aamcnamara

Since it's been long enough since my last post that I've forgotten what I intended to next post, I'll just pick up where I am now.

I recently realized just how old my last summer reading book is:

"This uncertainty was dramatically illustrated quite recently when a party of explorers diving in a bathyscape declared themselves unable to judge the size of the unknown creatures they had seen in the deep."

(Art and Illusion, E. H. Gombrich)

Bathyscape. BATHYSCAPE.

Strangely, this has made me much more charitable toward the book as a whole, so it's a pity that the revelation came on page 259 of 389.

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Small World Moment:
The weekend after I got back from Odyssey, I went to the farmers' market, wearing my Eddy and the Fey t-shirt. Usually I save it for times when I know someone will appreciate it, and I didn't have any plans for the day, but I put it on anyway.

And it turns out that the didgeridoo player at the farmers' market knew Emma Bull when she (Emma Bull) lived in the Twin Cities, from playing at the Renaissance Faire.

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I haven't written a word--well, of fiction--since Odyssey ended. I want to write.

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One of the reasons why is summer homework.

A list, more for me than anyone else:
- 2 quarters of health class online (complete)
- read a required book for the Theory of Knowledge class I'm taking (done)
- 3 summer reading books, with three pages of notes on each one (I've read all of the books now; I just have to do the notes)
- a large math packet (which I am partway through, and did not know about until after I got back)
- an extended essay (switched my topic, am currently trying to forget about it because a constant state of freaking-out is not good for me OR the essay)
- a long form intended to help my school counselor in writing me a recommendation letter for college

As I keep telling people, if I had the whole summer, it would still be a lot, but it wouldn't be a huge deal. With two weeks until school starts, though . . .

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Another thing I've been doing is watching the Olympics. I started mostly hopeful that I would get to see some Olympic fencing (they don't usually put the medal bout footage on the website), and kept watching because what these people are doing is truly phenomenal. More than half the time, I'm rooting against the American competitors, and it's lots of fun.

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I need to type up my notes: from Wiscon (it seems like an age ago), from Odyssey, and from Readercon. I need to compile the lists of Books I Have Been Instructed To Read. I need to find said books . . . and then find the time to read them, of course.

I've managed to read a few novels since I got back, mostly the things I'd been wishing for while at Odyssey--some more of Nancy Kress's novels, Elizabeth Bear's new books--but I know I have pages of book-recommendation lists scattered through my notes.

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There are a lot of things I have intended to do which I have not done. I don't know when I'm going to do them. Today, and for the past weeks, being a high school student has won out over all the other selves I have. The high school student has to win out tomorrow and the next day, too, if I'm going to get all of this work done.

Conflicting notions are battling: my writing got six weeks, so my school career is surely due for a few now; if I want to be a writer, I have to fit it in with everything else in my life; my life isn't going to get less busy when school starts, and on the contrary, it'll get busier, so I'd better get used to it now.

Will it get easier?

Somehow, I don't think it will.