On Muggle Quidditch and How People Don't Suck That Much.

So yesterday I played Muggle Quidditch.

I also got hit in the neck with a Frisbee (hurts way more than it sounds), which should indicate my level of athleticness. But it was really fun. I met Nerdfighters who actually go to my school in the flesh and we talked about TFiOS and wanting to date Augustus Waters and weird Harry Potter slash fiction porn. It was kind of like the internet, which was nice.

The way I think has become so messed up since around middle school--when I split from my large-if-shitty group of "friends", found the one real person I'm closest to as a friend (On Tumblr, I've tagged a lot of stuff "Teresa is the Holmes to my Watson"--this is way accurate on a lot of levels. There is no reason why elementary school should have instilled in me a distrust and distance from people seen in war veterans, but it kind of did...), and turned to the interwebs to fill in the gaps in social activity--that internet people = good and 97% of "real people" = approach with caution, if ever. It's not black and white, though, and a larger handful than I originally estimated seem to not inherently hate me and it's worth having conversations with them because human contact is enjoyable. Even just discussing things in random groups for class doesn't necessarily have to be moderately anxiety-inducing, because hopefully people don't know me well enough to have an opinion about me, let alone a negative opinion, right? And I'm figuring this out second half of junior year, for crissakes. So, too little too late, maybe. But, I don't know, I'm on my way to caring less about petty shit and being less cynical.* Which is good, yeah?

* Remember, children: Conan O'Brien wants you to not be cynical. (This is what I think of when I think of cynicism for some reason...)

just a little existential rambling going down, carry on.

My life  ...

I don't even know how to finish that sentence actually. I kind of just want to convey myself gripping my face, eyes squeezed shut, as I sway back and forth in front of my computer. But in a good way.

Mostly.

Depending on what day of the week it is, I alternate between viewing the future as a land of opportunity and a deliverer of DREADED CHANGE. In short, I have no idea what I'm going to do with my time on this earth, how I'm going to organize my life or even where I'll be living five months from now.

I mean, I'm turning 18, guys. Eight-freaking-teen. In two months. I have two months left of blissful childhood before I enter the harsh adult world. Or something. I don't really know what I'm saying but I've heard things.


The thing is, I have a general image of what I'd like to do and it's pretty simple. I want to drink chai tea lattes and philosophize and grow my own food and write things that change lives and play my ukulele on grafittied steps and have fun with my friends and fall in love with more fictional characters from the great books I haven't read yet*.

One of the issues with this picture is the whole, how am I going to produce income, and am I going to be dependent on my parents, and for how long (to a lesser extent, where am I going to do this and with whom). These are the quandaries that plague me. I assume that a fair share of contemporary grown ups have gone through this very thing that I am going through but it does little to comfort me.

I suppose I'll keep you posted on how this existentially fraught period of my life goes**. It's nice to think that it is going. Though on uneventful leap days like today, it doesn't feel like it, my life is far from static.

*also save our species from completely destroying our habitat.
**hey, maybe it never ends! Wouldn't that be great?

assumptions

There's a certain awkwardness to the moment when you text your friend asking if they've seen your changed relationship status on facebook and they're like, No! That's so exciting. What's he like?
And you're kind of like, um actually i have a girlfriend now.


And I know that our society basically spoon feeds heterosexuality starting from the first Disney movies we watch and also that I haven't technically come out as gay or bi or whatever but I can't help wishing there was a moment of doubt before the assumption that I'm dating a guy.

I never sat down with my parents and told them I was straight and that it wasn't a choice, just the way I am. My facebook profile doesn't specify my gender, let alone that I'm "interested in" men, strictly.* And I know it's not the most important aspect of who I am but I can't help wishing that people would not make assumptions of this--or any--variety about me.


*I like to share as little with facebook as I see necessary, meaning no birthday, no gender, no "interested in."**
**but apparently my romantic relationship can go on there *shrugs*

What if I'm secretly an ostrich, what then?

I'm being courted, in a sense. In the really Victorian-era sense, with all the interacting parties putting on their best faces and acting polite towards one another to prevent even the slightest suspicion that they are in any way unsuitable.

By colleges, not people. (Well, yes, people, deans and directors and whomever else puts their name at the bottom of a piece of paper, all claiming personal interest. Some I've committed to memory for no explicable reason--Todd Rhinehart, Karen Schrum, Marc Harding, Jessica Eads--my own little group of suitors.)

It's weird, this whole process: kind of exciting and ego-boosting and wanderlust-inspiring and overwhelming and just a fuckton of mail to sort through. At the end of emails and letters, they all say to keep in touch or something like that, like we're buddies already. I'm pretty sure it's someone's (possibly not the person whose name is in the closing) job to insert my name into the opening paragraph about how exceptional I am and how much potential I show and how the educational institution would love to have me and then click send. Or they've got computers doing that, I don't know.

I play my part too, not exactly keeping in touch with all my new dean friends, but mailing in cards for brochures or logging in to the school's website, being engaged and studious. Being the lovely person full of potential that the letter was meant for. There are things I'm not telling them: that I'm not really well-rounded, that I haven't shaved my legs in over a month, that I have no sense of direction, that I entertain myself by lip-synching Disney songs, alone, apropos of nothing, at midnight, and most definitely that I'm terrified they'll all hate and reject me and I won't be good enough to get into any college at all. These don't seem like college-bound-person traits. There are things they're not telling me either, though: that the showers are mildewy and the English professors have distractingly unkept facial hair and things like that, I'm sure. We'll learn these things about each other eventually.

I should go to bed.

It's not that I don't care, it's just that I don't care

I have this persistent habit of destroying things.

I don't mean that as some depressing metaphor. I just can't keep anything in pristine condition. I crumple and rip the edges of papers; I fold parts of pages of books; I'm more effective than a paper shredder when it comes to disposable cups. I don't know why I do it; I just can't stop myself. I think that somewhere in the back of my mind it all just relates back to how for a person who has so many things I am hardly at all sentimental about my actual physical possessions.

When my computer hard drive crashed in September last year, and me being me didn't back up half the files on my computer, I instantly lost virtually all of my pictures and files from my middle school years. Such is my attitude now that everything's gone digital; I hardly ever print anything out, and unless it exists somewhere on the internet, it makes its lonely home on my computer, and maybe a flash drive, if I don't get too lazy. You'd think that I'd be really upset about losing all these fond memories from my relative youth. But what upset me more than losing all of these files was that when my laptop was rebooted with an empty new hard drive, the dock from my desktop was missing. Never mind that I easily downloaded it from the Dell website later, when I turned on my laptop and it was missing, I burst into tears.

Yeah, that small outburst was just my release of my frustration over my computer dying in the first place, but the whole thing is just reflective of how I am sort of aggressively unsentimental about most material things. That is not to say that I live a life free from materialism or that I don't care about anything I own -- because there are certainly some things that I would be really upset to lose, and god help me on the day that I become too poor/financially independent from my parents to afford, like, new slipper boots -- but I just sort of have an implicit just-let-it-go attitude towards most things I own. I don't let the physical things replace the memories I have associated with them -- my memories, the ones that really matter to me, are meaningful to me without a physical token to represent them -- so I guess I'm just not that bothered when the actual thing goes missing.

(And, okay, when you lose a whole bunch of stuff, it makes the few remaining pieces from that collection all the more special. I have a few pictures and such from middle school and I think that ultimately those show more about me than the hundred crappy ones that I took with our old digital camera when I was 13. It's annoying but also sort of peaceful to start from scratch.)

That's also why the copy of TFioS that I'm annotating is the signed copy that was signed actually-in-person by John and Hank. I have two copies, and the other one I want to keep clean for lending out to people, and I didn't really want to get a third copy just for annotating... so I was like what the heck, it's just a book, and books are all about the interaction between the text and the reader, so I will write all over this goddamn signed copy because it's not the signatures and the pristine pages that make this book special, it's what I take from it.

I kind of like that attitude, to be honest. I figure all things in this world are some kind of fleeting (even memories, really, when you get into the whole memory reconstruction thing), so why bother getting so upset about the inevitable?

thoughts from places: Tour de Nerdfighting

I know I'm not the only person in the world to claim to not possess the talent of making friends. This social awkwardness seems to plague more individuals than myself, I realize that, but I want to share with you a three part breakthrough I had last night which starts with a road trip.

On Saturday, my family and two friends piled into a rental car and headed south. After forgetting the tickets and realizing this fact as the border guard handed back our passports, we drove five hours to Portland with no tickets and the hope that we could reprint them somewhere before the show the next day. (spoiler: we did. It turned out fine. Yay.)

It's a dalek, you guys. A DALEK!

Portland is an excellent city. I haven't had enough experience there to accurately describe its loveliness but I will say that if an opportunity ever floats by you to visit, I encourage you to seize it. The architecture is delightful, the food is amazing and there's something about the feel of the place--enhanced by signs featuring sci fi beings instructing you to not block the sidewalks and rainbow umbrellas wherever you look--that makes you want to stay and explore.

We took the bus to the theater on Sunday. It was raining and there was a line that snaked down the sidewalk and around the building. There were also so many really awesome t-shirts. I talked to the people next to us in line a bit and then went hunting for a massive umbrella that was sure to make us many friends with its vastness. This plan did not work out due to the fact that it stopped raining but, before it stopped, I heroically held the umbrella over the carts loaded with TFIOS copies as they ferried the books   down the line and received some cheering. Let me just say there was a lot of cheering in that line, despite the precipitation. There was also a lot of people telling other people that their stuff was really awesome, mostly because there was a lot of really awesome stuff and it's easier to be vocal about that in the kind of space that was created there. It was just so comfortable and excited and connected and caring. 

The show was fun. John is brilliant and Hank is hilarious and their collective energy was entirely captivating. The signing process went very smoothly and I was only mildly embarrassed when I stumbled over basically telling John that his books mean a lot to me. I had some solid eye contact with Hank and then we were shuffled along which was fine.

Adorableness does not completely diminish the creep factor.

The next day, we drove to Seattle, took pictures with the world's largest and arguably creepiest bridge troll and then made our way to the Seattle tour stop. I pretty much immediately struck up a conversation with the people next to us in line, some of whom were vaguely familiar to me. As it turns out a couple of them were of Bizarre Fruit fame*. 

And it was just so natural and not forced and we started to play Apples to Apples which lasted only one round before we were moved into the bookstore but was still pretty great. I exchanged info with one of the girls and we went to find seats**.

After the show, I was leaving the washroom when I looked up and recognized justmargaret whose tumblr and youtube I follow and, without even thinking about it, I just walked over and started talking to her. I can't explain the thought process because it doesn't make any sense to me in retrospect. I completely surprised myself with the lack of doubt and total and immediate commitment. I just strode across the bathroom to where she was waiting in line and said something along the lines of hi, I watch your youtube videos and your blog is my favourite part of tumblr and I'm sorry for obnoxiously liking practically everything you post. It was almost like reuniting with a friend who didn't actually know me and the whole thing was so surreal I can't capture it with words. 

Proceeding that, I had an extended fangirl moment as I explained the encounter to my friends, blushing in excess, and they looked at me and asked, "Who is Margaret?"***

The last guy I met was named Eli. He came up and gave me a high five after seeing my 'YA SAVES' tshirt and so I followed him when he ran away from me and we started chatting. He'd been at the Maureen Johnson event I went to and actually lives very close to me. It was also kind of strange, in a fantastic way. I made a note on his annotated copy of Paper Towns and it was all very swell.

I left with usernames and this feeling of satisfaction that was hardly even related to being in close proximity with the Green brothers. (I didn't actually get to go up to the signing table in Seattle because the security was really tight and we had to leave early because of the two hour drive home. I didn't mind.) I tried not to fall asleep on the way home and then was so ridiculously tired that I couldn't fall asleep when I got into bed, all of the events of the weekend swirling around in my head.

It's absurd when you meet people in person whose tumblogs or videos you follow avidly. It's strange being forced to wrap your head around the fact that people are just people, whether or not they have an online following. It's weird to hear John talk about his severe social anxiety and how he has to pretend we're not there to be able to function on stage. It's odd to be in a place where there are so many nerds that the very idea of being self conscious doesn't even cross your awareness.

And I mean all that in the very best way.

*which was featured on the vlogbrothers' Nerd Factor

**which ended up being in the front row. Not sure how that happened but it was really cool.

***eventually they figured it out because I had previously told them all to follow her on tumblr.