DAY 9
i was bad, and i took a few days off from writing. AND it was my ‘weekend'. so, double boner on that one. i am really afraid that my word count is not going to be where i want it to be come december first, but i can't let that stop me from continuing on, as i have for the past couple of days. so, what's happened since last we met? a new president was elected. by which i mean, an old president was reelected. i voted for him the first time. i am disappointed with how things turned out, so i did not do it a second time. i mean, i understand that making changes takes time, especially if the legislature is constantly fighting you on every last detail. i'm not disappointed with what he's done as president so far, i'm disappointed in the change i've seen in him as a person. he has, effectively, allowed his office to shape his conduct, rather than conducting himself truly, while guiding the office and nation in the direction of those goals. he realized that he had to play the game, or risk losing it all, and decided to play along rather than fight the system.

i'm just sick of bipartisan politics in general. i hate that people assume they have to vote for one or the other, because nobody else can possibly win. that's not how the system is supposed to work. and the figurehead for their respective party just has to parrot whatever their advisors tell them. maintain a satisfactorily contrary stance to whatever the other guy (or gal) is doing. this is all a giant - well, not conspiracy, but something like it - where the bickering and pandering are nothing more than smoke and mirrors to distract us from the fact that nothing is happening. i don't like to complain too much about it, because i really have no good solution to offer up. but it's still really fucking frustrating to be living in this system that is so obviously broken, and not be able to do anything about it, whether i voted or not. (but i did. even if it's all a crock of shit, i'm still going to vote. the knowing that it doesn't matter also makes things easier for me, as i can randomly pick who i want to vote for based solely on the attractiveness of their name. it's an important consideration in a candidate that will otherwise have no bearing on my daily life. if you're going to be forced to hear the name constantly for the next ... however long they're in office, it might as well be a kick ass name, right?) for the most part, though, i try to ignore the news and politics and current events. yeah, okay, so my finger isn't on the pulse, but i'm relatively happy. certainly much happier than i would be if i actually had to sit there and gag down all of the malarkey that the heads on the tv, or the editors in the paper, or the people on the radio are trying to feed me all the time. no me gusta.

WORDS
words are awesome. i've always had a love for them, whether innate or nurtured by my family is hard to tell. probably a mixture of both. i learned a lot from my parents, probably more dad than mom, but despite her many assertions that she's stupid, my mom is pretty darn intelligent. she just struggled in school a lot. my sister is the same way. but dad was really the one that pushed me to learn new words, because that's what my grandparents did with him, and they in turn did it to me as well. any opportunity to learn or teach a new word was unquestionably seized. we used to make paper airplanes at my grandparents' house, and shoot them across the opening where the stairs went down to the basement. the ‘ocean', as i had apparently chosen to dub it. so, you would fly your plane over the ‘ocean', then retrieve it and try to make changes so it could fly better. this is when my grandpa taught me the word ‘modify', as he described to me how i was making modifications to my plane to improve it. might not seem like a big thing as an adult, but you ask most five year olds what modify means, and you're more than likely to be disappointed. kids at school would shun me as a know it all, merely because i knew all these big words that they didn't, and it made them feel inferior. okay, so i was also an unintentional know it all. it was like a sickness that i couldn't stop myself from spewing forth. once i got to spelling bee age, i did very well. in 8th grade i won the school spelling bee and went to regionals, only to be ousted by the word dressage. on the one hand, i really overthought it, but on the other hand i don't think you can really hold my lack of knowledge about hands-free equestrian techniques, and how to spell them, against me.

so yeah, it was never really a question. i was super into words. i read constantly. like, seriously all the time. books were an escape from reality, which was both better and worse than i realized at the time. retrospect is a hell of a thing. anyway, most people that hit a word they don't know or understand while they are reading, will use context clues to make their best guess and keep moving. any word i encountered, whether reading, or in daily life, i wanted to know. i would run off and grab the webster's and learn me that word. this practice aided me on my way to loquaciousness, and was a remnant of grandpa and grandma once again. but i still did it when they weren't making me. i suppose at first it was out of habit (which is an excellent habit to be in, by the way), but i also had a very strong internal compulsion for doing so. while my reasoning was inherently and tragically flawed, i'm still okay with it because it taught me so many words. WORDS! glorious, confusing, limitless words. the logic was as follows:

i got misunderstood a lot. i would try to communicate the idea that was happening inside my brain to someone else, but by the time it got to their brain and they responded, it was clear that they JUST DIDN'T GET IT. i mean yeah, granted, my brain things are pretty complex sometimes, but still, you should be able to understand. communication breakdown. every damn time. thus, my thought process was that, since they didn't understand what i was trying to say, i must not be saying it right. i must not be using the right words. there must be better words out there with which to more accurately (precisely? i always get those two confused) convey my message. only then, once i've unlocked the secret words, will they understand what the hell i'm saying. this was the start to what has become a lifelong interest in the study of communications. and i was WAAAY wrong. there's a lot more to communication than using the right words (although they prove beneficial from time to time). hell, sometimes we communicate using absolutely no words at all. it's just that crazy, communication. humans are complex beings, and getting more than one of them together and having them exchange ideas and information complicates what goes on exponentially.

it took me many years to learn that even my most awesome, incredible, amazing words could do nothing to save this exchange of thought. so, i spent a lot more time than is recommended, learning a whole bunch of really sweet verbiage anyway.

i am afraid