It's Almost All Over

College is, I mean. Not life or anything drastic. College. That thing I started going to about four years ago and have been struggling and succeeding and everything in between. I graduate with a BA in creative writing May 2nd. Crazy, right? Yeah, I know. But it's happening, and I'm getting there. Oh, and did you know I wrote a book? Well, it's a book, and I wrote it, but it's not a novel. Yet.

I have to make a portfolio to graduate, with some stuff from my school year in it. Writings and samples, you know. So I decided, using Blurb, to make it into a book. So I did! I made it a book! I wrote every word and designed the cover and did that contents and everything except print it. It's coming in the mail in a week!

Right Dream, Wrong Time

Have you ever wanted something really, really bad? And have you ever gotten that thing and then had to say no because it's the wrong time? I waited my whole life for this thing. When I saw it was within my reach, I was very conflicted. It was what I always wanted, something I knew would make me happy. But it was the wrong time, the complete wrong time for it. I had to deal with the euphoria of having it so close, but I had to push it away.

It's a tough feeling. Sometimes I go back to the moment when I had it, just to remember what it feels like to have a lifelong dream realized. I remind myself often and tell myself it will happen some other day, when I'm ready. Because no way am I ready for this opportunity now. I couldn't take it. I'm still conflicted about it. I regret some days, but I know it was the right choice. It's a good thing in theory, but giving that dream up for now was the best decision for me.

When I had that dream right in my hand, I felt like I was starting my life. Every second I felt conflict, though, because keeping that dream alive would not be good for me right now. And now that I gave that dream a rain check, I find I am even more impatient to start life and have that dream for real this time. I have dreams pretty often about it. I'm happy in those dreams. I feel like I was given a chance to taste it until it actually happens.

A review of Blurb.com (so far)

After a quick search for book printing, I came across the lovely blurb.com. The prices were great and the pages were easily navigable. I learned that printing a book (that I design) would be maybe $4.00. That price is variable, depending on type of paper, print, size of book, whether it has a dust jacket or is a softcover, and lots of other personalized things. Additional pages are $.01 each. So I can easily print a book of, like, 200 pages for less than $5.

Blurb also offers free programs that you can download and use. The programs that I downloaded, BookWright and BookSmart, installed quickly and easily and uploading my Word documents was simple. There are very simplistic tutorials online that I took advantage of.

One thing I love about this site is that I can customize everything about it. I can add an author bio and a photo if I want. I can add thirty blank pages. I can write a title page, an acknowledgement page, literally anything I want to add, I can. They even offer services to turn your book into an ebook, and you can choose to hire one of their editor/formatters to tweak your work.

I'm a pretty impatient person, and getting a book even looked at by a publisher is a huge feat. With Blurb, I can print as many of my own books, designed exactly how I want, whenever I want. I'm crazy excited to work on something. And I know I'll have total power over how it looks.

I will say that it is a little confusing and difficult to get the book from your program to the site where it can be printed for you. I'm still learning how to use all of the tools given by the programs, but so far, I am loving it.

http://www.blurb.com

The evolution of popularity

According to the TV and movies you've seen since you could retain memories, popularity usually has to do with beauty and confidence. That's what I always thought that popularity would be when I went to school. Not so much elementary school, but middle and high school, I expected that cliquish popularity to take over.

I started going to school during a transition period. Ideals were changing. Beauty was no longer a requirement to being popular. And the idea of what 'popular' even meant was changing. Early 2000s and late 1990s, it meant those mean girls who dressed beautifully and went to parties. It meant you had confidence and knew everyone and classified everyone. It started to change when that whole 'be yourself' movement began to take charge.

When that happened, kids began to take less notice of those people that knew everyone. They were slowly taken down from their pedestal. Eventually, everyone was on the same ground. I didn't witness bullying and/or teasing in middle school or high school. It just didn't happen. People made friends and talked to one another and there was no hierarchy. People just were, and they weren't afraid to be judged for liking something obscure. In fact, the more obscure something was, the more people were interested in it.

People still liked mainstream music and culture and entertainment, but the Internet was allowing everyone everywhere to branch out and discover those little bands in Minnesota with seventy likes on Facebook.The Internet was instrumental to people changing how popularity in school was seen. You could discover anything there. Even the things you were sure no one else knew was a 'thing' had fandoms all over the Internet. We started to receive acceptance online and not just in a school setting, and suddenly, the opinions of people you went to school with held little to nothing when you had the entire world at your fingers.

But still, on television and in movies, popularity was always shown as the popular beautiful people with complete power over all other students. Everyone was classified, as if they could have no more than one hobby. I mean that was slowly changing, but it was still treated like a rarity when a drama geek was also a 'popular' kid. It's entertaining to watch, but it's not so real anymore.

I know that bullying is still a problem, and cyberbullying is no small dilemma. I just never witnessed the bullying or meanness to others. And if I did, people didn't take it. Since people didn't hold hierarchies, peers weren't afraid to speak up when something unfair was happening.

There will always be a problem with bullying because people are raised differently and are abused and some are just confused. But things have really changed. I, for one, am glad that my sister goes to a school now where everyone is free to be themselves without fear of judgement.

It's Coming Up

As you (most likely don't) know, I am to graduate in May. As I keep telling people, that's if I pass my classes. Not that I'm in danger of that. I just like to keep a hint of caution. I will have a creative writing degree. It's, like, my dream degree. I didn't even realize how perfect it was until I had been in it for a while. But it all adds up.

• At night, I was the best bedtime story teller. 
• I ate up books; children's and young adult. Still primarily read those.
• I actually wrote a few 'books,' including a book that I bound in cardboard about a unicorn who went on a journey to find other unicorns. She meets a giant spider in the forest. (I had no idea about that movie, The Last Unicorn)
• I also wrote a little four page poetry book. I wrote on the front who illustrated it (me) and who wrote it (me). It was a thrill to see my name on a cover.
• My senior year of high school I got to take a lot of elective courses. From a catalog, I selected creative writing, and it was the #1 class for me. I spent hours on my portfolio, literally binding ten little books with a work each in them to all fit into one of those decorative books that open.
• In English classes, my essays always had a sense of self. I loved writing days.
• I worked in the library for a class period my junior year. Dear god, the smell of new YA books as they roll in and the satisfying crack as they are opened for the first time... 
• I would get more passionate about the creative essays than the research papers.
• I stay up on all the young adult book trends and authors and titles and such. Always have.

So you see, it was something in front of me all along, but I never really put it together. I wasn't even aware such a degree existed. I heard someone say it in passing and I just reached out and grabbed it. My major used to be vocal performance, because it was something I loved doing, but I didn't enjoy the technical side of it. I minored in it instead and took on the writing degree!

Over the years I have written dozens - if not hundreds - of stories and poems. I have written scripts and written critiques for my peers and worked on my own little novels. I edited other people's work and helped them out with plot and characters. That rush from seeing my name on the cover of something? Still totally there. Now I convert my Word documents into epubs so I can read them on my ereader. Flipping through and seeing my book, even if only I see it, is exhilarating. 

So after graduation, I don't know where I'll go. But I'll always have writing. And I will always know that I majored in something I really love.