So THIS Is What Blogs Are For

The past eighteen hours or so have become unfortunately stressful for me. It seems that, although I am slightly excited to travel home for the summer, packing and cleaning is more than I bargained for. My roommate has already left; however, there is so much work left to be done (after I spoke with the landlord) that I’m not going to be able to come home until really late tonight (probably tomorrow). Right now, I’m just so frustrated that I’ve decided to sit down and blog. Just to get my mind off of things for a while.

I still have to polish up an essay for publication into the English Journal. I’m excited that my professor is encouraging me to submit it, but I’m not particularly excited about spending MORE time on schoolwork. Ultimately, I just want to head home and, maybe, go to the city tomorrow. That's not going to happen if I end up stuck here again tonight. Eh, I guess I’ll try to be optimistic… I am going to go. I am going to go. I am going to go.

Another piece adding to my bitterness is the fact that we handed in the cable box, and et cetera, only to be left with a really, really crappy connection. Now, this wouldn’t have been a problem if I were to have left yesterday as planned. You all get the point.

So, in thinking positive, I’d like to focus on some of the books that I want to read this summer. I always look forward to summer reading. This year, I think I’m going to catch up on some YA titles, as I said before. I’ve never read The Outsiders or Twilight, so I want to tackle them. I just ordered Paul Shirley’s book, The Contortionist’s Handbook, and Slaughterhouse-Five. Those will be the first to be read, probably in that order. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

I was able to chat with some really influential people this week, and I would love to write more about it, but I’m going to wait until after one more meeting tonight. For now, I’m going to work on this paper for the Journal. Hopefully I’ll be online from my house tonight.

Even if I leave tomorrow, I bet you I can still make it to the city… maybe.

Cheers

To Vent, Or Not To Vent

It’s really astounding how much I blog. I wake up in the morning and I blog. Before I go to bed at night, I blog. While I’m eating pizza in the morning, pizza in the evening and pizza at supper time… I blog. (This will happen when you are an author on three separate blogs.) Throughout all of this blogging I’ve come to find an interesting circumstance.

I was talking to someone yesterday and she asked me if I ever blog just to vent. And, I guess, my answer to that is… no (?). When I first started blogging as a freshman in college, I used LiveJournal as my blogging service. It was on this blog that I really just wrote to assert my emotions.

Now, though, things are different. I guess I got caught up in this whole “learning environment” idea (thanks, Will Richardson). I use blogging to further my addiction to learning. Not just learning as proposed by education. But learning as is the definition of learning.

I write about things that I’m familiar with, things that mean a lot to me, but I don’t necessarily know everything about. You see, I’m not an expert (yet) on any particular subject; however, the best way to become an expert is to *duh* keep learning.

So, most people who meet me understand that I’m one of the Nets’ biggest fans (self-proclaimed, of course). I tend to write about the NBA a lot, because I enjoy learning about it. The same thing goes with education. I’ve been studying literature for well-over five years now. I’m just starting to take core pedagogical classes. So, most of what I am interested in disperses from these facets. This is why a lot of my blog posts deal with the aforementioned areas.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I do blog, still, just to vent sometimes. Usually, though, these don’t get published. Consider this post. I wrote this poem just because I like to write poetry, and I appreciate all feedback (although, more comments would be nice). The issues that the poem takes hold of are issues that were plaguing me; therefore, I guess you could say that I used this medium to vent—right?

I really do believe that blogs can be incredibly beneficial. I’ve been boring anyone and everyone who reads this blog with this information for months now. But, basically, I can’t help but try to help expand my learning environment to others. Whew! I feel as if I’m beating this subject to death. So, on that note… later, folks. Cheers.

T.O. (and not the football player)

It’s been a while since I’ve actually focused on writing something creative; nevertheless, I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to sit down and hatch one of the ideas that have come to my mind.

As I’ve been primarily focusing on literature and pedagogical studies, it’s been hard for me to spend time writing anything else at all for myself. But, despite the fact that I still have a lot on my plate, I figure I'll allot myself some time to work on something(s) to calm my mind. So, amidst all the chaos and flux, I am going to try to post one creative piece a week, here. This will help keep me level, I suppose.

[Side Note: it’s weird when some of the things that a person is passionate about in life (for me reading and writing) are the things that you are studying. I go to school all day, reading and writing about various different cannons, gathering all sorts of personal ideas about what to write about, and then when I get home I have no brain-power left because it has all been exhausted... It's unfortunate, I assure you.]

This is something I wanted to try to experiment with for a while now, and I figure that I will guide my readers (I can say “my readers” because I know people read this blog, even though they disrespect it and don’t comment) through my personal writing process. Therefore, as I write this poem, and when this is published, I would suggest that it is far from complete. I am a firm believer in the idea that a work of writing is NEVER finished. So, here it goes:

Trip

Along Interstate 81: it’s raining-
Hard for Him to validate the gauche-
Strange monotony which buries our hopes

Wipers contrapuntal to the splashing-
Water fogging every move we’ve made-
From here it can’t be that far

“Dude, I’m not feeling like driving-
Anymore burgers left? There are fries everything-
Spilling over into the soggy brown bag”

Listen to the book-on-tape, dude-
Any dummy can understand it Makes-
Time, go faster

Off-Ramp towards NY-Rt.13: damn-
Time we’re back, 2AM awful-
Sounds as if we had no choice but to listen

I can’t believe that we have no class-
Keeps people around here looking better-
Left alone things can get pretty lonely

“Dude, wouldn’t it be bad-
Ass was so tired from sitting down four-
Hours in a car- must be low on gas”

The ride wasn’t as rough this time-
Seems to halt for a while it seems-
We’ll make this trip again, right?


There is not better time for y’all to leave a comment; it would be greatly appreciated if you did. Let me know what you think. I think I'm going to try some creative non-fiction next week. Cheers.

Hmm...

I found this video and it automatically struck my attention. I haven't had time to really look into this website; however, when I get some more time I will definitely check it out.

For now, though, what do you think about this video?