A Day in the Life...

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.-Albert Einstein

I spent a great deal of my childhood believing I was stupid.

Now, for those of you who know me now, you might be shocked to hear that, (or perhaps you wouldn't). But it is true. School bored me greatly, I had no affinity for spelling, my math was horrible, and the only thing I could do well was read. Sadly they wouldn't let me read all day, they made me do long division instead. To this day I hate long division.

My younger brother, the next one down in line from me, Jay, was always brilliant. Fell into school like a fish to water. Made friends much more easily than I did, made straight A's, had all the skills to make him the all-American scholastic kid. I had none of those things. I couldn't act socially to save my life, I was the kid that was always picked last in sports, and if it wasn't a subject I enjoyed, I couldn't care about getting a good grade. We were three years apart, but I always felt I was constantly behind him.

Things changed the older I got, and the more I was able to piece together how the game of education works. There is a game to it. I discovered quite quickly that education in America is designed only for the smartest or most promising students. The rest are usually ignored or left with other diversions in school to keep them satiated enough to graduate and join the masses of worker ants. If you play the system right you get the special attention, the extra support to get further in school than your peers.

I don't know if that makes me any smarter than they are, however, just more cagey about the realities of public education. My best friend in high school was never what one would call "smart". She didn't excel in academics in the least. She's a small-town, redneck girl, who likes hunting, working on cars, and raising her kids. Now I would never call this woman stupid. Perhaps she isn't as well-read as I am, or many people, but she's kind, considerate, and knows and understands things that I in a million years would not. Many are the times she's turned to me and said that just talking to me makes her feel stupid because of the way I speak, the things I know.

And I remember being a kid and being so frustrated by Jay always being one step ahead of me.

So I always reassure her she isn't stupid, she's as smart as I am, just in things that are different than the ones I know. I couldn't pull apart a car engine. I couldn't help my child hunt deer. I wouldn't know the first thing about handling an entire day care full of children. I learned how to play a system she had no interest in, that's all. It doesn't make me any more of a genius than anyone else.

For those of us who are working on more advanced degrees, we sometimes get caught up in our own hubris. It takes a lot to just get through the Bachelor level degree, and to graduate with a good enough GPA to get into a graduate school in the US means you had to work your ass off to do it. And at the end of the day, when you are done, you tend to be filled with a sense of your own self worth, that this piece of paper defines your intelligence. And really all it says is that you were able to effectively play the game, to manage to regurgitate enough of the information to satisfy your professors so that they would give you a good grade. I don't know how intelligent that makes a person. I think intelligence is much more than just book smarts. It's the ability to know who and what you are, and to live up to the potential you have as what you are, and not try to be something or do something you can't or are uninterested in.

Why be a fish climbing a tree? Climbing a tree doesn't make you smart. Being a fish that accepts it is a fish does. And sometimes we have to remember our intelligence isn't defined by what others except out of us.

Normality is a fine ideal for those who have no imagination.-Carl Jung

My world is that of my imagination, I don't know how I'd manage without it.

I was telling stories at a young age, and when I wasn't telling stories I was reading anything I could get my hands on. Encyclopedias were a favorite of mine, even now I can still remember the strange, technicolor photographs of Pompeii circa-1965 in the Book of Knowledge Encyclopedias. The way the cracked and ancient stones, lined with half-crumbled houses stood out against a robin-egg sky, it took my breath away, made me imagine what life was like there in a city that had been swallowed whole by a volcano centuries before. Someday, I told myself, I would go there, in my imagination I had no doubt of it.

Someday I did...well, to be exact in July 2007 I did. And while the sky was not robin-egg blue, the stones were dusty, and I had one of the worst sunburns of my life as there isn't a tree in sight there, I remembered the nine-year-old I had been twenty years before, who made up stories about the last days of Pompeii. In a million years I didn't think my imagination would ever turn real.

It shows you the power of my imagination.

When I was a teenager I wrote stories. Not good ones by any means, and certainly nothing compared to the likes of many of my friends, but I did. Most of them were romances, as that was the favorite genre of my sixteen-year-old self. All were predictably awful, but they were fun. I hadn't discovered role playing yet, though it was a natural fit for the way I saw character development. I discovered that my freshman year at William Jewell College, when my friends would sit at dinner discussing amongst themselves about vampires.

Really...vampires...not sparkling ones either. Sexy ones, yes, manipulative ones even, deadly ones, but not a hint of sparkling glitter anywhere in sight. Though now I have images of Hendrix in flowing white shirts covered in glitter a la Jareth the Goblin King....see, there's my damned imagination again. Really it was Vampire: The Masquerade that gave shape and scope to my imagination. What had been an amorphous land of crazy ideas taking shape now settled into grooves of stricture, a semblance of order. The weaving taking over the land of dreams if you will, which in and of itself wasn't really a bad thing. It made me a better role player, its made me a better writer. My characters, my stories all make sense now. People I play or write for are people and no longer set pieces in plays of my own devising. This has been a good lesson for me on many levels.

There are times I wonder if I live in my imagination too much, especially when real life sucks the energy out of me. Often in my thinking it is simply easier to slip into the skin of one of my characters than to deal with the issues I have going on right in front of me. It is a coping mechanism, I realize that. But if I didn't have my world to play in, my characters to slip into, the world would be a much harsher place to live in.


Carl Jung was a 20th century Swedish psychologist, best known for his development of the concepts of "collective unconscious" and "archetypes". The archetype idea has been of course bastardized by several RPGs, including Vampire: The Masquerade.

1. What were three of the stupidest things you have done in your life?
I have so many to choose from! 1) Hurting someone I thought highly of for no better reason than I was young, hurt, and silly. 2) Not following my own cardinal rule about matters of the heart. 3) Not finishing college much sooner than I did.




2. At the current moment, who has the most influence in your life?
1) Patric 2) Roomie, 3) Dad


3. If you were given a time machine that functioned, and you were allowed to only pick up to five people to dine with, who would you pick?
1) Constantine, 2) Beethoven, 3) John Lennon, 4) Jesus, 5) Alexander the Great

4. If you had three wishes that were not supernatural, what would they be?
1) Health and prosperity for my friends and family, 2) My debt taken care of, 3) A job that fulfilled me in life.


5. Someone is visiting your hometown/place where you live at the moment. Name two things you regret your city not having, and two things people should avoid.

I regret my city having no subways and not a lot of things to do late at night. You should avoid the 405 and the 5 freeways like the plague!


6. Name one event that has changed your life.

My parents' divorce

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well-Julian of Norwich.



Things are well...and yet they are not.

I suppose that is always the way life is, there are things that are great for you at the moment, and things that are absolute shit. This time last year I was facing losing my home thanks to a shitty arrangement by my roommates family. Now that is all well and done, in the past, and I have a lovely new home that is quieter than the last. This time last year I had a job that depressed me and paid me little compared to what I was worth. Now I have no job, and live off unemployment and student loans. But I am going to graduate school, something I had toyed with since graduating from UCLA. This time last year I felt much more secure in my personal relationships than I do now. Hell, two years ago I felt even more secure. Now I feel like the threads that are tying me to people are unraveling faster than I can keep them together, and frankly a part of me wonders why I try.

Things are well, and things are not.

My writing, albeit fanfiction, has grown by leaps and bounds. I have a story, a real story being published soon. That is well, and it is a small joy I can take to show my parents and make them proud. Not that they aren't proud of me already. I feel I have to constantly do things to make them proud though. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because I'm not there to hear the praise. My family gives so little of it to begin with. So I feel I always need to work hard to earn it, forgetting I already have it. My family...that isn't well. We are angry, we are lonely, we aren't speaking as much. I can't afford to see them now. They don't seem to understand that. I feel guilty for not being there for my nieces, for not being there for my Dad. But if I was there, what would I do?

That part isn't well.

The people I'm closest to in the world, those relationships feel taut. I don't know what to do about that. It's a constant presence in my mind anymore, but I ignore it. I feel too tired to deal with it, I want to curl inside myself and sleep and ignore it. But instead I do one better, I throw myself in things I love so I can distract myself from the fact that I am hurting a lot.

All shall be well and all shall be well....the mantra of my life. If I keep my head above the water, if I keep swimming, all shall be well.

Hopefully I don't drown first.

Note-New format for my journal, I am feeling the need to be more contemplative and less chatty with it. We'll see how this goes. Julian of Norwich was a Medieval English mystic, famous for Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love.

Fragile....it's Italian!

To all of you from me, have a blessed, wonderful, and lovely Christmas with family and friends. Enjoy the warmth and comfort of the holiday season!

Love you all!

I'm alive, really, just been trying to write the SHORT STORY FROM HELL! And got distracted by the pretty, pretty layout that thewatchmaker did for my RP/Fanfic journal. Go check it out at 1breath, it is so made of smexy!

Of course this meant that lizfirestarter and I had to look for smexy new Scully icons. So that wasted an afternoon with the two of us drooling over pics of my fav FBI agents.

It's funny, I had a mad idea yesterday for an online RP just for FBI characters, there's so many FBI shows on TV, and characters that could probably fit in the FBI. But then I thought that would be boring as hell to everyone but me.

I am a geek.

Anyway, come Jan 1st I promise I'll start posting real stuff in this journal, my brain died with school and I need to be more diligent about writing in here. Besides, it gives me practice on something that isn't crackfic.

In the meantime, you never know, I might be in jail with one of you one day. Follow the meme below.

Using only four words, tell me what you would say to me if we woke up in a jail together.

Then copy and paste this into your own Livejournal and see what responses you get.

Imagine what its like, sitting in one's quiet neighborhood, enjoying ones Christmas tree, waiting for Santa Claus to ride to drive by the house, and you hear five gunshots ringing through the clear, cold night.

Yeah, that was me last night. Don't worry, it wasn't close enough to be dangerous, but the fact I could hear them was disturbing. OK, so I can walk to the sight, but still in Monrovia of all places. This is a quiet town, suburbia. It's the land of Coffee Bean and boutique shops. It's not the 'hood. So it was certainly strange.

But living here as long as I have I know that there are problems. There are gangs in the city, and there are drugs, and there is one section where racial tensions did flair up two years ago between blacks and Latinos. Monrovia is still part of the greater Los Angeles area, and pretty much anywhere you are in LA there will be gangs, drugs, and racial tension, even in tonny Beverly Hills. You just sort of accept it here and move on.

Still, it was strange.

Christmas tree is up. I think its one of my better creations.




I was in a good mood till I had to discuss gym with Patric. *sigh* This is the deep, dark petty side of Jenn. I will admit I've been slightly jealous, mostly because I can't even do a gym now and with nothing but time on my hands I can finally go. But also I've been mad at myself for ignoring an offer made that at the time I felt badly about taking. The reasons were numerous, but it really boiled down to pride. I felt guilty over the offer, even though I wanted it. And when nothing more about it was said, I figured it was a one time thing, it was off the table, and I felt like too much of a schmuck to say anything about it. It was a nice offer, very generous, and I could have used it. But I was too shy and too hung up on my own issues to take it up.

My life seems hampered by my inability to not let go. Every wonderful, good opportunity in my life i will accept or not accept based on the amount of guilt or control I feel over it. And it seems of late I've had nothing but regret for those things I didn't but wanted so badly.

I'm a fucking schmuck. And will spend the rest of my life alone and discontent because I couldn't say yes, just once.

I heard there is birthdaze down in FL. Enjoy. Don't let the otters get to intoxicated, it is the holidays and all.

I so badly right now want to write a X-files and White Collar fanfic. SOOOOOOO BAD!!!!!! But I have to wait till January to find out what in the hell is up with this whole new angle. What the effing HELL!

I am in love! Not only did White Collar just bring in two things I adore dearly, the FBI and conspiracies, (not that I believe them in real life), but the characters just suddenly went from quirky cute to OMG WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED!

JANUARY!!!!!! I haven't carried on this bad since the time Fox Mulder died....the fourth season time he died....I forget which number that was. LOL

Ring....ring...

Hi, you've reached Jenn at (XXX)XXX-XXXX. I'm not in right now. After this drunken party with the Whore of Babylon an the ten headed beast, I think I've had enough of the end times and cosmic wars for a while. Despite being sort of dour, Ulrich Zwingli has turned out to be a sort of interesting chap to talk to, might go hang with him a bit and throw things at Luther. Gees, Luther needs some Xanax or something.

Toodles for now! Where is my beer....


Beeeeeep....

Ring....ring....ring...

Hi, you've reached Jenn at (XXX)XXX-XXXX. I'm sorry I missed you. I have been kidnapped by the great ten headed, horned beast and his lovely, whore girlfriend. Apparently they said something about this cosmic war with God, good and evil, lots of martyrs, swords, the vengence of the Lamb, something to that effect, and asked me if I was game? I admit, I thought it was a good idea at the time. Now I'm a week into it, and the whole thing is starting to make very little sense. This is supposed to be the apocalypse, the 'lifting of the veil', seeing behind the scenes of what God's great plan is, but frankly its more fucked up and confusing than if he'd just tried to keep it secret. Sadly, I'm on this nightmare ride for the next 24 hours.

I should be back again tomorrow, if these Protestant Reformation dudes don't come and snatch me away first. So far they look particularly dower and depressing, maybe they would be more up to this whole smiting of God stuff. I personally just want a beer and a nap.

Anyway, leave a message, and when I get back from slaying a beast, hanging with cranky people angry at Catholics, and hugging trees while telling teenagers God is spiffen, I might get back to you. Enjoy!

BEEEEEEEEEP

(Note: I really do love grad school, but sometimes, you just have to bitch.)

Turkey is in, and will let it roast for a bit longer. Then will yank it to make other tasties. So very good. And while I make those, pumpkin pies will bake. I say pies because I suspect one will go home with Patric....he loves pumpkin pie.

In the spirit of the day I want to consider what I'm thankful for.

1) That despite lacking a job for most of the year, I still have a roof over my head, a car to drive, food in my fridge, electricity, internet, and cable at home. I'm going back to school, and it seems to be me calling to fall into academia, and it has been facilitated by my student loans.

2) Even though my family had a ton of health problems this year, we are all still here, still in one piece. Dad, Lexi, and Serena are doing much better now.

3) My friends are still my friends, and I've made many new ones. Smooches and hugs to you all.

4) For the fact I'm not dead yet.

It's been a rough year but a good year despite it, and I've had a ton of time to write, to be creative, and to figure myself out this year. And I think that counts for something.

I think tonight I will watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving....I rather adore it.

I came home last night after a choir practice that ran a tad long. I wanted to write some fic to get it out of the way for a day of studying today, but that didn't happen. Instead I ended up reading through some old fic while waiting long enough for food, eating a turkey sandwich methodically, and then going straight to bed. I was asleep by ten something and didn't wake up till eight-thirty this morning. God was I tired.

And today I'm supposed to manage studying, writing, and seeing the boys....I don't know what I'm thinking! Patric though is feeling a tad dejected, and rightfully so. He got his big job and had no one to celebrate with as Randy and I were busy. Randy's restaurant opened officially the nigh Patric heard, and when I say I have school...I have OMG, SCHOOL! It's frightening how much I have to get done before the end of the quarter.

But before work and school is Patric, whose pulled out butts out of the fire more times than I care to think. So off I go.

I've been thinking a lot about interpersonal relationships lately, especially mine. I'm not sure what I think about these ideas yet...lots of thoughts, not a lot of direction. Will sit and stew a bit till after the holidays and will think some more.

So I need to make this short and sweet, I have homework to manage. I'd rather just lay in bed all day and sleep. *sigh*

I've reached that point in the semester when everything's coming fast. The problem a ten week quarter, (and part of why I like it), is that it is so short. No sooner do you get into the pace and rhythm of school than you are staring finals right in the face. On the one hand it doesn't drag things out, which I think is problematic with some 16-18 week classes, but it does mean that you have a decidedly "OMG-WHERE DID ALL MY TIME GO!" moment when the quarter races to its close.

I'm glad though that I'm not working for the moment with this degree, (this will likely change when the Unemployment runs out). It's allowing me to get set in school and tackle some tough classes right off the bat without the added pressure of employment. This was a major thing at UCLA as I was working 40 hours weeks during a majority of my time there, and 20-25 hour weeks the rest of my time there between my part time HR job at Added Value and my tutoring job on the side. It's amazing I got anything done. I feel much less stressed about getting my work done now, especially the massive amounts of reading, but I do admit there is much more dicking around that goes on when I don't feel like jumping on my work, (like the 1000 word book review I'm supposed to be writing right now). Something about the stress I suppose did make me to the point on my homework. However, I don't miss the mornings when I was up at 3 AM writing a paper due the next day.

Theology is much more difficult than history, or at least for me it is. My mind tends to approach everything from a historical perspective, especially the Bible. What do we know, what does the text tell us, how does this relate to the time. Not a lot of philosophical thought goes into the reading of philosophical documents, except in-so-much as learning what this is saying about philosophical thought in that time. We never usually apply it to ourselves. Once you get this idea of "Scripture" and "word of God" mixed in, historians like me sit there quietly perplexed, (unless you happen to be a theologian on the side too). It's not that we don't get it, it's just that we don't know how you got from point A to point Z without hitting all the other letters in between.

Thankfully most of my profs are very sympathetic because guess what...most of them get both students in their classes. Many theology students I'm finding are either people who are interested in theology or history majors, with a few psych students thrown in for fun. The theology crowd tends to come from either Philosophy or Biblical Studies backgrounds, or have a background in something completely different but have served as pastors or leaders in their churches. The history students are...well history students. Most of us either are coming straight from an undergrad or are not so far removed that we don't still live, eat, and breath it. There's five or six of us in my New Testament class...and we all are commiserating with one another. It's hard for us, it really is. But I look at it this way, this isn't so much about understanding the world in which Paul and the early church existed, (which it sort of is for me, but that's not what the class is about), it's about understanding what these words mean for the theology of the church and how it is supposed to live and act.

And let me tell you, if you can figure that out from Paul's writings, please tell me, the man is about as clear as gravelly mud. Is there small wonder why the church has done horrible, messed up things in the name of Scripture, I'm not sure if they even got what they were reading.

Anyway....off to do my paper now, I should do it before I piddle anywhere else. Then I have a Church History paper to write, which I should do now as well. At least I'm on firmer academic ground there.

My New Testament prof is a LA born, Vietnamese kid who got his PhD in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Yeah, pause while I let that sink in. Butt ass of Scotland. Colder than a witches tit in January Scotland.

Somehow we were discussing places to find Hawaiian food in Seattle, (one of the guys in my NT class is from Hawaii and went to school in the Washington State area), and we got to discussing strange foods. This may or may not have been brought up by the poi/chicken foot discussion, (not poi and chicken feet, just they were in the same discussion together). And my prof brings up that the strangest thing he ate in Scotland wasn't hagis, (which most people claim, but which I sorta like), but rather marmite...yeah, the yeasty spread that Brits and some of their former colonies like to eat.

In disgust I asked him if he seriously ate it. I was shocked. I mean, yes there are some things in everyone's cuisine that disgust and horrify people. I know folks who are mystified by the idea of fried chicken and waffles together, (ambrosia of the gods). But seriously...marmite? He admitted he did eat it, but not often. I was impressed....bully for him. He laughed it off saying he'd eaten stranger things made by some of his family, but really...just...eeeewwwhhhh.

Not offense to the Brits out there, but I'll stick to my Nutella on toast, thank you. See, the Italians can think of something totally delicious and completely decadent. Not salty yeast on a cracker...which sort of looks like something else on a cracker. But then I've been watching Supersizers Go and Supersizers Eat on You Tube, (my addiction started by fatfred, thank you very much), and have decided that there are places in British culinary history that people just should never, ever go.

And Marmite is one of those.

I'll give this to the Brits...Cheese Whiz and all canned, processed American plastic cheese is sort of our bad. I'm curious, is there things in American food culture those from overseas find odd? I'm sure we have oodles.

I love Thanksgiving....not as much as I love Christmas, (I saw a commercial today for Home Depot and Christmas trees and squealed in childish delight). But I do love Thanksgiving. It's about the only holiday none of my friends have an issue with religiously or morally or whatever, and it involved a giant, roast fowl. My grocery store was offering $10 large Butterball turkeys this weekend. I went last night,, before the contents could be picked over by anyone else in Monrovia.

The 23lb Tom is in my freezer now. You may ask why it is that I would purchase such a large turkey for so few people. It's easy....I like leftovers and the boys easily can clear me out of half a turkey. And I send them leftovers too. That way I know they won't starve for a few days gnoshing on giant turkey legs.

As usual, you all know if you are local and have no one to spend the holiday with, you are welcome to come and eat turkey at my house. I have a feeling that RB will be involved. At least by me as I don't play WoW.

Turkey Day, Turkey Day, Turkey Day....

It's sad...I am a freak of nature...

I got a B on a paper I was thrilled about and busted my butt on. This bothers me.

Now I've spoken to the prof, not to change the grade, but so I ca learn what I need to do for a masters/PhD level critical paper. This is important in the field I want to go into.

No, the problem is that I can't let go of the fact that I got a B. Really....I would get a B at some points of my school career and I would be overjoyed. What in the hell is wrong with me?

I'm a FREAK!

Seriously, just...I need to chill...

I'm not doing Nano this year....

The reasons for this are really just grad school. I have a tough schedule of reading I need to get done, and while I've gotten through the worst till finals in a month, it's still rather icky to try and start. Instead I'm working on a story for Drops of Crimson, (the new issue is up today people, go, go, look, look). So far the story is about Samael, "Sam", the Archngel of Death in my little, private universe, (and in larger angel studies, he's not out of thin air), and it's titled "Death Takes a Holiday." I talked it out with roomie last night, and may discuss with Patric soon too for ideas. Everything is subject to change, obviously.

This has of course given me lots of reason to think about "Steve's" universe, as I call it. For those who haven't met Steve Gardner, he is my Fallen detective. But I've yet to get around to writing about him. The reasons for this are many, and I've been thinking about perhaps moving his time period from 1930's LA to modern LA, but with that same pulpy feel. I mean, the pulp, noir genre was really written about LA, and I think LA at any time period would work...besides, it would be interesting to try it now. But I'd have to think of how he ends up in LA, now, which changes things up considerably for him.

I might not do this...it's just a thought. This also changes things for Shemazai, whose name has to change because I was calling her Sammy, but now that is Samael, so....yeah....have to think things through. Those are minor, surface changes really. I need to really think out a bigger plot and a smaller plot. Not happy thinking these things out. But as my paper writing and my fanfic writing has taught me, this stuff flows easier for me when I map it out. As getting stuck is usually my biggest enemy, I want to really work these tings out in my head....or on paper, whatever the case.

Halloween was successful, candy was passed out, and I had tea lights all up and down the fence that looked gorgeous. I then proceeded to watch four hours of scary movies with Patric on netflix, chatting with each other over gchat about the ick factor, (there was a lot). It was fun.

Now for Thanksgiving. I know its been a rough year for most, but still I think Thanksgiving will be a good time to reflect on the good things we still have. Like turkey! And friends. And people to support you always, whether it be the family that God gave you or the family you've made, or both. And besides, I'm looking forward to my purloined broccoli casserole recipe I stoled from wedschilde. Yum.....

I need another visit down SD way soon....I think all my fanfic writing has me wanting to snuggle a Dickens. *snork* Anyway, off to finish that writing today, Queequeg has taken on Dickens personality for some odd reason, *grin*.

Well Patric's job was finally hit with the layoffs...much later than most people, but as a law firm I suppose it is one of the last ones hit.

Patric has bent over backwards over the last five years to help take care of Randy and I. And so now we have to step up. I don't have much with the student loans, and Randy doesn't have much with the new sous chef salary, but I think between the two of us we can help keep Patric afloat till a new job comes around the bend for him, (especially as unemployment compared to what he was making sucks).

*sigh*

Still, at least he got Europe done before he lost the job, which makes me grateful. Maybe this will give him the opportunity to find what he loves instead of what he tolerates. Who knows.

Hopefully the link works, but here is my Philippians paper for those people interested in it.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AZ3-4737f7ueZGNkNDRrampfOGd3bW1zM2M0&hl=en