[via]Leave me alone. Here's something green you can buy so I can pretend any kind of justification exists for how random that was:
Some more #reverb10 prompts after the jump.
PROMPT FOR DECEMBER 19, 2010: Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011?
Ah, an easy prompt.
In 2010, I started following the writing prompts at Write One Leaf. In my desperation to write what I know and nothing I don’t know, all my first responses were at least semi-autobiographical. For the most part, they were words and feelings that I had tucked away in haste, wrapped in butcher paper covered in telltale brown dried-blood fingerprints and shoved in the back of a sock drawer to rot and be forgotten.
Let me just say, I anticipated that my textual endeavors would be painful, but I thought it would be painful the way any kind of mentally, creatively taxing activity is satisfyingly painful. I did not expect to find the seams between my broken parts and willingly break them some more. But I did, because I knew I had to, like setting a broken bone correctly, even if it hurts. Or amputating your own arm because you’re trapped between a rock and a hard place.
Basically, I’m James Franco in 127 Hours. This is a totally accurate description, because if there were an audience watching me, a good number of them would have thrown up and a few would have fainted.
I am always impressed by how much emotions hurt, how they can be as all-consuming and overwhelming and blinding as a sudden bright light or smashing your shin into an open drawer or hot oil splattered on your inner wrist. Or cutting off your own arm. So to anyone who wants to discount emotional pain, fuck you. And fuck off.
In 2010, writing healed me, drip by drip, like an IV hooked into my arm feeding life back into me. In 2011, I would like to heal my creativity, which I have been slowly strangling for the past year.
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PROMPT FOR DECEMBER 20, 2010: Beyond Avoidance. What should you have done this year but didn’t because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?)
In 2010 I avoided looking at a serious alternative to the hard-major-stable-job route I had willfully locked myself into. Frankly, I’m getting really sick of rehashing this same fucking story over and over, so I guess that’s one thing I can thank #reverb10 for; by the time I finish all the prompts, I’ll be so over 2010 that I won’t even regret anything I did.
I guess I was scared, worried, unsure, and busy. I mean, how was I supposed to guarantee myself job security without a degree in computer science (or accounting)? How could I possibly have something to offer the world or the economy that people would exchange their money for? How could I make myself necessary to society without learning an irreplaceable skill?
Spring semester, I was both worried and unsure of myself. As a humanities major and as someone who did relatively poorly in math and programming classes in high school, I didn’t think I would be good enough to pass my CS classes and prerequisites, let alone do well enough in them to be an adequate programmer of the skill level that would get hired come graduation. But you know what? Spring semester was a fricking cakewalk.
Then came summer classes. I stayed the whole time, mostly out of fear. It was less of a cakewalk.
Fall was busy.
“We cannot think if we have no time to read, nor feel if we are emotionally exhausted, nor out of cheap material create what is permanent. We cannot co-ordinate what is not there.” – Cyril Connolly
And that’s when I became desperate enough to start looking for an alternative to what I was doing.
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PROMPT FOR DECEMBER 21, 2010: Future Self. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?)
Write enough that the crap drains out of your head every day and good stuff starts to grow in its place. (Write every day, because you have to finish writing about yourself before you can write about people who don’t exist, should you choose to do so.)
Be vocally grateful. Write about it. Life is short and moves fast. Like the Usain Bolt of leprechauns. This will help you attract people you like, so you can move into a network of friends instead of a circle. The Law of Attraction isn’t a religion; it’s a way of thinking about life. You will find it rather useful this year. That was an understatement.
I know there are things you don’t put on your blog, but keep more of your life to yourself. Process your experiences privately, and only when you are completely sure of yourself should you put it online.
Seriously, just get rid of those clothes you’re not sure about; your wardrobe is heading toward being small and cohesive but ecstatic and always surprising. If you can’t bear to let them go, refashion them into something else, even if only for the sake of practicing your sewing.
Don’t wait for the text or email; send it.
WALK. A LOT. YOUR ASS IS ENORMOUS. IF YOU DON’T DO IT NOW, YOU WILL BE FULL OF REGRET.
Color your hair something unnatural. Before you get too close to 25. Ha-ha.
Consume a lot of tea, ginger, and NEW WRITING. Classic literature, new novels, short stories (I know this medium totally eludes you!), essays, and blogs. And pick up some new young adult sci-fi/fantasy novels.
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And here's the second part of the prompt.
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Dear 10-year-old Sam,
Being 10 is going to suck. 11 will be better, but 12 will be better than that, and 13 will be better than that. In high school, you will feel like an exploding star. For now, all I can really tell you is that as a 20-year-old, you don’t count yourself as Catholic, you wish you had never drifted so far from your brother (and that you had never hurt him, because you still remember at 20 years old the little things you did that made him unhappy, and because he was not the one you should have been angry at), and your homework often consists of what are essentially logic problems.
By the way, your friends suck. They’re not nice to you, and you don’t have much in common with them other than being emotionally troubled and really, really angry at most adults. You should seriously consider being friends with the weird kids instead, aka the smartest kid in your grade and all of his friends. Everyone else is going to turn out petty and not worth your time.
And you know that website you have on angelfire? TELL YOUR MOTHER ABOUT IT. Don’t be embarrassed about it. The code you’re reading and writing and copying and pasting will be your first experience with programming, and you’ll do some more of it in high school (and the guys in your class will be all “But you’re a girl, how can you have ever programmed before I’ve even started?” and you’ll do REALLY cool stuff with programming in college (but you won’t stick with it).
And you still won’t like Java in ten years.
Actually, you should consider switching to geocities; it’ll look way better, and there’s a little hack to get rid of ads.
P. S. Pink is not an evil color.
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