Ambitious, Apprehensive Procrastination (With a Quick Glance Around)

Hello everyone, and welcome back to my sad little corner of the internet that like 6.5 people care about. It's been a while! Let's catch up - I am now a sophomore in college, I'm thissss much closer to declaring a major, I still don't get enough sleep, and now I have AC in my room (thank GOD).

Now that that's out of the way, we can move on to discussing more pressing issues, such as all the things I'd like to be doing if I could just figure out how to organize my life well enough to do them.

I am this school year's features editor for a fashion/art/photography publication at my school called ROCKET, and I am, slowly but surely, figuring out just how to do that. My ultimate goal is to not only guide my fellow writers towards their best creations, but to also be a person they can look up to and rely on. Most of us are around the same age, but I'm their beta leader (we also have an EIC, so there's that leader to answer to, as well,) and I want to be a good one. I want to foster a little community between the six of us that allows for a constant flow of communication, ideas, creativity, and of course, friendship. On top of that, I also strive to be the most competent person I can be, so that I'm never left not knowing how to solve a problem. As you can imagine, no one of this is going to come easy, but I believe in ROCKET and the writers and our potential and I am willing to work to achieve these goals. I'm just not going to be able to sleep, ever, apparently. It's cool.

ALSO, before I forget to mention it! I got in an Instagram argument with the LITERAL Marc Jacobs last week! Okay, let me break it down briefly, (I intend to write more about it for ROCKET's website, so I can't get into too much detail but OMGGG).  Last week was the tail end of New York Fashion Week (NYFW). If I'm not mistaken, Marc Jacobs' show was one of the last ones, and it was expected to be big and innovative and awesome. And for many aspects of it, it was. The setting was futuristic and colorful and creative and some big names in the modeling industry walked for him, including Kendall Jenner and both Hadid sisters. But the one glaring problem with the whole show, that has since overshadowed any of the actual clothes that went down the runway, was that despite most of the models being white, or otherwise non-People of Color (POC,) they were all sporting pastel-colored dreadlocks. I saw this on one of the pictures on the Marc Jacobs company Instagram, and commented that while this show was otherwise impressive, it was disappointing to see non-POC wearing dreadlocks, and that if that was the aesthetic they were going for, they should have used actual models of color. THAT'S WHEN THINGS GOT CRAZY. Marc Jacobs HIMSELF, on his actual personal account, commented back and tagged me and one other girl, that it wasn't cultural appropriation, it was just appreciating people and love is all you need, and wouldn't cultural appropriation be when women of color straighten their hair? And other nonsense like that. I WAS STUNNED. Both because he commented back, and because he was SO INSANELY IGNORANT. I commented back trying to break down for him the (many) points he'd misunderstood. From there, SO MANY DIFFERENT NEWS SOURCES AND INDIVIDUALS saw this comment and found my original comment and started tagging me in things and videos and articles and it was NUTS. I shared screenshots of the comments on my Facebook page, and to date, it is the most interacted-with post I've ever shared. I never imagined it would end up like this, but I'm glad I wasn't the only one that noticed how strange and wrong Marc Jacobs was acting. I don't discredit him as a designer or hate him or anything (who's got actual time for that,) but I am really disappointed in him. If he could've acknowledged that he made a mistake, that all would be well, but his response was just so surprisingly childish, that it almost seemed like a joke.

But anyway, aside from being more culturally sensitive than a major fashion designer, my life has been pretty consistent. I did see the Lumineers in concert last Friday, which BLEW MY MIND, and then this week I discovered that stickers will actually stay on my laptop surface, going against what I previously thought. Pretty exciting stuff, I know. Now I just have to try to focus on maintaining that kind of excitement in little, everyday things, which is the ultimate goal, amiright?

The most magical night, the best performers

Seriously, though, I do have a lot of things I'd like to accomplish this year, and hopefully by writing them down, I'll be more motivated to get them done. One of these things is to participate in NaNoWriMo again after having not done it for 2 or 3 years. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and basically you just commit to writing 50,000 words of an original novel during the entire month of November. I've attempted it twice, but I've never finished. This year, I want to change that. I used to love writing so much, and I still do. But I used to be better at churning out stories. They flew out of my brain like oxygen out of my lungs when I'm late for class and have to speed walk. But now, it's like my story well has pretty much dried up. I want it back, so I'm forcing myself to write more. I'm going to start prepping now by trying to write creatively at least once or twice a week, hopefully more. The thing with NaNoWriMo, also, is that it doesn't have to be a good novel, it just has to be a novel. So with that in mind, I think I might be ready to (finally) conquer it.

Additionally, I want to become a better musician, I want to learn how to spend and save money smarter, and I want to get in the habit of living my life in a healthier way - i.e. preparing for things further in advance, sleeping at more normal times, keeping in better touch with friends from home, and of course, eating on a more regular schedule instead of snacking on small things that aren't necessarily doing me any good.

I don't really know what the point of this post was, but I felt like I had a lot of thoughts floating around in my head, and I needed to organize them somehow. Kind of like I need to organize my life, but easier and less time-consuming. :P

To end this post, here's my current playlist, which is honestly my favorite thing to write about, so here you go. :)

Happy Birthday - The Beatles (today is my cousin's 1st birthday and he might be the cutest baby I've ever seen so I had to)
Cartoons and Forever Plans - Maria Taylor
Keep On Loving You - Cigarettes After Sex
Americana Dream - firekid
Hell No - Ingrid Michaelson
Cool Blue - The Japanese House
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now - The Smiths (I stalked one of the new features writers' blogs and this was on one of her playlists and I knew she'd fit in with us right away at ROCKET)
Life Itself - Glass Animals
Season 2 Episode 3 - Glass Animals
Pork Soda - Glass Animals
June, After Dark - Elliot Root
Gemini Feed - Banks
Underdressed - VERITE
Give Me Something - Jarryd James
Babylon - David Gray (this song is SO GOOD, I don't even know what else to say about it, just listen it)
Cool Girl - Tove Lo
American Money - BORNS
Always Love - Nada Surf
Still Not a Player - Big Pun
LOST BOY - Troye Sivan
Laura - Hockey Dad
Flesh Without Blood - Grimes
Closer - Duck House

This Is Not a Metaphor

So. I just came back from seeing the "midnight" (which was actually at 9 PM) premiere of the movie "The Fault in Our Stars" and let me tell you, I've never been more satisfied with a book-turned-movie in my life, (I'm not including Harry Potter, that's a whole other story). Anyway, I was so incredibly impressed with this movie, because never before have I cried during a movie I saw in the theater. Obviously, I've cried watching movies, thank you "A Walk to Remember," but it was always while I was watching it alone, at home. I find it awkward to cry in public. But this is a movie that warrants tears in mass quantities. When I read the book, I didn't cry throughout the whole thing until I finished it. Promptly after closing the book, I burst into tears that lasted profusely for about 8 to 10 minutes. About the same thing happened with the movie. I was so overwhelmed by the whole situation, and the fact that I was finally witnessing the movie version of one of my favorite books, that I couldn't feel any emotion but excitement. And then when I did start to fully engage, all my emotions rewired themselves into nervous laughter. It wasn't until the final scenes where I really started to let it all out. I wasn't the only one either; the entire theater was sniffling and laughing and crying at the same time, including my friend who was sitting next to me. You can't blame them, though, because the movie was absolutely beautiful, and, dare I say it, pretty perfect. I can't say too much without giving away key plot points, but I was immensely satisfied with everything that went into this movie. Shailene Woodley is the perfect Hazel Grace Lancaster, and Ansel Elgort was the ABSOLUTE BEST Augustus Waters. Nat Wolff as Isaac was also amazing, and the cinematography and editing and special(ish) effects were executed astonishingly. I am so in love with this book, and this movie, and anything and everything having to do with it, (except for maybe the t-shirts. "Okay? Okay" is starting to get overused, except within the movie in which it is used sparingly but effectively and I love it). The soundtrack was phenomenal, and the settings were absolute perfection. I'm running out of extremely positive adjectives that I can use to express my feelings about this movie, so I will end this post here. But to all of you contemplating seeing this movie or reading this book, I recommend you do it at the next possible showing. It's one of those few movies that actually make you feel like the book was brought to life accurately, like those characters you pictured in your head are right there in front of you, saying the words you loved so much and doing the things you know will make you laugh or even cry. It's a movie worth more than the box office sums, or critic reviews. It's a story that lodges itself in your heart, and stays there, cheesy analogy be damned.

P.S. - Having just seen this movie, my friends and I are all very conflicted. We loved this movie so so so much, but we also feel dangerously empty and depressed. It's because the movie makes the characters feel so personal, like you could easily imagine yourself in their positions and what it would feel like to be so close to someone with a terminal illness. It scared us to go to that place where we thought about what would happen if one of us had cancer or even died. It's THAT kind of movie.