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Quick Bio. Name: Theresa. Nickname: Tish. Age: 25. Birthday: March 4th. Relationship Status: Married as of Nov. 14, 2009. :) Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pa. Current Home: Washington, DC. Occupation: Electronic Production Editor Level of Completed Education: BA in English from Penn State. Continuing Education: I'm three classes in to a 4-class editing certification from UC Berkeley Online. Favorite Color: Teal. AIM: tishtacular ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Monday, January 4, 2010 Currently reading: Nothing, unfortunately. Happy 2010! I've just had the sudden urge to journal, so here I am. I always get the urge right after the new year. Once upon a time, I was able to keep journaling as a resolution, but anymore I'm too busy. I do miss it, though. Maybe this year will be a better year. I'm back to "rapunzel-ing," by the way, lol. I'll define it--I'm growing out my hair again with the intention of donating it. This will be the third time I've rapunzeled, so that's fun. Having long hair in winter, however, is not. My blowdryer is getting a run for it's money on a daily basis. So I suppose a few things have happened since I've been away. One, I got married. Finally! I'd been engaged since Feb. of 2008, so it was about time. The day was special, and married life has been, well, no different than un-married life. Un-married life was already pretty good, though, so don't count that as a complaint. :) As many people are doing, I'm considering 2010 and how I can make it a better year. There are a few areas I really want to concentrate upon, like nutrition for me and my husband, my body as a moving thing rather than a stationary thing, trying to keep myself together a little better (as in stopping losing things, stopping forgetting things), and trying to appreciate the here and now rather than wish for things in the future. I'm tired of being unhappy. I am unsure of how to pursue this, though, because my husband loves to complain, and it always gets to me. I don't want to hate my job, my commute, my apartment anymore. I'm just so tired of negative attitudes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Monday, August 31, 2009 Currently reading:
It has been over a year since I have "checked in," I suppose. Rather delinquent of me. I apologize. I'm checking things out because I received an email about WDC's ninth birthday. That makes my personal account eight years old. Has it been that long? I feel like such a different person from when I started out here. In June of 2001, I was a child, 17 years old. I am currently an adult, 25 years old, waiting for almost three years of hard work to pay off at my job, waiting for another three months to pass so I will officially be married. WDC, if you stick with me through this stuff, my name will legally change during the course of my tenure on this site. It renders me amused and speechless. Even more poignant, I just visited the front-door page of WDC to find my Testimonial there, back when things were Stories.com, and I was graduating high school. I discovered that over a month ago, I had been featured in the Spiritual Newsletter: "Spiritual Newsletter (July 15, 2009)"  . I'm appreciative of Northernwrites  for featuring my work, but I felt very badly that this piece was so, well, empty, especially when I feel so strongly about journaling. There was a time when I journaled daily, or even multiple times a day. As silly as it may seem, I think that The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot [Order The Princess Diaries from Amazon.Com] was illuminating in showing just how useful a journal could be (I've only read the first novel in the series). The novel is written in journal form, as the title would suggest. Cabot's speaker (eek, I can't seem to remember the main character's name) places personal thoughts, lists, goals, and just about everything into this journal. It may seem silly, but before I read The Princess Diaries, I wasn't able to keep a journal, because I kept intending it for someone else. Like Northernwrites says in the newsletter, "Whether a journal benefits anyone else is secondary." What a great way to put it. I think of it as Anne Frank syndrome. We all think that some day our journal is going to get out, and millions of people will scrutinize it. Anne Frank's journal [Order Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl from Amazon.Com] certainly became an important piece due to her historical context, and although that is not impossible of our times and writings, we must not pretend that journaling is some lofty endeavor meant for future generations. Journaling is really for me. Journaling can be for you, too, if you try it.I have about three full analog journals from, 2001 to about 2004. I was blogging for my friends around that time, but I ended up moving away to that and shifting to handwriting my journals in special books I found in the craft store where I was employed. My friend accused me, jokingly, "You've gone analog on us! It's an anablog now!" I remember why I shifted to handwriting, too. I had just read, I think it was, the forward to Dreamcatcher by Stephen King [Order Dreamcatcher from Amazon.Com] ,...either that or The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, also by Stephen King [Order The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon from Amazon.Com] . Anyway, King wrote in the forward how he wrote one of those novels on a typewriter while he was recovering from being run over by that infamous van. He wrote that writing a novel by typewriter really connected him with the work. Or at least that's the impression I took from it, as I cannot recall his exact words. But it was about unplugging and getting to what is basic in the writing, to me, and I was excited to give it a try. I hand-wrote journals for three years. Sometimes, even today, as I work in scholarly scientific electronic publishing, I get an overwhelming urge to see my handwriting on paper. Sadly, I lack the push for that handwriting to spin into ideas and personal histories anymore. But I still want to see my script and feel a pen heavy in my hand. Such was how the greatest writers of our histories wrote, and it should certainly be a good enough medium for me. The last time I was visiting my parents, my mother asked me to help her clean out my bedroom and ready it for the possibility of my grandmother needing to use it. I went through my old clothing and donated a great deal, but I slowed considerably when I came to my journals. I had painted them with tempera paint and covered them with stickers of piano keys. Inside, I see the ink that I had been addicted to at that time. I used to buy my favorite specific pens and empty them in a month's time, I journaled so avidly. Picking up an old journal and just skimming the first few pages is the closest method of time travel we have currently. You cannot believe how quickly you remember thinking that way, doing those things, and worrying those worries. It's an incredibly intimate moment, like finding a horcrux you never meant to leave behind. I wanted to hide it away where only I could find it, because it made me feel so vulnerable, that I let myself be so recordably, referentially honest. Anyone could pick up that book and examine an older piece of my brain or even my soul. I think that makes it so priceless, though--I mastered traveling to the past, to my past, and no one can understand it like I do. That makes it so untouchably important, I grow literally unable to describe it. It's one of the most important things, and I did it for me, and it is mine. If you can get yourself to do it, spend some time journaling. Fill a book. Your older self will love it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Friday, August 8, 2008 Currently reading:
Well, that last entry wasn't very fun, was it?  Purging your work is like picking which children should live or die. Well, that's pretty extreme--let's suffice to say that it's a difficult and painful process. I wrote the last entry after I had deleted everything. I didn't cry, but my words are black and blue. I'm in a better mood today.  I received a comment from a user (I'm not sure if he or she would like me to mention them here, so mum's the word), and it really made me feel better. My muse is not dead; it's just sleeping while my mind is busy with other things: my job, my home life, my pending wedding. When things are slower, my muse will return. I'm hopeful of this.I sent off my final for my online grammar class today. I added that tidbit to my bio, that I am enrolled in UC Berkeley's online editing certification program. It consists of four classes, and the first was a grammar class. I struggled a bit in the middle weeks, but when it came to the exercises that were more like editing, I did pretty well. I hope that my final will reflect my hard work. One of our texts for the class was Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O'Conner [Order Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, Second Edition from Amazon.Com] . The text is very colorful--not even close to that of dry style guides. If you're in doubt regarding your usage, certainly seek out this book. I found it very helpful--a breath of fresh air in contrast to Chicago [Order The Chicago Manual of Style from Amazon.Com] and Hacker's A Writer's Reference [Order A Writer's Reference from Amazon.Com] . You may also find Hacker's corresponding website helpful: http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/writersref6e/Player/Pages/Login.aspx?sViewA... You don't need to have the text to register on the site (although, as the correspond, the text does explain the concepts on the site if you are unfamiliar with them). Create an account and run through some of the exercises in your troublesome areas. All of the answers are explained, so it's a helpful watchdog of how well you know the rules. Well, I think that's all for me. My next goal is to garner up the will to run through my reviewing forum. I think that would be the first and most helpful step toward becoming involved again with WDC. I am hopeful. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wednesday, August 6, 2008 I am 24 years old. My Writing.com account is 8 years old. I just spent the last hour listening to music I used to love, deleting my own writing, an activity I used to love. My upgraded membership had expired and I decided to purge my things. I haven’t contributed much to this writing community for so long that I think I’ve spent a year’s worth of upgraded memberships simply preserving my older pieces. No more. I did have to spend the $9.95 on a basic membership to have access to my frozen items, but when the three months of that paid membership expires, I’m not renewing it. My time at W.com is stagnant. No, that’s false—my muse is stagnant. If I were less fearful, I’d admit that I suspect my talent is dead. Is that possible? I’m so young, aren’t I? Writing talent takes years to develop. My hope is that I am just dried out for now. I have to admit that after I met my fiancé, my drive for most artistic things has waned. I suspect that my muse was most likely my loneliness. Paired with self-esteem issues, the biggest goal in my life was to find someone who liked me back. Honestly. Pitiful, I know, but I’m running into issues regarding the realization everywhere. For example, I’m trying to plan my wedding, and people keep asking me, “What do you want?” That is a good question—what do I want? The problem is that I never dreamed of what my wedding would be like because I never thought I would get married. Further, I never thought anyone would be attracted to me, let alone love me. It’s cruel, being the fat girl and graduating with a class of 200. I knew everyone. I’d known them all since kindergarten. I never had a chance to define myself until I moved away to college, and even that was a lengthy, painful process. I think that pain drove me to express my unhappiness, my loneliness in my writing. I can’t say that I am perfectly happy. I have another set of problems currently—they are rooted in my feeling of fruitlessness, really. I lost all of my passions when I discovered passion. I always thought that if I found someone, that I would live for him, that he would be my driving force. Now, I find that isn’t enough. It was for a time, but that time was short. I can be with him without him being my sole passion. It’s a pity I’ve given up all of my other passions in exchange—it didn’t have to be an exchange. That is where I am, and why I’m leaving my portfolio so barren—I am in search of my driving passions. When I find them, I may return. It’s always comforting to know that my W.com portfolio will be waiting for me. Don't worry—I'm not always so maudlin.
© Copyright 2008 Rapunzel (UN: theresa333 at Writing.Com).
All rights reserved.
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