The Drama That Is My Life

So, I decided to start blogging here again. I'm not going to worry about who is going to see what anymore. Why? Because honestly, I just don't care. The past few months that I haven't written? Probably the most blog-worthy months of my life.

...where do I even begin?

Well, it all started those few days before my 20th birthday. First my girlfriend broke up with me, then two of my best friends broke up, then I found out that one of said friends - whom I had feelings for for... awhile - liked me back, then the cosplay group threw a surprise party for me, then I found out that the friend that I liked that reciprocated my feelings also had feelings for my ex, *takes a deep breath* aaand all that happened within just a couple weeks.

The next couple months after that were filled with mass amounts of AWKWARD within the group, yet somehow I managed to have the time of my life. People who previously were just friends I saw at school had become some of my closest friends. Not to sound cheesy or anything, but we all made memories to last a life time.

To skip ahead over some of the more depressing parts of the story, the friend - one of the most amazing guys I've ever met - asked me out. Well... if you could call it asking out. Considering all we'd been through to get to that point, it seemed more significant than just "asking out"...

But I digress.

Since we started dating we've had to deal with a lot of drama and interference from other people, but I've been happy, and I'd like to think he has been too.

And there you have it, you're caught up with my life... more or less.

Despite any of the issues we've previously had with one another, most of the group is getting along once again too. Er... except for my ex and I, that is.

It's not that we aren't civil or anything, because we are. I mean, she is one of my boyfriends best friends, I should respect that. It's just... I don't know. I'm not sure which fuels my dislike for her more, my irritation with all the bullshit she pulls, or my jealousy.

Perhaps it's neither. Maybe that nauseated feeling I get whenever she's around is just the pain she caused manifesting. Or it could just be that now that I see her through eyes not blinded by love... I don't like what I see.

Who knows?

Either way, I'm pretty sure what I told her back when we broke up was a lie. I don't think we can be friends again. Not genuine I-care-about-and-trust-you friends at least.

Which is the only kind I want.

Eventually

So, it's been barely a week since I turned twenty and HOLYFREAKINGCRAP so much has happened since. I... can't even begin to describe. So much drama, so much chaos... I can't wrap my mind around it all.

But...

Some of the most memorable and amazing moments of my LIFE have happened this past week. Most of which I'm not even go into BUT...

My friends threw me a surprise party, I'd never felt so loved before.

I rode the bus for the first time after taking an epic face plant onto the street.

I feel... lighter now. No, things aren't any easier, in fact, I'm pretty sure they've just gotten more complicated, but... I'm more confident that everything is going to be okay now. Eventually.

It's OVER

Sooooo, I'm twenty now. Yup. I'm old.

When I first woke up this morning, I was not excited for my birthday. This week has been one of the worst in a long, LONG time - for a lot of people, not just myself. But you know what? It's the weekend. Week end. The worst is OVER.

No, I'm not being positive, I'm remembering how AWESOME I am, and celebrating it justly.

Sleep Is For The Weak

Okay, so I've managed to put off blogging for over a week now, and I have no real excuse. The end of December/beginning of January were so busy, that the past couple weeks have just been an uneventful blur. The only two times I really got out of the house were last weekend, at the cosplay gathering and today, at the Gantz movie premiere.

This weekend, what with filming and all, should get me back into the routine of life. Maybe I'll even get more than three hours sleep one night. (Here's to hoping~)

ALA 2011

Anime Los Angeles was amazing. I'd love to talk about the crazy day of preparation, the sleepless nights, the fangirls, the karaoke, the friends, the love, the insanity, the laughs, and most of all the cosplay. But.... I'm just not up to it. Not to self advertise, but I'd suggest you check out http://www.youtube.com/user/OtakuClanDiaries for all the fun.

Right now, I'm sitting here trying not to think. And I gotta say, it's pretty hard to do when there are WAY too many things to think about and not enough things to distract myself with.

...

Guild Wars it is.

Onward To 2011

I feel as though I should be typing up my goals for the upcoming year - I don't like using the term "resolutions" - sooo... here we go~

1. I need to draw more. I'm not going to set a specific number, as life is unpredictable and I can't make any guarantees, BUT I would like to draw more than I did in 2010.

2. I want to work on my cosplay, a lot. Granted this is something I'm already doing, but I definitely plan on continuing.

3. I want to NOT fail out of community college. It's sad that I have to make this a goal, but I'm incredibly lazy when it comes to school.

4. I want to attempt to find a job that I wouldn't hate with a burning passion. I don't think such a job exists, but it would still be nice to move out within the next couple years.

5. I want to keep blogging on a regular basis, it keeps my writing skills sharp. It's also a lot of fun.

There are soooo many other things I want to accomplish, but I don't like setting more goals than I'm capable of completing. Plus, five is a good number, I think.

On a side note, it would seem my goals get more and more realistic each year. I'm not sure if this is because I'm growing wiser, or just lowering my expectations of myself.

Ah well, onward to 2011~!

2010

It would seem we have entered the final day of 2010. 2010... 2010, man. There's just so much to say about this year, I don't know where to begin. Ahem, I'd best grab some Mountain Dew for this one.

I can say with quite a bit of certainty that 2010 was by far the most eventful year of my entire life thus far. Consequently, it was also the second worst year of my life. (First prize still goes to 2006, which will be spoken of at a different time. Or not at all, that's fine with me.)

Logically speaking, I should start with January. Oh my God, was that only a year ago? It seems like an eternity. I actually have to look back at my old blog posts to remember, how sad is that?

The year started with Winter intersession, an optional 6 week long session at my college in which students can take classes in half the amount of time they normally would. I was foolish enough to enroll for it. My memory of those first couple months is pretty hazy, as I got minimal sleep, loads of stress, and a good ol' fashioned cold.

Life progressed, I turned 19, I had a few laughs with friends, I failed some classes, I took a trip to Boston, etc. It sounds like my spring was pretty eventful, doesn't it? But looking back I barely remember it. No, the true highlight of this year was the summer.

Perhaps I should correct myself, the insanity started sometime in May or so. I suddenly had commitments. Granted these commitments were playing Dungeons & Dragons and meetings for a cosplay group, but still, it was the first time I'd had any weekly commitments since... since... EVER. Things were moving along smoothly, I had a nice balance of things to do and time in which to do it... for about a month.

When my group of friends - half of whom were attending college out of state - reassembled for the summer, they wanted to hang out all the time. Okay. As did the other group of friends I had managed to attain. Uh oh. Oh, and did I mention I had three online classes for the summer? Uhhhhh, this isn't looking good. And on top of the many excursions, the friend drama, the family drama, and - OHMYGODICAN'THANDLETHIS!!!

Yeaaaaah. It was an amazing summer, with some unforgettable memories, but GEEZ, I've never been so exhausted in my life.

Things slowed down a bit for the latter part of the year, but not by much. There was the good: I made quite a few more friends, entered my first relationship, started another cosplay group, made a lot of good memories, and even started hanging out more often on campus... because it was fun. And there was the bad: family issues - some concerning my mothers health, some concerning strained relationships - became even more stressful, my grades got progressively worse, and I found out that one of my best friends is moving across the country in January.

So much happened... I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the thought that... it's over. 2010 is finally over. Well, almost.

By the way, I completed one out of my five goals for the year - to post on this blog on a regular basis. Go me.

Sanity, Or A Lack Thereof

I'm sitting here staring at the Dungeons & Dragons dice he gave me for Christmas and thinking I'm not ready to say goodbye, I don't think I can say goodbye. Not that being ready for something really matters when it's completely out of your hands.

Stand back, I'm about to make a sanity roll.

Christmas And All That Jazz

Looking back at my last post, I realize it sounded as though I had an awful Christmas. Yes, I had a horrible Christmas season, but the past few days were fairly decent. I got some rather nice gifts, and both the day before and the day after Christmas were endlessly fun.

I still don't understand what it's about, but whatever.

I Just Don't Get It

This year I made it a point not to say "Merry Christmas" or anything of the sort to anyone unless I meant it, and as you can guess, I've yet to say it.

I just don't understand Christmas. I mean, from a Christian perspective, I do, but outside of that, what's the point? When I was a kid I only had the "Christmas spirit" because I got gifts. But what is there to it now?

I know there's the gift of giving and all that Lifetime channel nonsense, and I do enjoy giving gifts but... is it really THAT big of a deal?

Maybe I'm just jaded because one of my best friends is moving in a few weeks. Or perhaps it's the fact that I'm growing up and all the magic in life is fading away. Or it could be that I associate Christmas with the actual Christmas day, which is when I go spend unnecessary time with family.

Or maybe I'm just another Charlie Brown.

ME

Erm, I apologize for my lack of post last night. I was just kind of... yeah. ANYWAY, moving on.

Both yesterdays and todays prompts are fairly similar, yesterdays was "a photo of me from over 10 years ago" and todays is "a recent photo of me", so here you go:



I should go with an out of cosplay photo, but I really don't have any.

Planet Holly

Today is "a photo I took", so here you go. I take a lot of photos like this, actually. Of things with my name on them, I mean. This one, however, was the first in the collection. I was in Las Vegas, and the Planet Hollywood casino was still being built. We happened to drive by as they finished the "Holly" part of the sign.

Don't Quote Me On That

Today's prompt is "favorite quote", and sifting through my long list of favorite quotations on my Facebook profile, I find myself most drawn to this one: "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." - Jack London

Why? Because as an artist/author/human being, I find this to be true on a daily basis. Inspiration is fleeting, and it's a pain to hang on to, beating it into submission is the only real option.

Here are a few of my other favorite quotes:

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” - C.S. Lewis

"Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality." - Beatrix Potter

"Whoever had decided that school should start so early in the morning and last all day long needed to be hunted down and forced to watch hours of educational television without the aid of caffeine." - Vladimir Tod

"I am living proof that it is possible to profit from being a high school freak." - Meg Cabot

And then, just for the lols, I throw in one of my own quotes:

"Nerdiness is not defined by what you love, but how you love it." - Holly Van Leer

Is it sad that I love my own quotes?

Oh Boy...

Relationships: Something I, at 19 years old, have ventured into for the first time, and I gotta say...

I have no idea WTF I'm doing.

That is all.

SNAP

Okay, confession time: I am mentally disturbed. Well, you actually already knew that, but it's become such an issue that I now have a rubber band on my wrist to snap whenever my mind goes ridiculous places. I'll let you know how it works out for me.

The Epic Tale Of Epicness

This weekend was insane exhausting ridiculous fun. It was, as usual, filled to the brim with anime, involving events with both of the cosplay groups I am a part of.

The most epic part of the weekend would probably be the beach trip that Friday with The Other Cosplay Group. (Uh, the not-OCD-one.) The beach itself was mediocre, really. It was too old to go in the water, and we ended up being really late, due to the fact that ten minutes from the destination, my GPS decided to direct us halfway back to Riverside. It's what we did there that made the day for me. We played Red Rover. That was my shining moment of glory in life, because I am the Michael Jordan of that game.

After persuading the group to play, I was made a team captain. (This was probably a mistake on the groups part.) My team proceeded to tear the other to shreds - in some cases, almost literally. My catchphrase for when people would bounce backward after running into the wall that was my arm was "YOU CAN'T BREAK ME" and whenever I would tear my way through the other teams linked arms I would chant "I AM KING". Unfortunately, every great ruler has their downfall, and toward the end of the game, I met mine.

For those who don't know, when a person successfully breaks through the team that called them over, they are allowed to take back a person with them. At this point, the opposing team was down to only two people, and when one of the people had managed to identify and break through one of our weaker links, she thought it best to bring ME over to their team. Soon enough, I was faced with the daunting task of breaking my own empire. For a moment, I thought I could do it.

But the team knew me, they knew my method of running full force, and knew that the way to defeat me was strategy. I threw myself at the link of arms, as usual, and pulled a good half of the line to the ground, but they didn't break....? Why? Because they hadn't resisted falling, they decided instead to fall with me and watch me breathlessly crawl on my hands and knees screaming "YOU... CAN'T... BREAK... ME..." pulling them with me, their chain still not breaking. When they realized I wasn't giving up, they began running forward - forward for them, that is -sending me hurtling backward, the taste of defeat - and sand - poisoning my mouth. Needless to say, they had stopped me, and I was once again, a part of that team.

In the end, it was my team - my original team - that won, but that one bit of failure disappointed my overly competitive self. And this, dear friends, is why I should never be allowed to play games that I am actually good at.

The rest of the weekend was not nearly as amazing. Oh sure, there was filming, a movie night, more filming, and other fun, but nothing quite like Red Rover.

I also managed to hurt myself quite a bit amongst all this. Aside from my bruises/scrapes from playground games, I also got a battle scar from the first day of filming with the OCD. While attempting to zip up Patrick's too-small-for-him boots, a chunk of my finger was ripped away - along with his dignity - leaving me with a hole the size of a pencil eraser in my flesh.

Fun stuff.

I'll let you in on the not-so-fun stuff in another post.

Note To Self: Think

You know how 90% of the time, I'm simply a victim of circumstance/bad luck? Well, the other 10% of the time, when I cause my problems, they seem to be of the catastrophic variety. The most recent one, however, really takes the cake.

One of my priorities in life is being a good friend, and lately, I've been a really, really bad friend. As if to make matters worse, to someone who refers to me as her best friend. And, of course, none of this would've happened if I learned to think before I speak.

Answers

Ever do something and not know WHY you did it? I mean, sure, it's because you wanted to, but why did you want to? Most of the time, I understand my own motivations... except lately. I finally got around to assessing this, asking myself WHY, and you know what? I don't really like the answers I'm finding.

So Long Summer

Earlier today, one of my friends mentioned this being the best summer of her life, and... you know what? It was the best summer of my life. Or, at least, the best summer since I started high school, half a decade ago.

Not only have I actually acquired a social life - well, as much of one as a nerd can have - but I accomplished things. Also, a major hurdle, I finally moved on with my life. I finally let go of a lot of the issues I'd been bogged down with, and I must say, it's quite a relief.

I was ridiculously busy, barely got any sleep, and got frustrated more than a few times with people, but I had fun. I can honestly say, I got the most out of this summer, and accept the fact that it's over. Don't get me wrong, I really, really, don't want to start school on Monday, but this is a better state than I am normally in prior to the beginning of a semester.

Come to think of it... my first post on this blog was at the start of a semester. Considering how differently things turned out from what I had hoped for in that post... I'd rather not think too much about what might happen. I'm just going to embrace my impulsive nature, and wing it.

Today

Today was a really good day. I had fun. Though it certainly wasn't perfect, there weren't too many complications. It was... refreshing..? I mean, good things happen every day, but there are certain days where you're having such a good time that things don't bother you as much anymore. That was today.

Oh, sure, I mad as I could possibly be at a few people, but it's not bringing me down. Not today.