rude... it's just asking for her to respect your differences. If she oversteps the line, or starts pressuring you, she makes herself out to be the bad person... so as long as you make a point of accepting her opinion as different than your own, you can't not win. If you try it, do your best to be genuine about it too. Being snarky in those cases, even in jest, has exploded in my face before.


Solifuge away!

[Aqizzar]

Neither she nor my father will know any of these things.  I am too busy being the dutiful daughter.

Would that I had the time to say anything more, but having read that - have you not right there found something to write about?  Screw the wording of the assignment, right about your mental conflict with your parents' intentions, and don't make yourself the badguy.

That said, it sounds like you're sharing the room with a bunch of self-absorbed drifters, the professor included, and dropping that would not be a bad thing.

Your mother actually reminds me a lot of my own, except she tries to pretend otherwise.  She insists she's all inclusive and bears no ill will against anyone, then rants and raves about politics she doesn't understand, and having to be around Mexican drivers when she was the one who decided to move to a mostly Mexican neighborhood, and locks the car doors any time she sees a black man within walking distance; and not-at-all-subtly intimates that, while she wishes she had waited til 30 to have children, is actively trying to find dates for me, with the top consideration on her list being what she thinks our children would look like.  I'll never forget when I told her I met a girl named Moesha, the first words out of her mouth were, "I don't think I want any black grandchildren."  I had yet to mention what race she was.

Point is, don't let her try to live her life through you, or make you live in what she imagines her world used to be.  As if you needed to be told, but don't ever let the fact that she's your mother make you doubt that you're in the right on this one.