Posts Tagged ‘ Books

i’m a terrible writer

there was a time in my life when i thought i would be a writer. i always excelled at english and literature class. i always got As on any papers i handed in. i got a 5 on the AP english test senior year. in other words, i thought, “hey writing. this is easy. this is fun. yeah.”

well, it should be pretty obvious that i never got to be a writer. what i found out is that if you give me a topic, yeah i can BS as good as the best of them. i can write a report about fucking cantaloupes and make any teacher shed a tear over it’s beauty. what i can’t fucking do is write about real shit. the shit people actually want to read about. an interesting story with a myriad of characters that interact and have adventures or some shit. can’t just get my brain to work in that way.

i was really disappointed about that for awhile, until i realized that you can’t really make money as a writer. there are hundreds up on hundreds of new books that come out every year, and maybe 20 of them will make someone rich. not that what i do now is ever going to make me rich, but at least i earn enough that i don’t have to wait tables or something else equally demeaning (sorry to those of you that work in food service, not a job i could ever do so mad respec’)

last night as i was drunkenly falling asleep (victorian’s midnight cafe being 1 block from my house for the win!) and i had some brilliant idea for a new journal entry on here. fucking problem is i was kinda drunk and really sleepy, so i just thought to myself “well this is so great i’ll totally remember it in the morning, no big deal.” right. so here i am the next day, and all i have is this faint idea that i had something amazing to write about and now it’s gone.

oh well, live and learn. i need to keep a notebook next to my bed or something.

by the by, if you can get your hands on this little gem, i’d highly recommend it. i don’t even like van halen, but this shit is … well. i guess you’ll just have to see.

girls

i’ve never really been what is known in the biz as “a ladies man.” i tend to get nervous and insecure when i get to a situation with a girl that i like or find attractive.

take, for example, last night. i go out with my roommate, his gf, and some of their friends to one of our local watering holes. it turned out this particular event was a live journal group meet up. i’m not a member of live journal, but the people were cool so it was all good.

well, in walks these two amazing girls, and to my surprise they sat down at the other end of our table. we are introduced and then they start talking to the people they know. well, being the total asshat that i am, i never really make any attempt to talk to them b/c they are at the other end of the table.

for me the real problem comes from trying to discern those situations where it is ok to walk up to the girl and those where it is not. i always assume it’s not ok, b/c they are either there with someone, not (what i would consider) interested in me, or whatever. basically what i’m getting at here is that i have no balls.

i just recently read two of the best books i think i’ve ever read in my entire life. one being blink by malcom gladwell and the other being freakonomics by steven levitt and stephen dubner. both of them are very interesting; blink is about your unconscience ability to “thin slice” or in other words in a very short amount of time reduce any stimuli to only that which matters in a particular situation.

freakonomics is just about the different incentives we all have in life, and how two seemingly disperate things (like, say, public school teachers in chicgo and sumo wrestlers in japan) can actually be very closely related in a lot of ways.

i would recommend either of these books to anyone that is interested in sociology or psychology or just someone who would like to find out some very interesting things about themselves and the world around them.