January 25, 2015: Sunday Night Catchall

Random SFPD car

My Wednesday afternoon took an unexpected turn. The majority of the comments under that article say something along the lines of, "Well, I guess somebody didn't want to take that Physics test!" That's probably (hopefully?) something along the lines of what happened, but seriously, people, think of better/safer/more creative ways to get out of test taking next time besides calling in a bomb threat, okay?!

My organization made it past 500 likes on Facebook! Actually, it somehow got from 475 to 550 in less than 48 hours. I don't exactly know how. But yay! Now send me more LGBTQ-related YA book suggestions! Or, if you're a writer, write more books with LGBTQ characters. :)

I can sum up senior year in one anecdote from Friday. I sometimes send my teachers random NY Times articles relevant to something they taught during the day if the article happens to appear. But this semester, instead of sending my teacher a NY Times article, I sent my teacher an Onion article that felt relevant.

#DeflateGate has been dragged on and on and on, but one beautiful thing the endless discussions yielded was Bill Nye kicking some butt!

And per my usual, this is my favorite Onion article of the week ("Nation’s Historians Warn The Past Is Expanding At Alarming Rate")

January 18, 2015: Sunday Night Catchall

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

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Crazy end to Packers vs. Seahawks game! Wow. As much as I dislike the Seahawks (I'm from San Francisco; what do you expect?), that was epic.

The Oscars have decided we need to just honor more white people than we already do. Um ... what?

On the subject of racism and movies, you might want to research more about Selma before you take how events were portrayed in the movie as historical fact. This article by Roger Stone and Phillip Nelson is a good place to start.

It's only January of senior year and I already identify with this kid in The Onion.

I'm attempting to use Twitter! Now how one transitions from 50,000 words to 140 characters, I have not a clue. But it's a good challenge.

My brother informed me a few days ago that Unwind by Neal Shusterman is now the beginning of a series. So an added plus of senior year that I'm discovering: having the time to go back and read more Young Adult books! If you haven't read Unwind, I highly recommend it. It's one of my favorites.

Coming Out to Siri (January 13, 2015)

I'm using an iPhone (not the one pictured) and I'm a few operating systems behind, so I'd like to think my phone will evolve from here. This is surprisingly on point with what many LGBTQ teens face in reality, which is humorous.

Me: “Hey Siri, what if I told you I’m gay?”

Siri: “Hmm. Let me think. OK, I found this on the web for ‘if I told you I’m gay.’”

Me: “Siri, I’m gay.”

Siri: “I don’t know what that means. If you like, I can search the web for ‘Siri I’m gay.’”

Me: “I’m gay.”

Siri: “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

Me: “What do you think?”

Siri: “It’s nice of you to ask, but it doesn’t really matter what I think.”

Me: “This wasn’t easy to tell you.”

Siri: “Who, me?”

Me: “Yes, I just came out to you.”

Siri: “I thought so.”

January 11, 2015: Sunday Night Catchall

Self-care is so, so, so important. Sleep (like my cat!), write, listen to music, eat food ... and if you need support, there is so much support out there, including support from The Trevor Project (1-866-488-7386), 24/7, seven days a week.

My cat, Ché

Awkward transition here, but as The Onion has observed this week, "Mankind Tired of Having to Remind Itself of Good"

Kirby Delauter decided to try to bully a journalist. The Fredrick News-Post responded in a beautiful way, down to the first letter of each paragraph. Nice job!

I was reminded today that for any high school juniors out there, applications for the Telluride Association Summer Program (TASP) are due on January 20, 2015! I went to TASP last summer, and it was amazing. It’s a six-week, 100% free academic summer program that brings together people from all over the world. (We had people from the U.S., Macedonia, South Korea, China, and Brazil.) If morning bathroom conversations about the merits of communism and charades games with clues like “Platonic ideal” and “existentialism” are your thing, you should apply.

The Rome Statute has nothing to do with Facebook privacy settings, despite what that chain message on Facebook says. However, the chain message did inspire me to post a similar message about the need for Facebook to change everyone's profile pictures to wombat pictures. But apparently it wasn't as catchy as the original message. Darn.

For any writers out there considering querying agents, I recommend reading through this site and doing the exact opposite. Unless your goal is to be forever immortalized on an agent's Tumblr page ...

Write It on Your Heart (January 6, 2015)

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Last year, I wrote a blog post called "Denial, Denial, Denial, Denial, Denial: The Five Stages of College Decision Grief." I wrote it as a high school junior watching the seniors around me crumble as they were hit with decision after decision. I expressed my hatred for what this application process does to us. We are conditioned to hate ourselves based on our rejections. We feel worthless when we don't get into X school, but that one really, really annoying kid does instead.

And as someone who just finished "going through the process" (which I know sounds like I'm talking about genetically modified food, not myself), I understand even more how powerful that pressure is. I consumed more mint chip milkshakes in the week before the early deadline than there were days.

But here's the thing: what if we all take a time out? I know January 1 is now out of the way and many of you high school students are done yelling at the error messages on the Common App, but the air is still filled with so much stress about decisions to come, about that one typo you know was still there when you hit "submit" ... but what if we put all of that aside? What if all of you adults out there put the stress in your life aside?

During the craziness of October before the early deadline (when, no surprise, my blogging stopped for a while), I made a list of things I wanted to do this year when college apps and finals were over. I don't want to call them New Year's Resolutions, though. (Freudian slip -- I typed "Near Year's Resolutions" at first -- which highlights why I hate the term, because I only get near my goals instead of reaching them.) I will instead call this a list of random fun things I want to do this year:

1. Learn how to read sheet music
2. Double the amount of time I spend writing (thank you for allowing me to do that, senioritis!)
3. Read more books for pleasure again (goodbye, standardized testing passages!)
4. Go to a random A's game (because why not?)
5. Sleep 8 hours a night
6. Paint
7. Run Campus Drive (3.8 miles)

So what will you do for fun this year? Think of things! Make it about you. No matter how crazy your life is, you deserve to do something that serves no purpose other than making you happy. Here's to a great 2015!