Write every day for 10 minutes at 9pm
1/23/24 – This is the stuff I wrote in class when I didn’t have my laptop
I love reading. Some of my favorite books are the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz, the One Second After Series by William Forstchen, The Hobbit, Steven King books, Narnia, Harry Potter, The Book Thief. The Book Thief is one of my all time favorites. I like that the story is narrated and told from the perspective of Death.
I love running. I did cross country, indoor, and outdoor track in high school. In track, my events were 4×800, 800, Mile, and 2 Mile. The 2 Mile was always the last event, and the hardest. After high school, I started running road races. I ran the Millinocket Half Marathon my freshmen year of college. When I finished the race, I heard someone cheering for me in the crowd of strangers. It turned out to be my high school cross country coach. After the race, she congratulated me and told me I chose one of the hardest half marathons for my first half marathon. I agree with her. The first half of the race, we were running on snow and ice. Running always makes me feel like I can do anything.
I like hiking and being outdoors. I’ve hiked Mt Katahdin twice. My favorite hike in maine is Great Pond Mountain because you can pick blueberries on your way up and swim in Alamoosook lake when you get back to the bottom. Borestone mountain is another one of my favorites because of the view. I like hiking in Acadia in the winter when there are no tourists. Some of the hikes get a little scary with the ice, but its worth it for the uninterrupted views of MDI and the ocean.
I love to travel. I have been to half of the U.S states and I hope to make it to all of them at some point. When I was in high school, I went on a month long trip with my grandfather across the country. We went to a bunch of national parks: Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Arches, Rocky Mountains, Zion, Grand Canyon Shenandoah. My favorite park is Arches. The color of the rocks is crazy compared to the rocks here in Maine, and the arches and other rock structures are unique and gorgeous. I would love to travel outside of the country more. The only other country I have been to is Ireland. I would also love to go back to Ireland. When I was there, I got to see the Cliffs of Moher, Giants Causeway, and Wicklow Mountains National Park along with many of the quaint towns and cities across Ireland. One of my favorite things was getting to see the bridge from the movie P.S I Love You. Dublin remains the coolest city I’ve traveled to so far. I could’ve spent the entire trip just exploring Dublin.
1/25/24
I really enjoy horror movies, tv shows, and books, especially paranormal horror movies. I used to hate horror movies, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep for weeks after seeing one. The first horror movie I ever watched was Event Horizon, and I couldn’t get the image of the main character’s scratched out eyes out of my head for close to a month after I watched it. That was in middle school. Now I love horror movies. I especially love the Mike Flanagan’s work, which includes The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and The Midnight Club. The Haunting of Hill House is my favorite. I like the mix of paranormal activity and mental health. I also enjoy the Conjuring film series.
I love music. I mainly listen to alternative rock, grunge, and indie rock, but I will pretty much listen to anything. I used to hate country music until I went to Nashville with my friend who loves country music. A lot of people make fun of me for this, but my favorite band is Imagine Dragons. They were the first band that I considered “my music.” up until middle school, I pretty much listened to whatever my parents listened to, and I still enjoy a lot of that music. When Imagine Dragons first album dropped in 2012, they became the first band that I discovered on my own, and I have loved them ever since. Not all of their albums are great, but I own all of them and I could probably sing almost every song they’ve written word for word. I love going to concerts. I especially love being in the pit at concerts. Being surrounded by a bunch of other fans so close to the stage, all singing along and interacting with the band is unlike any other experience I’ve had. I was in the pit at an Imagine Dragons concert and the drummer threw me a drumstick at the end of the concert. I know they do this at every concert, but I still love that I have one. The best concert I have ever been to was Foo Fighters. No one puts on a show like Dave Grohl does. I saw them in Ireland back in 2019. The concert was at an outdoor sports arena. I was in the stands for this concert. The stands were on either side of the field and they were the only covered part of the arena. In the middle of the concert, it started pouring and the temperature dropped significantly. The people who were in the crowded field didn’t care at all, in fact, they loved it. Dave Grohl paused at one point to say “Now I understand why the Irish lover their whiskey so much.”
1/30
I’ve decided to change my daily writing time because I keep forgetting to write at night. From now on I will write at 1pm every day.
I really enjoy both supernatural horror and mystery/murder mystery stories. I would love to come up with a story that combines the supernatural with a mystery.
Talking about lies our culture believes in class got me thinking about religion, and how a lot of religious beliefs are used to excuse behaviors that are detrimental to the earth and society. This is at least personally how I feel about religion because of my personal experiences with it. I grew up in a household that wasn’t overly religious, but it was definitely a part of our lives. My dad grew up in the Catholic church and my mom grew up in the Pentecostal church. I was exposed to elements of both of their religions, and eventually ended up rejecting both. I now consider myself an agnostic. This is because I felt like a lot of their beliefs were outdated lies that could be linked to many of the problems facing modern society and the earth. My dad’s beliefs in particular seemed very damaging. He strongly believed that everything on this earth was put here by God for humans to use however they wanted. This included all other forms of life on the planet. In his mind this justified the abuse of the animals we eat, driving species to extinction, and treating animals like objects or property. I feel like this is a pretty common religious belief and it contributes to the inability for society to accept the problems with our food systems, and just our systems in general. When I was in middle school and high school, I did a lot of projects on endangered species to try to raise awareness. I remember my dad saying, “Why not do your project on people who are suffering and try and help people.” My answer was that people have voices, and there are a lot more people trying to help people than there are people trying to help animals on the brink of extinction. Looking back, this reminds me of Lady Eboshi in the beginning of Princess Mononoke. In the beginning, lady Eboshi is so focused on helping her own people that she completely ignores and doesn’t care how Iron Town is affecting the environment around it. Lady Eboshi is not evil; she’s extremely altruistic toward her fellow human. My dad is not evil, but much like Lady Eboshi he believes only in helping his fellow man without any consideration for other life forms. I think this is a very common belief, at least in American culture. This idea that we are better than all other life forms and therefor can use them however we want is a lie that society believes that has left us with our current environmental problems.
2/1
I am still struggling to consistently write. I am going to set a daily reminder on my phone. I am struggling to decide what I want to do for my story. Task 3 is supposed to outline a bunch of details of my story, but I am still trying to come up with ideas. It seems like we’re supposed to be writing a story about some kind of real world issue, like climate problems, tourism, or mental health. I guess I’m struggling with this because I tend to like fictional stories, and I’m having trouble integrating some kind of meaningful real world message into the types of fictional stories I see myself creating. I am going to try to review examples of the types of stories I like and analyze them. I just want to come up with a better story than last semester. My story last semester ended up getting very skewed from what I originally wanted it to be because I was too focused on trying to check all the boxes that the book said a story needed. I like the blog that we are reading this semester. It covers a lot of the same story structure elements, but in a more simplified and straight forward way.