Melissa’s new studio, PassionFruit Games, is releasing its first game this April. The game will be a romance casual game called Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box, based on a novel by Marjorie Liu. The plot sounds really interesting, and the gameplay looks right up my alley! I love casual games, especially ones with an adventure/puzzle/mystery element, which this game seems to have. Plus the beautiful art looks like a joy to play through. I think the thing I’m most excited about for this whole thing is the fact that there’s a new studio out there with female leadership and creative talent. Women are absolutely underrepresented in the gaming industry, and as a result, games designed and marketed with a female audience in mind (and not just male exclusively) are pretty scarce. It’s just so awesome to see a new game out there made by a woman, based on a book written by a woman, with a female lead character that I am excited to play now and probably would have loved to play as a little girl. As the PassionFruit studio website explains, Tiger Eye is a casual game that should appeal to all audiences. It’s a romance game, but that doesn’t mean it’s covered in pink sparkles. A product doesn’t have to be stereotypically feminine in order to reach a female audience, and I think a lot of times it takes female team members to understand that concept and execute it properly.

I think this company is totally inspiring in so many ways. I can’t wait to learn more about them and I hope to see them succeed in the gaming industry!

So, until the wedding, I’m just going to keep planning, helping mom and dad build our new house, and helping Nick make a game for his portfolio.  We’ve been having a lot of fun working on this game and figure it’s a good use of our downtime and will help him have a better chance at some game companies.  It’s a point-and-click puzzle game, kind of like Myst.  Our friend Matt is helping us with story and gameplay, another friend is helping with music, I’m doing graphics, and Nick is hand-coding everything in XNA.  Our big vision is for us to be able to complete the game and post it on the XNA developers community and get it approved for download on the XBox 360!  We’ll see if that goes through or not =)  I’ve been getting really frustrated with being responsible for all the graphics.  I become too much of a perfectionist and get annoyed when I can’t figure out a good way to get everything in accurate perspective.  Nick is really good at encouraging me and helping out though =)

Now I’m feeling a little more motivated to go work on it, so I’ll go do that!

Been thinking about history, the great atrocities that humans have done unto each other, wondering how human minds can work.  The world is getting bigger and bigger.  There are too many people, we’re all too different, we’re all too content to live our lives completely absorbed in ourselves without stepping back.  “The picture’s far too big to look at kid, your eyes won’t open wide enough.”  Thinking about all that, what exactly is it we should be aiming for?  What’s the worth in becoming a YouTube celebrity, having fun doing your thing?  Is starting a website to help privileged kids transform a bit of their selfish hobby into charity work really the best idea?  Isn’t it reinforcing that self-absorption?

Or is it a given, no matter what level of comfort people are at, they will strive for more for themselves before giving to others?  Is that a bad thing?  Should we be held responsible for people who were foolish and threw their lives away?  Or the people who happened to be born in undeveloped countries?  The people whose rights aren’t being respected by stronger forces?

Whose happiness am I responsible for as a result of my inherited privilege?  I have been given much, what is expected of me?  I have great power, what are my responsibilities?  Most people wouldn’t blame me if I pursued my own happiness and only my own happiness.  But then, those people are probably in my same position.  Who exactly do I owe?  Is that my only sense of caring?  Obligation?  Is there a difference between obligation and the kindness of one’s heart?

And the further I stand back, the more ridiculous it all seems.  The smaller I am.  The less I care, the less I think anyone else cares, the more overwhelming the forces trying to mold and shape me seem to be.  The easier it looks to just be content with my own personal gain.

I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go from here.

So I’ve divided the rest of the month up into 4 weeks and what is due during those weeks:

WEEK 1 (this week)

• Japanese HW as usual
• I’d like to finish the design for the marching band CD/DVD this week
• I’d also like to get Save the Date cards for my wedding at least designed and maybe printed at Kinko’s or something.. this needs to get done!

WEEK 2

• Presentation in MDST 315
• Group Presentation in MDST 350
• Japanese HW as usual

WEEK 3 *CRUNCH WEEK*

• Final Project for MDST 401
• Freeman Asia Project/Presentation

WEEK 4

• Nothing really?  Just getting ready for my one final!

So the only thing I’m really worried about is that Week 3, or I guess the weekend right before that.  I don’t have much done on my 401 final project, and it’s worth half my grade.  And then my Freeman Asia project is supposed to have a video to go with it that I haven’t started… I just hope I can get it all done in time and not go crazy!

The really big thing that has me irritated about this last month is that in the middle of all this school work and other projects and wedding planning, I feel like I don’t have any time for the most important thing I need to be doing right now, which is job hunting!  Nick and I thought we might have had some things lined up here in C’Ville for after graduation, but everything has fallen through.  We’ve only heard back from about 3 of the places Nick had also applied to.. (with either a negative or a try-again-later).  We really have no direction at this point for picking a place to look for jobs or a place to live after we graduate.  Right now we think we want to apply to a bunch of video game places in Atlanta since it’s about halfway between where our two families live.  We were going to do that this weekend, but Nick had to spend all day Saturday on a homework assignment, and all day Sunday on his thesis, and I was working on that website all weekend.  I think we’re going to try again tonight.  It’s just frustrating to feel like school should have precedence over trying to find a job.  The school part seems less and less relevant at that point!

I guess we’ll just keep doing our best and really try to proritize the job search somehow.. and if we don’t have anything by graduation, maybe we’ll both go back home instead of moving in together somewhere new with no jobs.. hah.. blah.  Stupid economy!  Time to get productive I guess!

Right now I’m trying to start and finish a handful of projects.. I just want them to be done so I can work on my personal projects like websites and stuff! I’ve got two school projects coming up, two art/design-related projects, and a scholarship service project, plus a final project for one class that I need to have a progress report finished for by Monday. Somehow all I can bring myself to do is stretch my muscles, listen to music, and play Alchemy (an online game I’m addicted to). I need to figure out what the roadblocks of each of these problems are and get past them so I can move on!

So I see something like this, and I think “I could get involved in movie making.”  I’ve been raised in a society that tells me I can do anything I want to do and be anything I want to be, and I pretty much believe it.  At this point, Nick and I aren’t going to be tied down to any location post-graduation until we choose one together.  I could find some way to get involved in movie making and pursue that for the next few years.  It would be cool and fun and creative.  But lately, my reaction to every thought of every industry is that it is frivolous and not helpful enough to society.  My mother recently quit making wedding and birthday cakes for a living and finished her nursing degree.  She did it for a number of reasons,but the one she tells people most is “Making cakes just started to seem very frivolous.”  That’s how I feel.  I don’t want to do something frivolous just for my own enjoyment with no benefit to society.

Why do I feel this way?  I definitely never used to.  Over the years I’ve become more socially aware and concerned, but up until recently I still didn’t think this way.  The thing that worried me most was finding my “passion.”  I really wanted to find that one thing that I would pursue with my heart and soul.  I knew I could do whatever I wanted but nothing was calling out to me, nothing seemed good enough or exciting enough.  That was my big problem.  Now I’m dismissing career ideas not because they’re not interesting or appealing enough (although I could probably dismiss most of them that way), but because  they’re not good enough for the world.  They don’t give back.  Making a cute funny magical love story movie is great, and might entertain some people, and might inspire some people in some way, but that’s about it.  Poor people can’t enjoy that, people being oppressed in countries that don’t respect human rights can’t enjoy that.  It’s spending so much money and resources to create just another piece of media for consumption.

I’m not saying we should do away with media-making or consumption or any of that.  I know it’s all important to the economy and provides jobs and people need entertainment.  I think the way I’m feeling is this:  There will always be people who want to pursue careers in media-making or other areas that only benefit the privileged and do not necessarily help those in need or better our world.  I do not feel particularly compelled to pursue such a career, and I do feel compelled to help those in need and better the world.  Because I am aware of this need, I should therefore pursue helping those in need and bettering the world.  It’s almost like, because I’m conscious of my effect on the world and the power I could harness for good, I am responsible to use my work for the good of the world.  I could probably just teach myself to ignore that feeling and go back to how I used to be, and live only for my own happiness and success, but I don’t think that I want to.  Some people are content to just live live and survive and try to make happiness for themselves.  My gut says I cannot be content with that, and so I feel I must try and use myself for a greater cause.

Now the big question is how.  There are many ways to help others and help the world.  I can volunteer of course, and donate money, but I have to support myself as well.  I think the frustrating part is my conception of my own power.  It sounds silly or self-righteous to talk about it, but I feel like every person holds a lot of power.  So many important things are just started by one person.  People invent amazing things to help society, people write inspiring books or scripts, government leaders make world-altering decisions, on a smaller but still powerful scale people utilize the internet, blogging, YouTube, etc. to spread their messages.  I might just be one person, but you’re reading this post.  I have a website I made with my boyfriend and I’m working on two more.  I can do so many things.  Before, I think if I realized I had power I wouldn’t have known what to do with it.  I think I’m still unsure of what message I’m trying to spread, but I’m at least on a better track.  Social awareness, helping others, protecting the environment.  Things like that.

The problem is that everything seems too small.  Sure I could create or work for some local organization wherever I end up living, or something like that.  Or start some kind of website.  I just worry that I won’t be doing as much good as I can.  I don’t want to get bogged down and stuck and waste my potential.  I’m terrible at math and science, so going into any career like that to help others has never really been an option.  For me, my future lies more in the areas of changing hearts and minds, reaching out to people through media of some sort.  That’s the only way I can really see it happening.  But what?  How exactly?  Do I even have a goal?  My mantra for the dream job is something that lets me be creative and help people.  I just wonder what that job could be.

I guess what I’m basically saying here is that it’s frustrating.  There are a million jobs and industries out there that seem fun and interesting, but fun and interesting isn’t good enough.  It’s just wearing my heart out a little bit to have that automatic reaction to everything I see now.  Everything has become frivolous, unnecessary, almost harmful by its existence.  Every purchase is questionable.  Every activity is difficult to justify.  Only by using my power to its greatest potential for helping others can I justify my existence in this world and birth into privilege.  I feel like people will tell me to just relax and enjoy the life I’ve been blessed with.  I could, but if we all do that then the world will just keep on being a terrible place for so many people, and it will be terrible for us in some ways eventually.  Even though it’s mentally exhausting, shouldn’t I pursue the greater good?

Of course it’s going to be an uncomfortable and exhausting train of thought at first.  I’ve lived my whole life without caring what I do or where anything comes from or what impact I have on the world or who else is in it.  To suddenly change that is going to feel weird and annoying and bad.  The worst part is this feeling of entrapment that I get.  The feeling that I’m trapped in a society of consumerism, where there are very few options and the rules of society pretty much have to be followed.  Sure, I could become a hermit and live off the land or whatever, choosing not to interact with society, but I think I could do a lot more good by consuming, yes, but having an active role in society and influencing others. I also feel trapped by uncertainty.  Is it better to save a tree and landfill space by using cloth napkins or save water by using paper?  Is it better not to consume and make waste, or to fuel the economy by consuming?  How can I pioneer for alternative energy sources and clean coal when my father is a coal miner and I know the effects it would have on his job and the jobs of others in my area?  What is the greatest good?  What should I be pursuing?  What cause is most worth my power and time and energy as a human being?  Is it really worth being so utilitarian about or should I just go work a darned soup kitchen on the weekends and say I’m doing the best I can?

I’m told that this idealism fades out when reality sets in as an adult.  I don’t know if I should hope it doesn’t or not.  As of right now I don’t see any reason why my career shouldn’t be something that works towards the greater good rather than anything else.  Maybe it will end up being location or money or something stupid like that.  Maybe my town won’t even have recycling facilities.  Maybe I’ll have a kid early in my marriage and everything will just go out the window and I’ll be happy to get by from day to day.  It just makes me very unhappy to think that that’s how it would all end up.  And that’s what makes me think I need to figure it all out soon and get on the right track early on.

I drew a picture the other night that sort of sums up these feelings.  I’m sitting, holding the earth in my hands, trying to figure out how I can fix it.  My muse has come along, and extends a hand out to me.  He wants me to go away with him to a world of creativity and beauty and indulgence and happiness.  A world of the stories of individual people who are colorful and interesting with rich stories to tell, of specific places that are wonderful and mysterious, of music and photographs and multicolored skies, a world of contentment with a wonderful husband and cooking and crafts and children and grandchildren, a world of enjoying the tiniest moments of this life and living it “to the fullest.”  But if I go with him, if I go to this wonderful world, then who will save the rest of the world?  The muse doesn’t visit everyone.  The homeless man on the corner can only sit in his world of no food, no home, no family, no future.  The prisoner in North Korea can only sit in his world of inhumanity, starvation, and hopelessness.  If the rest of us continue along our path, we’ll be woken from our dream worlds to live in a world of inconvenience, of sacrifice, of rising sea levels and gas prices, of conscious lifestyle choices becoming responsibilities becoming requirements.  If everyone followed the muse, who would be left to care for the world?  Am I willing to make that sacrifice?  Can anyone truly be happy rejecting their muse?  Should such happiness necessarily be entitled or pursued?  Once I am cut off, exactly how am I to save that world in my hands?  Is there any way to make the muse work for me and my goals instead of letting him simply sweep me away without a care?

I wonder if I’m setting myself up for a life of either guilt or frustration with this philosophy.  I think I need more prayer in my life.

Well, last fall I had finally made it up to a steady 113 pounds, and saw one of the blood drive vans on my way home from class.  I had been thinking about it for a few days and finally decided to face my fears and save a life!  I was walking with a friend and he was also planning on donating, so we went together!  It took a long time to go through the forms and then wait, but we finally got in.  He was very nice and supportive, I was glad to have a friend there for my first time giving blood!  I was surprised that it didn’t really hurt much and didn’t take long!  I was especially worried they wouldn’t be able to hit my veins since I have tiny arms and tiny veins.  Quoth the just-trained newbie nurse guy to his superior;  “Um, her veins are like…real small..”   That didn’t help my nervousness at all!  But he ended up doing fine and we all cheered for him.  I felt really good about myself afterwords =)  I knew you were supposed to be kind of dizzy, but I walked home (right across the street) and didn’t feel strange at all until reaching the top of the stairs of my dorm building (I live on the third floor), and even then I just felt a little woozy at worst.  The rest of the day I was totally fine!

This year was WAY different.  I had just gotten out of class and had about three hours before I needed to go to marching band practice, so I figured that was enough time to give blood and get dinner.  It took forever to get through, but I got up on the table with what was going to be plenty of time to give and make it to practice.  I noticed that the needle thing hurt a lot more than I remembered from last time, and it actually hurt every time I squeezed the foam thing they give you.  The nurse kept asking if I was ok, I guess I was making a painful face!  I knew it was all working correctly and the blood was flowing OK, and I really didn’t want her to have to try and re-place the needle again so I just said I was fine.  It didn’t take very long to give my share, and the nurse said once I was ready I could get a snack and be on my way!  So I just hopped up out of the chair and went over to the counter where the snacks were.  That’s when I started feeling really lightheaded and my vision started blacking out.  It just felt like when you normally stand up too fast, so I started to put my hand on the counter to brace myself until it went away.

The next thing I knew, I could hear voices all around me slowly fading in, and I think I felt kind of hot and feverish or something like that.  As I started to come back into consciousness, I could see that the nurse who had been helping me was telling people around me what to do.  One of them was taking my blood pressure.  After several minutes I started piecing things together.  Then I asked about the dumbest thing I could have asked at that point:  “…did I pass out or something?”  The nurse said that yes, I had taken a little spill.  Apparently I had fallen backwards and hit the back of my head on a corner of a dividing wall in the van, so they had an ice pack on the back of my head, and one on my chest I guess to help with my temperature.  After a while they gave me a soda and I just sat there and drank it like a zombie.

They told me I could stay there as long as I wanted and I eventually asked someone to bring my stuff over so I could call Nick and see if he was free to come pick me up.  He was, thank goodness!  Always there to rescue me =)  I was able to stand up OK and didn’t feel too weak or shaky, but they wouldn’t let me leave the van until Nick’s car was outside.  One of the nice girls I had talked to before giving blood had even offered to stay with me after til I felt better after she saw me pass out, people are so nice!  At this point I also called a girl in my section in band to tell her I wasn’t going to make it there in time, if at all!  She was super sweet about it too =)

Nick took me to the dining hall to get some nourishment so I didn’t pass out again!  I felt really weird all along the way and up the stairs to the dining hall.  We sat down and I asked Nick to get my food for me since I didn’t feel well at all.  I started to eat some and drank water and apple juice, but I just felt worse and worse.  I called my mom since she’s a nurse now to get some post-passing out from blood loss advice.  She told me the foods and drinks I ought to consume, but before we were finished talking I decided I needed to go throw up.  I went to the bathroom and threw up for the first time since probably grade school when I was sick with the stomach flu.  Interestingly, there was another girl in the bathroom who had just thrown up also, but hers was from something she drank that somebody put too much salt water in or something like that.

When I came out of the bathroom Nick was waiting for me =)  We got some soup and drinks from the convenience store and went back to my place and he got my stuff out of my room so I could spend the rest of the evening at his place and he could take care of me.  By the time we got back to his place I had to throw up again >_<  I just felt horrible!  After that I just laid in bed for the rest of the night with a migraine.  I had gotten migraines twice in high school, but I’m pretty sure they were triggered by stress.  Those were cool migraines because I would get several of the auras you can get before having a migraine, and it was just the bad headache and no throwing up.  This time was just awful and there was nothing cool about it!  Nick’s roommate gave me a propel water and Nick made me some soup after a while.

So I’m still not sure what made me have such a bad reaction to giving blood this time around compared to last semester!  I hadn’t weighed myself at all at school, but over the summer I didn’t think I had lost any weight.  Now that I’m home I am back under 110, so maybe I had been underweight when I gave blood?  Do 3 or 4 pounds really make that much of a difference?

I don’t really know how to regard giving blood from now on… I know I’ll wait a lot longer before I get off of the bed, and I’ll sit up for a bit first before I stand, and make sure I’ve eaten directly beforehand.  But I’m pretty sure I just hopped right up the first time I gave blood and it was no problem.  Is it really my weight that’s the issue?  Should I not give blood until I’m well above 110?  And was the migraine triggered by the blood loss or the passing out/hitting my head?

I guess this story wasn’t so much funny as it was distressing, haha.  It was my first time passing out, my second time giving blood, and my third time having a migraine.  Interesting day!

What’s so awesome about Chegg?

1. They pay for return shipping.  That means once you’ve listed all the books you want to sell or donate to them, they give you a packing slip to print out and tape to your box of books.  All you have to do is provide the box and packaging materials.  Give them all your books at once and just track down one box!
2. They rent the textbooks they buy back from students.  Your books are going to a good cause, which is discounted rentals for future students.  Their rental prices are still pretty steep, but when you consider how much you usually (don’t) get back from selling your books, it seems like a better choice to rent them for a bit cheaper and give them back when you’re done.  When you’re selling books to them you can even opt to be paid in Chegg money instead of dollars to use on a future book rental.
3. THEY PLANT A TREE for every book you sell or donate!  Woah!!  This is the awesome one to me!  How cool is that?  They’ve already planted over 200 acres of trees!

So those are the perks, are there any downsides?  Well, I tried to sell 16 books (yeaah.. I’m pretty lazy about getting rid of my books), and they only offered to buy back two of them.  I had to just donate the rest.  And in the end, I only made $16 from those two books.  In their defense, however, I searched for a few of the ISBNs of the same books on different buyback websites, and they weren’t offering to buy those books either.  It really is all market-based, so if nobody needs the books I have, then nobody is going to be willing to buy them.  (Interestingly, the two books I were able to sell were both from my media studies classes).  And if you’re going to be giving your books away anyway, you might as well get a tree planted for them!

Even though I didn’t make a ton of cash from giving my books to Chegg, it was really easy, it was free, I didn’t have to go run around campus or the internet trying to get the best deal, they’re just going to take them off my hands.  And I like to think of it this way:  it’s like they did give me a bunch of money and I donated it to a program which plants trees to help the environment.  Sweet!

So if you just want to get your old dumb textbooks off your hands, maybe make a little money, and help the environment, go check out the ease and awesomeness that is Chegg.com!

And then I got sick =/  I’ve had a fever for the past couple days which has been a little crummy, but I think it’s about to go away.  I’ve been working a ton on my newest website, which will be a place for people to organize and advertise charity events and such, with a focus on anime and cosplay-themed events.  I think it’s going to turn out pretty neat =)

But tonight’s big project is something I’ve been thinking about for a while.  I’m going to graduate in May, and probably move to a new town.  I’ll have to go through my room and figure out what all I want to be part of my new life, and what I want to leave behind as childhood memories.  Let me just say, my room is FULL of childhood memories, if that’s what you want to call them.  My family has lived in the same house for basically my entire life, I haven’t redecorated my room since about 4th grade (aside from moving furniture around every few years), and the stuff has just accumulated.

So I really don’t want to have to drag this entire room full of stuff around with me for the rest of my life.  Moving is hard enough when I’m just taking a dorm room’s worth of stuff back and forth.  I imagine that Nick and I probably won’t be settled in one place right away, especially if we start off in a smaller apartment and work our way up to eventually buying a house.  Plus, my parents are building a new house next year and will probably start the moving process in late summer or fall, and if I’m not around I really don’t want them to have to deal with all this junk!

It seems like as consumerism becomes more and more ingrained in our culture, this will become more of a prevalent problem for young adults.  What do we do with all the stuff we bought with our allowances in grade school?  What about all the junky birthday and Christmas presents our friends gave us when we were little?  Where did all this stuff come from?!

Maybe I’m just overly sentimental and keep things longer than most people, but I feel like my room has always had more stuff in it than it can handle, and the majority of it really is junk.  So starting tonight I’m going to work on getting a handle on some of this stuff!  I started with my moderately-sized collection of anime merchandise, mostly Sailor Moon stuff.  While I still have something of an interest in anime, I no longer want my three decks of Sailor Moon playing cards, Trigun wall scroll, or bootleg Sailor Moon light-up yo-yo that I bought in excitement over the fact that it just had Sailor Moon on it.

It was fun to buy anime stuff when it was just becoming popular in the U.S. and it was hard to find.  I would flip out any time I found a VHS tape or doll or anything and would buy it immediately, just because it existed and I knew I probably wouldn’t find it anywhere else.  One of my most exciting purchases was a $50 talking Sailor Moon organizer I found on eBay, imported from Japan.  Now you can find a lot of anime goods in mainstream stores, although it’s only the really popular stuff like Pokemon or Naruto.  Even still, it’s not too tough to get on the internet and find whatever you might be interested in.  Basically, I’m not 12 years old and on fun scavenger hunt anymore, and these items just don’t have a place in my future new home.

There are a few items that I think I’ll keep out of sentimental attachment.  One is a small collection of Sailor Moon trading cards that were released in America when I was little.  They sold them in a little coin machine at Toys ‘R Us, and anytime we were in the area I would make my parents or grandpa stop by, not so I could buy toys, but so I could get some Sailor Moon cards.  I’d usually have to go in and trade all my bills for quarters at the checkout counter and then go back out to the lobby to get the cards.  It was sooo much fun because it would give you a few cards at a time, and it was so exciting to see which cards you would get.  Sometimes there were shiny prismatic ones.  At this point my Sailor Moon exposure was limited to what was on USA network at 6:30am and the VHS tapes I had with select episodes, so all of the artwork on the cards was really exciting for me.  This was about the time I think I started getting into drawing anime-style, and I’d use the cards as reference.  Anyway, I just somehow have this really vivid memory of my grandpa driving me to Toys ‘R Us, and the excitement of getting those cards and looking through them all in the car as he drove us home, so I’ll probably hold on to those.

Another item sentimentally tied to my late grandpa is “The 3D Adventures of Sailor Moon” computer game.  I’m not even sure it would still run on any of the new computers, but that game was pretty neat.  Most of the content didn’t have anything directly to do with Sailor Moon, just some silly games Sailor Moon-ified.  There was one really cool section though where they had made some neat music videos using clips from the show.  I used to watch those videos over and over.  There was one with a really nice piano song I’d like to learn someday.

Anyway, the big thing about that game was that I was up north visiting my grandparents, and they took me to the mall and I found this game in an Electronics Boutique store.  I flipped out and really wanted to buy it, even though it was a whole $40 dollars.  My grandpa said we had to call my parents first to make sure it was OK with them since it was such a big purchase.  Apparently my argument was that it was super rare and I really wanted it, with the punchline “and there’s no shipping and handling!”   My granpda used to get a big kick out of telling that story, so that game reminds me of him a lot.  I don’t think I could part with it!  Plus it would be fun to get out and admire the cheesyness and bad graphics sometime (it was made by DiC after all).

Besides those two items, I think I might keep my two plastic transformation wands, maybe a transformation locket, some plushies, my mini wall scroll, and maybe a figurine.  The rest is out of here!  I’m putting it all in a big box and I’m going to try my hand at some internet sales for the rest of break!  There seems to be a pretty big number of Sailor Moon collectors out there, so I think I can get rid of at least some of this stuff.  Sure, some of it might be worth something someday, but I’ll leave that fortune to the people who are already devoted to collecting and spend my time making money other ways.  As for the stuff I can’t get rid of, I’d really like to do a charity raffle at an anime convention.  The key to a successful raffle like that I think would just to have tons of stuff so that if you bought a ticket, you had a pretty good chance of at least winning something, even if it’s only worth a dollar or less.  And everybody has anime stuff they want to get rid of, so it’d be easy to get more donations.

Anyway!  That’s my big plan, part one: get rid of old anime stuff!  After that I guess it will be finding something to do with all the old junky presents I got when I was a kid (you know, candles, silly figurines, maybe some beanie babies).  There’s no rule that you have to keep all that stuff for life, right?  We were young and foolish and didn’t care about cluttering up each others’ rooms!  Any suggestions on what I should do with it though?  I’m not sure it’s anything anyone else would necessarily want.. I don’t want to fill up someone else’s house with junk!  I wonder if the Salvation Army would take any of it…

Next is Japanese History, tomorrow at 2.  This is the big one that I’m a little worried about.  I’ve probably got a low B in the class, and I’ve been behind on the readings all semester.  In all fairness though, the professor usually assigns 2-4 chapters of the textbook, plus upwards of 100 pages in”"primary sources” (often including exciting official rescripts and such from the Japanese government, detailing just how much rice the peasants owe in taxes now, or which areas of town the samurai are not to be seen in, etc.), so pretty much everyone has been behind on the readings.  The final is covering an entire 332 page book and it’s not even cummulative.  So this course has been a little frustrating.  Forgive me if I find it hard to devote my time and energy to learning about Medieval Japan’s economic ups and downs, or the rise and fall of Emperor Whoever.

The latter part of the course has been really interesting though, as we’ve been learning about WWII era Japan.  I really can’t recall anything I learned about WWII in high school, and this is really the first time I’ve started to understand what exactly happened.  It’s especially interesting for me to learn about Japan’s point of view and what happened in the aftermath.  It’s really interesting having been to Japan with no real knowledge, and now looking back.

Anyway, the important part is that I’m not sure how hot I’m going to do on this test.  I started writing this post with the thought of balance in mind, as I thought back on the semester.  I think fall of last year was the only time I’ve really made my best effort to stay caught up in my classes, and even then I got really stressed out and upset all the time because I felt like there wasn’t enough time to get it all done.  (This was when I was taking too many credits, had a job, was doing marching band, and was preparing for study abroad).  I ended up getting really good grades that semester, but I was so unhappy all the time.  This semester, I ditched the job and didn’t have study abroad prep hanging over me all the time, and I’ve been a lot happier.  I’ve also been chosing social time with Nick and his friends over coursework.  At first I tried to stay caught up with all my readings, but when I found I could get by in discussions and class without really reading them, I basically stopped.  If Nick and friends were playing Rock Band in the living room, I was much more likely to go hang out there than stay in Nick’s room to try and read.  When it was just me and Nick, I’d be more likely to be working on our websites instead of studying.

I’ve felt really frustrated with college this semester.  I know it’s great, but I refuse to let anyone tell me that any point in time is going to be “the best four years of my life.”  (That’s what they told us in high school too, ha.)  That’s up to me to decide.  Sure, college has fewer responsibilties (or just different ones, I think is a more appropriate approach), you get to be around cool people all the time, learn cool subjects, etc.  But all of that comes at a price, and finding the balance.  It’s almost cruel.  Some friends and I talked about this first year, how college is like a big social experiment, where lots of young people are thrown together, independent for the first time in their lives, and you see what happens.  It could be so great and so much fun and so perfect, but it can’t just be easy street.  They make you stress about classes and getting good grades and deciding whether you’re going to study tonight or go enjoy your youth and spend time with these wonderful people you might not see again after you graduate.  They provide activity after activity for you to participate in and have fun, but schedule a practice or review session at the same time.

So as I sit here trying to think of what excuse I have for not studying more throughout the year to be ready for this final, or how poorly I might do tomorrow, really the only excuse I have is that I chose to enjoy college instead of aim for a higher grade.  I switch back and forth between images in my head of my parents, who have every right and reason to expect and encourage me to get good grades and do my best in my schoolwork, and some mysterious figure who will ask me what amazing things I did in college, or why I didn’t relax more and enjoy my last bit of freedom before the day-to-day drudgery of the working world (which I still have every intention to avoid by finding a job I like.  Isn’t that what my college education is supposed to get me anyway?).

I guess college is about teaching you to make those choices and to find the balance, but I have to say it’s my least thing about my college experience.  All free time spent for fun instead of work is filled with feelings of guilt, and a sense of regret later on at times like these.

In the meantime, in an effort to correct my mistakes/good choices, I think I’ll go down to the overpriced vending machine, buy a bodily and environmentally harmful bottle of coke, pop a bag of popcorn that I’ll only eat half of before I get sick of it, vow to stay up for two or three more hours studying intensely, get bored and tired and convince myself it’s more important to be well-rested for the exam, and go to bed.