Apparently naps induce more weird from me

I've decided it's a really bad idea for me to get less than four hours of sleep. Granted, I did have a nap today (which was funny all by its self), but still. It just messes with your head no matter how long your nap.

Before my nap, I was bored in one of my classes today and doodled a star on my hand. Of course, when I fell asleep it was on that hand. This caused two interesting things. One, I had a faded star stamped onto my face that is still there. And two, I positioned my arms just so that all the blood drained out, kinda like when you hang upside down for too long, but in reverse. So when I woke up an hour later, my arms felt something akin to dead fish. And yes, I did panic just a little bit and rolled over so my dead fish arms draped over my stomach in an odd way that I'm sure looked like I was paralyzed or something. Then I felt the blood come back, which felt something like I was mutating into a were-platypus.
Which somehow made me want to write a story about a platypus who wanted to be a superhero. And then I fell asleep and promptly forgot about that until now. The strangest things your remember when you start rambling about dead fish arms.

And my second piece of evidence is this (haha, that makes me sound like I'm trying to convict myself of something in court. Maybe I have split personality disorder. Or maybe I'm just weird.) Just five minutes ago I was trying to write something down. I don't even know what it was anymore, but I'm sure it was important, and I will greatly regret forgetting tomorrow.
Anyway, I was trying to write the word 'chair', but instead of writing the nice word chair, my brain decided that the random word 'machine' was much better in that sentence. Once I saw this I promptly burst out laughing, and forgot what I was writing.

And the third, and perhaps most convincing piece of evidence is that I was sitting at my brother's house mildly bored and decided this would make a great blog post.


*shakes head at self* I promise to get back into stuff like crafting, writing, actually interesting stories, and you know, if I decide to get really crazy, I might do some actual worth while content or something.

Until then though I'm just trying to get back into the habit of blogging regularly. Also, I will always have really weird and random posts, but I hope to intersperse them with something a little less insane. Well, maybe not less insane exactly, but a type of insane someone won't send me to the asylum for.

That one post where I just started typing and something rather odd and hopefully at least a little amusing came out

Don't you hate it when you meet someone at a one day class/workshop, but then promptly forget about them the second you leave, because you have the memory of a goldfish and don't actually like meeting new people? Well, this part isn't so unpleasant. Something you don't know about isn't going to harm your mental comfort.

But then you're at the grocery store or something, and they walk up to you and go, "Hey *insert your name here*!"

Your initial reaction is something similar to deer in headlights, because some random stranger has started talking to you, and you're envisioning a man in a trench coat offering you candy next to a van with painted over windows.

"How's it going? Man, it's been a while."

Then you calm down a bit, because you realize you must know them from somewhere, and you take a few unsteady breaths to dispel the adrenaline that was about to make you either run faster than superman or suddenly become paralyzed.

At this point they start talking about something funny or cool or really stupid for about a minute, but you stop listening because after the calming realization that you know them, you panic again, because you can't remember their name or where you know them from.

You rack your brain for their name at least, but when nothing is forth coming you just start listing names in your head that may go with their face.

This is usually when you realize that there's been an awkward pause in the other person's rapid speech, and you don't know what you're supposed to respond with. So you laugh, hoping it was a joke, but the other person just looks slightly offended at this and you hope against hope that she didn't just tell you about how her pet cat died.

In a desperate attempt to free yourself from this awkward situation, you pretend to check the watch you're not wearing, mumble something about being late for your shopping errand, return your shopping cart to the front, and run like a cheetah on steroids without getting any of the food you really needed.

In which rambling about lunch foods is actually useful to writing

Apparently not blogging for two months or so puts me out of practice on spewing out random things that are hilarious, interesting, snarky, or all of the above on demand. (That sentence construction was pretty awful :P)
Cause I've sat here staring at the blank spot for content for about 20 minutes now, and nothing particularly brilliant has come out of my strange brain. Or really anything at all, unless you'd like to hear about what I had for lunch (it was good. Mmmm, burritos.)

And I'm starting to get frustrated at that endlessly blinking cursor, like it's somehow to blame. And then I start yelling at the computer and threatening to beat it with a bat, cause it won't make me come up with something particularly awesome.

Then people start to give me weird looks for wanting to strangle my computer, so I decided to come up with  a solution in a calmer way. After reading about half way through my really odd ramble up there I got an excellent idea. I'll talk about the infamous writer's block.

Writer's block: Does it even exist?
A lot (and I mean a lot) of people claim that writer's block doesn't exist in the first place. That it's just a figment of our imaginations. And other people swear that it's their arch nemesis.

So which is true?

I think that somewhere in the middle is right (aren't I awesome at choosing a side? :P)
Some people tend to use writer's block as an excuse for when they feel stuck, like it's an entity that is somehow stopping them.
On the flip side, it is true that we get stuck in our writing from time to time.
So, I think the truth is, is that writer's block is real, but it's something that we can get past if we work at it (so no lazy excuses people! Well, unless you feel like being lazy. But at least admit you just don't feel like writing.)

How to get past it
There are several different methods, but the way that works for me is exactly what happened in this post. I sit down, can't think of anything, and start rambling off about who knows what until I get an idea.

Which is awesome for a blog post that could actually be about what I had for lunch if I really wanted to be. But how do we get specific ideas for our stories?

As a side note
I've decided it's a bad idea for me to write a blog post at the same time as an English paper. I get all serious and start putting things in orderly thought processes and bold the headings. Heck, I make headings.

Back to writer's block (HA! I didn't put it in bold that time!)
I like to write what one of my favorite authors, Gail Carson Levine, refers to as 'notes' or 'junk'.

Notes are when you write stuff about your story. You ramble about what kind of food your character likes, their favorite color, or why they happen to hate that one teacher until you think of something you could write about in your draft.

Junk is what I was doing. You ramble about what you had for lunch, about why clown cookies scare you, why you hate having no ideas, or why gorillas look so funny (ironic, seeing as we bear a strong resemblance. Well, more of a resemblance than lizards or whatever.) Until one weird idea leads to another, and to another, and eventually it leads to something that would actually make a good story idea.


So yeah... that's my piece on writer's block. And yeah I know it sounded a lot like a school paper, but in my defense I haven't written a blog post in a long time, and I have written quite a few papers.

Rock on! Peace out! Don't kill too many stupid people! All that good stuff

Hmm. Well that went well.

You know, I've noticed an interesting pattern. Whenever I say in a post I'm going to be posting more often, I disappear for a while week month or more.

Now, I'm not going to claim I was too busy, cause there were definitely times during the last two months or more when I could've posted. And it's not like I suddenly didn't like blogging anymore either.

The truth is, it's not only the blog that kinda died for no apparent reason. My whole life kinda went 'bleh'. And I had no idea why! For the longest time I could not put my finger on why I wasn't the happiest and why I was getting so lazy with all my hobbies.

Well, about three weeks ago I figured it out (which of course was the time school decided to punch me in the stomach, pin my hands behind my back, sit on me, and laugh at my attempt to have a life).

The simplest way of putting it would to be to say I was bored, but that's not the real problem. I got lazy about life. I wanted good experiences and fun stuff to come my way all by themselves, and when they didn't (ha, life isn't that nice) I got pessimistic and thought things were hard. When in truth, I was just sitting around being a bum.

I'm not really sure what made me snap out of it, but I did. And then I yelled at myself. And then got in an argument with myself. And then I wasn't speaking to myself for a while. And then I wondered if I was insane, and decided to just get over it already.

So now I'm getting my rear back in gear, which means I'm crafting, writing, tripping over my own feet, mocking myself, making snarky comments, and most importantly for my followers, I'm blogging again. Now, notice I'm not saying I'm going to post more often, cause that never goes well. But I'm over my weird semi-mid-life/summer crisis thing I had going that was, in a word, lame.

To celebrate this, I redid the blog again. Out with the old ya know. Isn't it shiny?

On yet another note, I promise to stop being a lame follower, and read all your guys' amazing stuff again. And leave comments.
Uh, though I think this time I won't post a comment on every old post. Cause that would kinda eat my soul. And I don't think that'd be a fun experience.

Which brings me to the part I've been dreading about this post. I've decided that I follow too many blogs for me to keep up with. GAH! There's too much awesome! It's overwhelming.
So, I have to stop following some blogs. At first I thought it'd be easy 'I know! I'll just stop following the blogs that haven't updated for like 9 months'
But then I realized that wouldn't change how much ends up in my feed on a day to day basis. So, I have to stop following some really good blogs that update all the time. Erg! I don't want to do it, but if there's too much then I just get kinda scared of how much I have to read, and then I don't even get started on any of it.
Grrrr. I don't want to step on any toes, but I just can't read it all.
Hope no one gets offended or anything. Cause if I followed you in the first place, you're awesome.

Anyway! Have a virtual cookie to celebrate the revival of this curse upon sanity.

yum

 And here's some cookies that will probably eat your soul or something, cause I'm a loving, wonderful person, who never does anything even remotely evil *snickers*

Seriously, run