Life's Little Hardships

It's sometimes difficult to admit that you're not happy with how your life is going, and that you're certainly not meeting even a fraction of your potential. I find myself mulling this over almost every night that I forget to take my medicine on time. 

Whether it's just chemical withdrawal, the depression the medicine controls, or actual discontent, it gnaws its way to the forefront of my thoughts.

I'm sure I'm not alone.

Being 20-something and living with your parents seems to be more common than usual in my generation. So is being 20-something and still working on your college degree. Being unemployed is probably even more common.

Being all three is just depressing.

I do have excuses. I know they're credible and hold water. I've had a myriad of problems that have kept me from following the footsteps of my former classmates and graduating on time.

I've had major depressive disorder for 6 years. Add 1 year to high school.

I developed iron-deficient anemia in my sophomore year of college and had to drop out. I lost my $16,000 scholarship as a result. A whole year spent out of school as a result. 4 months of feeling sorry for myself, 1 month of having a terrible first job experience, and 7 months of working a fairly pleasant but grueling job washing dogs.

I became anemic again this summer. Had to withdraw from a 4 credit class.

A month later I started experiencing somatic symptoms of anxiety that mimicked cardiac issues. It was an extremely stressful time for my family and I was starting an English class, which has bad memories for me. Had to withdraw from a 3 credit class.

This semester I had one class, Sculpture. I developed freakish allergies and once again... Had to withdraw from a 3 credit class.

So here I sit, at home every day.

I can't hold a job with these allergies. I don't respond to over-the-counter pills or even the prescription nasal spray I was given. I'm currently taking sublingual immunization drops to raise my immunity.

It could take up to 9 months before I see results.

I can't go to school with these allergies either.

I can't do just about anything.

I am so unhappy.

I want to move forward more than anything in the world. I cannot express it enough. ...Yet I can't.

I have had a taste of an independent life though, and I am ravenous for more.

This week it has been just me and Jon here in the house. While he works, I sleep and try to rest enough to be energized for when he comes home.

I wake, I wash, I tend to home matters... Washing the dog, scrubbing the dishes, moving the laundry, watering the plants, things that are so mundane that we often ignore. 

I enjoy every moment of it.

When he is on the way home, I lay out the ingredients for our meal. I microwave and fry and boil. I make something to the best of my ability, which is far from impressive.

Then he arrives, I finish the cooking, and we feast.

It is beautiful.

I want this. I want this life.

I want a beautiful, simple, mundane life that I can call my own, in a place that is my own.

I want to own a dog.

I want to decorate for the holidays.

I want to have a corner of a room that I can call my studio.

I want to cook dinner for a smiling and tired man.

It can't happen and won't happen as long as I don't have a job. I cannot get a job without a degree. I cannot get a degree without my health.

...and so it stays the same.

None of this matters to the glaring eyes of society.

We're expected to move out at 18, get a job, hang the degree you earned above your desk. It's just not always that simple.

It's disheartening though. It's even tougher having to explain yourself to others, or even trying to.

Until I get better, I just have to keep doing what makes me happy. It's getting harder and harder though as my definition of "happy" changes.

Does watching TV or playing video games truly make me happy? Or do I just enjoy the fact that time has passed, and I'm one little bit closer to the next day coming around? I no longer know sometimes. 

I feel like most things I do are just to fill in the void of having nothing to do. 

An idle mind leads to idle thinking.

Idle thinking leads to pondering about life.

...and then I write long blog posts, just like this.

Crafting Update! What I've Made This Summer...

Since I officially closed down my Etsy shop, I've been a roll making tons of new stuff for our grand reopening.

Here's some photos of what's in... hehe... STORE! (Okay, that was awful.)

After a lot of research into polymer clay techniques, I decided I definitely needed a clay machine. I found a reasonably priced off-brand one on eBay, and it works like a charm! 

After my first venture into the world of clay canes and clay machines, I made myself a cane that looked a lot like bacon. Thanks to the clay machine, I was able to make some great pendants and button-like post earrings!

Anyone who played World of Warcraft knows that home is where the hearthstone is... These hearthstones were shaped, textured, carved, and then accented with blue glow-paint from Glow-On. After they were glazed, they were made into pins and earrings!

Jon went for a bike ride one morning while we were in Delaware, and brought back a gorgeous dead dragonfly he found! I decided to buy a shadowbox and paint a background to mount it on.

More adventures with the clay machine! I made a tiger-stripe cane and used my new cutters to make shaped pendants. The pendants on the right were from my first clay machine experiment... They're supposed to look like they're made out of real stone.

Continued fun with both the clay machine, and my new blade! By making a small millefiori cane and cutting it up into tiny thin pieces, I was able to make the wings for butterfly post earrings. I then took scrap pieces, flattened them with the machine, and used the cutters to make some some more pendants and post earrings. 

School has started up again, and since I'm looking for a veterinary internship, I'm taking it easy this semester. The only class I'm taking is Sculpture I, and we're already getting started on something big! We're going to be making a giant "Yellow Submarine" installation in our college's east atrium... but the catch is that the WHOLE THING must be made out of only newspaper, and duct tape! Today I made a Portuguese Man o' War, and it may have attacked me... :P

I'll be keeping you all updated on the continuing progress that I make in building up my shop inventory before the big reopening day!

What Happened To Me?

Here's what happened in a nutshell... with PUPPIES.

Productivity Bonanza - Monday

Unpleasant mornings have begun to become ordinary.
I woke up yet again for breakfast, and had to sleep until 12pm because of a high pulse and chest pains.
I'm sure somebody reading this is thinking, "You're probably a fat lard-ass and you don't know why you're having heart problems?!? LOLOLOL"
...except that I'm 5'4", female, and 120 lbs, which is a perfect weight for someone my age/height/gender.
So yeah, I really have no damn clue what's going on.

Well, after waking up to Jon returning from class (he came back super early), I ate lunch and took a refreshing shower.
I wrote my blog entry, and then got to work.

When I organized my craft supplies, I found all these blue beads that I didn't even know I had.
Not sure where I even got them from.
I knew I had to do something with them, along with all the UV beads I purchased a couple years back but never actually did anything with.

Since my fish fiasco on Friday was a bust, I decided to do something with the rest of the pawprint cane slices I had made, once again, a couple years ago.
I started to string up some beads and designed a pretty snazzy bracelet, and then proceeded to repeat the whole process 4 more times until I ran out of the tiger's eye beads.

I'm pretty proud of the finished result, and I even glued the ties together for extra strength.

RECAP:

• Wrote blog post
• Made 5 bracelets with a possible value of $10 each

Not too shabby for a shortened day's work!

I just really wish I could feel better in the mornings though.

Productivity Bonanza - Friday

Yes, I'm late with this entry, but for good reason.
Something is really not right with me.

I've been waking up with Jon like I'm supposed to, but when I do wake up I have chest pains and my pulse skyrockets up to 90-110. It usually abates after a while, but for some reason it was really bad yesterday.
I slept almost 16 hours yesterday and had a persistent headache. Really unpleasant.

Anyway, enough with my continuing health issues. (Can't I ever get a break, though?)
TIME FOR PRODUCTIVITY!

So, on Friday I had a bit of a difficult morning. Once again, chest pains and a high pulse...
...so I decided to sleep until 10am again.
Well, things didn't want to work out that way. My high pulse lingered and kept me awake, so I gave in and decided to give myself until 12pm. Thankfully I did manage to fall asleep, and waking at 12pm did help me a bit.

I had a small lunch, washed up, wrote my blog post (Thursday's), and then got to work.
My mission was to make some things out of some scrap clay I found.

At first, I was pretty much set on using some salmon-colored clay (I mean the color of real salmon, an orange... not the so-called "salmon" color) to make some fish. While organizing my supplies, I found a ton of blue-colored beads, so I thought making some small fish charms would be great for creating some bracelets.
Well, turns out making fish is a boatload (hahaha) tougher than it seems.
When I tried pinching near the tail, I'd warp the whole fish. No matter what I did I could not get that darn fish shape. Finally I tried working on a larger scale and managed to make a fish that could only be a necklace charm, which of course was not what I had intended to do at all.
I stopped trying to make fish after that.

Frustrated, I decided to go much simpler, and make some oranges for post earrings.
Well, okay, maybe making the orange itself is easy, but those little leaves were a pain.
All I could think as I pinched off microscopic bits of green clay and formed tiny leaves was "I hope nobody quit their day-job for something like this."
Being a crafter is fun, but most of the times you're really not paid based on effort.

After making a random pair of peach earrings too, I switched to making my famous (not really) wacky birds. I only had enough time to make two of them before Jon showed up and we ran off to get pizza. (Mmm, pizza.)

So, let's look at what got done...

RECAP:

• Thursday's blog entry written
• Approx $47.50 worth of clay goods created (when finished, of course. I still need to bake, glaze, attach to earring posts or whatever, and actually put them up in my currently non-existent shop.) 

Maybe not as much as I wanted to get done, but it's still a lot more than I do on a regular basis.

All I know is that this stupid health issue needs to resolve itself, or I... well, I don't know what I'll do. I guess I'll go to the doctor. Again.

Goddamn it.

It's upside down and I'm too lazy to flip it.

Productivity Bonanza - PROLOGUE

I try my best to stay strong and not let difficult situations get me down, but sometimes it's a lot harder than usual to cope with things.
This past month or so really got to me, though.
Between familial issues, friends leaving for other schools, my own school problems, and my own health taking a downturn, things have just absolutely sucked.

The thing that really did the trick was my anemia getting out of control once again.

If you've been reading this blog for at least 3 years (which I highly doubt, since my life isn't all that interesting) you'll know that in 2010 I had to leave the University of New Haven due to a bad case of anemia.
My hemoglobin levels were down, my iron levels were down, my red blood cell count was down, the sizes of my red blood cells were inconsistent... I was a mess. 
Worst of all, I had to leave college to recover, and lost my scholarship.
You can imagine how painful and upsetting that was for me. I didn't go back to school for a year, and instead moped around for 5 months until I finally got off of my butt and got a job.

Well, it happened all over again two weeks ago.
I started to nod off during class, had shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and dizziness. When it led to confusion that's when I got really scared... I quit my summer class, got a blood test, and sure enough my iron count was low again.
Once again, I fell into a period of feeling useless and upset. I started to stay up late, get up late, and generally do nothing.

This Monday was the final straw.
I stayed up until 5am, accidentally woke up Jon as I climbed into bed, and he couldn't fall back asleep. To make matters worse, he had to leave for class... On about 6 hours of sleep.
I felt so guilty for that, and told myself I had to start going to bed at a normal time... So I drugged myself to sleep with some ZzzQuil and somehow found myself sleeping for 13 hours.

Yesterday I had a psychiatric appointment.
I've had a psychiatrist for the past 7 years. Once again, if you've been reading this blog (which I doubt) you'll know that I've had major depressive disorder from approx. 2002-2008. I started getting psychiatric therapy in 2006, though of course I haven't had the same psychiatrist since. (I've had two.)
Even though I'm technically "better," you never really recover from depression 100%. You're still left with some emotional "scars," some painful memory triggers (which eventually just become annoyances rather than sources of pain), and of course, problems adjusting to being "normal" again.
One of my "scars" so to speak is a feeling of guilt when I don't live up to other people's, or even self-imposed expectations. That was a prevalent feeling when I was depressed, and I still react badly to it. (Of course, I just feel sad now, not an I-wish-I-would-die kind of feeling.)
I'm pretty sure it's guilt for having to quit my summer class, and that Jon is off doing something awesome every weekday that had me spiraling into a sort of mini-depression, so it was a relief to be able to blab to my psychiatrist about what had happened and what was going on.

The result of that appointment was a game-plan to help get me out of this spiral downward, and get back to being happy and proud of what I'm doing.
The plan is:

• go to sleep when Jon goes to sleep
• get up when Jon gets up
• when Jon is at class or at his internship, work on crafts or videos or anything useful
• NO NAPPING, no matter how tempting it may be
• make a blog post of my progress at the end of each day

Since I obviously am running out of time (Jon is already asleep, but he went to bed much earlier than usual) I'm going to make a blog post of the previous day's happenings each morning.

I hope that by following this "plan" I can stop feeling so useless. I know having this list given to me by my psychiatrist sounds kind of silly, and almost juvenile, but I've always held adults in high regard... So when an adult tells me to do something, I listen. 

I know I'm technically an adult myself now, but I guess I mean I respect my elders. 

And by elders I mean people older than me. 

Or something.

Here's to hoping this works in the long run.... I feel a lot better today, to be honest.

That's a start.

Crazy Days of Autumn

Life has been crazy lately... thus leaving me little time to update this blog, unfortunately. :[

With Jon in China for the semester, things have been rough. This is the longest we've been apart, and it definitely shows. I'm sure my parents are ready to strangle me, because I can't help but say "Damn, I miss Jon!" out loud at least 5 times a day. The 12-hour time difference doesn't help either. We try to keep in touch through email and Skype, but it's tough because his evenings clash with my classes, as well as my evenings with his. Needless to say, we can't wait for winter break!

I've been taking Biology and Public Speaking this semester at my local community college, and as easy as it may sound... it's not. My Bio teacher is a former teacher of embryological development at another college, and definitely knows her stuff. The class is twice a week, includes a lab, and runs from 11:30am - 2:20am with a 15 minute break in the middle. We have a lab quiz every week, an exam about every three weeks, and two lab practicals (basically my midterm and final, which includes questions about stations with microscopes and models). It's pretty hardcore, but I've managed to keep an A average. Public Speaking has been pretty crazy as well, seeing that public speaking in general is an unpleasant task... I have to say though, running a YouTube channel has actually made me better at it. I'm also sitting on an A average in that class, but heck... If I can't keep an A when I'm only taking two classes at a community college, then I must be doing something very wrong!

In addition to being heartsick and having my head buried in Biology notes, I've been taking on quite a few projects.

1.) My YouTube channel! If you haven't noticed yet, I've been making a boatload of Rage of Bahamut videos for the past couple months. Incredibly, people like them and I've actually managed to waste 1500 hours of peoples' lives. I've never been so proud to do something so horrible! But that aside, it has netted me $40 from ads, and as an unemployed college student living with her parents, any money is good money. I've been trying to upload a new video weekly, which can be kind of tiring because I no longer enjoy RoB as much as I used to. Ah well, it's cash in my pocket.

2.) SHRIMP. TONS OF THEM. Okay, not REAL shrimp, but clay shrimp! I've been in talks for months about doing an order for someone with a restaurant in Costa Rica, and finally we worked all the details out about two weeks ago. I was working like a madwoman to fulfill the order, because I had a deadline to meet: Oct, 20. This wouldn't be that tough, but it was because this wasn't a dozen shrimp... two dozen shrimp... This was an order for 100 CLAY SHRIMP, not only of different sizes, but different ring positions for hanging. I had to hand-sculpt 100 shrimp, put ring pins in 50 of them, head pins in 50 of them, bake them, cut and ring the head pins, and then glaze all of them before packing them away and shipping them off.

25 of the stylized shrimp, glazed and ready to be packed.

Needless to say, it was the most difficult, yet rewarding experience in my crafting career thus far! I have to admit, I did bite off a bit more than I could chew... but after sacrificing all of my free time, some sleep, and a little bit of my sanity, I was able to finish and get them to their destination on time.

3.) My room. Oh my gawd, my room is a disaster. You see, I haven't even been sleeping in my room for months... I sleep on the couch in the basement. Yes, I officially live in my parents' basement... embarrassing to a point, but I don't really feel ashamed of it. Losing 6 years of my life to depression really put me behind schedule in just about everything, which includes cleaning up my room. It's a mess of binders, notebooks, papers, books, and everything else I've amassed since middle school. I've started cleaning it up starting with my bookcase, and after two shelves I'm terrified at the task before me... I already have filled a giant plastic tub with all of my books, half a box with stuff I want to sell, and a box of things I want to keep. There is just so much stuff to sift through, but I keep thinking about the goal of this cleanup: essentially packing up everything for my future life, having a room that only has the things I need now in it, and making some cash. I've already found a vintage 1981 Garfield candle, some jewelry, and discontinued toys among the clutter, along with junk that I can sell at a tag sale for a buck or two.

Not to mention I still need to get onto working on Jon's and my scrapbook of our years together at UNH, get my driver's permit, and various other things....
I swear, sometimes it seems like there's not enough time in the world.

So that's basically my current autumn insanity. I can hardly wait for winter break, where I can just relax!

Back to School... and back to fear.

Tomorrow I'm going to visit UConn Stamford to figure out when and how I'm going to go back to college.
I'm not going to lie... I'm PETRIFIED.

I've had a bad relationship with education.
I grew up bullied in school for being creative and "different" in a snobby town full of clones, but excelled in almost everything.
That all changed when I hit my teenage years.
I started noticing that I had to wrestle with my mind to keep focused. I became easily distracted, and gained a hatred of long-term things, like projects and essays.
Short-term things, I continued to do well at... math problems, standardized tests, short answer questions, and the like.

When I turned 16, it was apparent that something was extremely wrong. Nobody goes from being a straight A student to a kid struggling with their grades without something happening.
Turned out I had two things... major depressive disorder, aka depression, and ADHD-PI.

What's ADHD-PI?
For starters, the PI stands for "predominantly inattentive."

Wikipedia can explain the rest:

ADHD-PI is different from the other subtypes of ADHD in that it is characterized primarily by inattention, easy distractibility, disorganization, procrastination, forgetfulness, and lethargy - fatigue, but with fewer or no symptoms of hyperactivity or impulsiveness typical of the other ADHD subtypes. In some cases, children who enjoy learning may develop a sense of fear when faced with structured or planned work, especially long or group-based that requires extended focus, even if they thoroughly understand the topic. Children with ADHD-PI may be at greater risk of academic failures and early withdrawal from school. Teachers and parents may make incorrect assumptions about the behaviours and attitudes of a child with ADHD-PI, and may provide them with frequent and erroneous negative feedback (e.g. "you're irresponsible", "you're immature", "you're lazy", "you don't care/show any effort", "you just aren't trying", etc.).

The inattentive children may realize on some level that they are somehow different internally from their peers. However, they are also likely to accept and internalize the continuous negative feedback, creating a negative self-image that becomes self-reinforcing. If these children progress into adulthood undiagnosed or untreated, their inattentiveness, ongoing frustrations, and poor self-image frequently create numerous and severe problems maintaining healthy relationships, succeeding in post secondary schooling, or succeeding in the workplace. These problems can compound frustrations and low self-esteem, and will often lead to the development of secondary pathologies including anxiety disorders, sexual promiscuity, mood disorders, and substance abuse.

And there you have it. Me in a nutshell.
When I was officially diagnosed, I was floored. It was like somebody had observed my life and behaviors, and wrote a description of it.
I tried ADD medications, and had horrible heart-related side effects, leading my psychiatrist to scrap the ADD treatment altogether, and go straight for the neck of the depression.
Two years later, I was depression free, and have been ever since.

But what of my education?
I ended up failing classes in high school, and having to take 5 years to graduate what normally takes 4 years.
And if you've been following this blog at all, you know what happened to me in college... my lack of focus and frustration led to getting tons of incompletes, and eventually it was anemia that screwed me completely over.

Like I said, I'm not going to lie...
I'm scared to death of going back to school.
I have nightmares every week about school... elementary school, middle school, high school, college, you name it.
I either am failing, can't remember my schedule, late to class, missing a test, being kicked out of school, having to escape school, being yelled at by a teacher, being tortured by classmates, or the like.
Don't get me wrong, my life is great right now. I'm not depressed at all. At night while I'm asleep, however, my mind likes to dig up crap from the past and taunt me with it. It's like school-induced PTSD.

I'm wrestling right now about going back to college.
I know I can't ever get a job better than dog-washing without a degree, and it's not fair to Jon to not finish college while he works so hard to do so.
But I haven't changed. I can't focus, I hate projects, I drive myself crazy with my forgetfulness and inability to pay attention to things.
I think I need to try medication again... but I'm scared of side-effects too.
It's one evil or another. Failure, or the discomfort of having your brain go haywire from side-effects... a tough choice.

It all scares me.
Life never gets easy, does it?

I Should Be Sleeping

I really should be sleeping, but I feel way too restless...
...not just in a "I can't sleep!" sort of way, but also a "what should I do with my life?" sort of sense.

Things have changed a lot.

For one, I am most likely not returning to college.
Before you judge me and label me as a college dropout, that's really not the case.
Originally, I left college because of my anemia and planned to return once I got better. It took about a month for me to realize that I really didn't want to go back. It wasn't that I wanted to laze around at home all day and leech off of my parents. It was that I really wasn't me anymore, and I wasn't truly happy.
Let's face it... School is one extremely long journey that ultimately leads to a college degree.
Not a job... a degree. The degree is a tool that is used to get a job, and usually you get a degree so you can get the job of your choosing.
The thing is, college only complicated my ideas of the future instead of condensing it into a decision.
I really became lost in all the possibilities, and though some classes were incredibly enjoyable, others were pain-staking and annoying. All of the work and stress really made me wonder what I was really working for.

The truth is, I don't know what I want to major in.
I don't know what kind of job I want.
I don't know what I'd like to train to become, and I don't know what I want to spend the rest of my life doing.
Stress to do well, stress due to my health, stress of the future... it all adds up.
It also really detracted from my life.

Without college, I realized, I was nothing.
I was nothing but a student, but when that's stripped away, I'm nobody.
I don't have any real hobbies, goals, ambitions, or anything else.
My one goal in life was only to graduate college for a degree... but that's an empty goal, and that's really no way to live.

Taking this time to recover from my health issues has really helped me realize what in life I actually value.
With all the stress from college gone, I've gotten a lot more in tune with what I actually want in life as well... not just what is wanted from me.
I've come to the conclusion that I want to get a real job. I want to have something to be proud of, I want to bring home a paycheck. I want the satisfaction of knowing that I am capable of doing something out in the real world.
I want to further expand my art. Since my recovery from depression almost 3 years back, I've barely drawn anything, let alone actually worked on art. Of course, I've done some polymer clay work for Etsy, but definitely not enough. I want to try to get back into drawing, digital art, maybe even perler beads... those look like a lot of fun. Either way, I want to produce. I want to share my work, sell my work, whatever. As long as it isn't just sitting in my mind somewhere, that's fine with me.

Do I really want to never go back to college?
No, not really.
I'd like to go back someday. My credits are good for the next 8 years, so there's always the option to go back.
For now though, I feel like I need to prove to myself that I can self-provide and that I'm capable of... well, living.
I need the success that I stressed so much over... because honestly, it's 4 years to get a degree, and that's kind of disheartening and discouraging at times. But a week for a paycheck... that's almost instant gratification in comparison, and right now I need that.

So why am I so restless?
I'm brainstorming all of these things I should do.
I want to try out perler bead art.
I'm thinking of all the things I can draw when I get my new tablet.
I'm planning new things to make out of clay.
I'm mulling over job possibilities.

Now that I've written this though, I'm finally getting sleepy...
That's a good thing, I think.

OH MY! What is to become of Hello Interloper?

It doesn't take a genius to notice that there has been a significant gap between my last post and this one.
I assure you, there is a reason why.

Oh Yikes.

Well, college is approaching... really, really, soon.

Blast from the Past #3

I was sorting through my old files, and I came upon my Creative Writing folder from my junior year of high school.

That's... hmm, about 4 years back or so.

Jeez, I feel old.

Anyway, here's a short story called "Chatter."

It's about two crow brothers and an incident...

Always Guilty

I awoke this morning at 4am to keep my promise that I would finish an essay before I left for Delaware.
I am guilty, always guilty when it comes to my schoolwork.
In class, I function great. I am a relentless note taker, I excel on tests and quizzes, I participate often, and almost always find myself in friendly conversations with my teachers.
Anybody who saw me in class would think I'm an amazing student, even maybe a teacher's pet because of my enthusiasm and comfort level around adults.
Outside of class, I am a wreck.
I procrastinate away every last minute I have for my assignments, and when the due date approaches, I sit frustrated and upset, paralyzed with guilt.
I end up not completing a course because of one or two essays or assignments, take an Incomplete, and grapple with my dysfunctional inability to get work done across the span of a whole vacation.
Most likely than not, I end up waiting until the last minute once again, and the process repeats itself, this time with me finally completing the work after an excruciating amount of effort and pain.

Though stumped at first, my psychiatrist told me I basically have a handicap.
Being used to excelling at academics to an incredible degree up until the beginning of high school made me practically obsessive-compulsive about my quality of work...
I either hand in the best example of work possible, or I hand in nothing at all.
My constant failures and depression in high school created such a fear of failure that I become "paralyzed" and unable to work under stressful situations, like incoming due dates.
I have a lot of trouble focusing on things I don't like or that bore me, which resulted in a diagnosis of ADHD, inattentive type. It basically means that things that bore me can't hold my attention, even if I know it's important. (I also have a cluttered room, yet know where everything is.)

All of that stuff combined creates a recipe for disaster whenever an out-of-class project is assigned.

I live with such guilt and frustration over this.
Years of struggling to make things easier hasn't worked.
Psychotherapy, organizational skills, counseling, medication, you name it.
Sometimes you just can't change the way a brain works...
...and I hate it.

So every school year, I end up getting a high GPA, which people marvel at and congratulate me on.
I smile and thank them, but once I'm alone, I cringe at the pain and suffering I have to go through just to even complete a class in the first place.
And I'm always guilty.

Trust Issues

I'm not going to lie...

Life Drags on By... Like a Dead Person!

Things have been pretty much staying the same...
...which is pretty bad all around.

I'm sorry!

I just want to start by saying that I am SO INCREDIBLY SORRY for the unexpected haitus I have taken. I assure you though, this is only temporary.

Stress is literally eating away at my sanity

I'm freaking out, and it's not pretty.

JRTomb Photography!

If you're a fan of photography, you should definitely check out this site!
One of my fellow classmates from back in high school has been taking some incredible photos in his spare time, and regularily posts them on his website.
(I personally reccommend the new winter photos, they're amazing!)
Check them out here!
JRTomb Photography