Summer Update: School, Dance, and Books

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It's been a long time since I posted here, and lots has been happening. I've been working hard to try to finish up Algebra II and Medieval History. I've been doing art classes once a week (pictures to come eventually), Irish dance (soft shoe and hard shoe) once a week, and, starting this week, ballet two to three times a week! There have also been lots of parties and spontaneous get togethers in the nice weather, plus many birthdays to celebrate.

Sunset over Bellingham Bay, on a spontaneous evening excursion to the park with some friends.

I am currently reading The Prince for History, and just finished Are You My Mother? and Maggot Moon, both of which I have written reviews for which will come out soon. If I have time, I'll try to review Fun Homeas well, since it kind of comes before Are You My Mother?

It's been hot around here, in the high 70's to mid 80's all this week. It's supposed to get close to 90 soon, which is quite hot for NW Washington!

As usual, I'm staying busy this week with dance (I have 1.5 hrs of ballet and 2 hrs of Irish on Monday, plus ballet on Friday, and maybe on Thursday), volunteering at the library, a family soccer picnic tonight, a World Cup party tomorrow, and art class, golf, and probably other things I forgot. I'll be reading, doing school, and editing as well.

I'll try to get back to blogging more again soon, but probably not until August, when things really calm down a bit for us. We are camping in Bend, OR for a week in about 10 days, so I won't be blogging then either.

I'll get a few book reviews up this week, but other then that, I probably won't be on here until the beginning of August.

Some Thoughts for 2014

This morning, I wrote this post, and then decided not to publish it. I thought it was too long, too strange, and too philosophical for this blog. But just now, I reread what I had written earlier, and I decided to post it anyway. Yeah, it's long, and confusing, and mainly fueled by sugar and sleep deprivation, but I kind of like it. This blog is many things, but at it's heart, it's a place for me to write. A place to write book reviews, and about my writing, and about what I'm thinking. This is the kind of thing I write, and so it belongs here. If anyone actually reads it all the way through and understands my thought process while writing it, I will be duly impressed. :)

Well, it's 2014 now. I went to a very fun party last night where I ate lots of food, talked a lot, played some poker, played a bunch of various card games (spoons, peanut butter, and more), talked books and movies and was generally nerdy, and just generally had fun with the "Usual Suspects." See my last post for more on that if you're confused.

Right now, I'm about to head out to park day to see if any other Bellingham homeschoolers bothered to come out on New Year's Day, but first I thought I'd try to find something to write about here.

I don't know about you, but when I eat too much sugar, and get too little sleep, I tend to get far too thoughtful and reflective. :)

Today, I've been thinking about something a friend said to me last night.  I was telling two friends about a project I'm thinking about taking on, and I was asking them if they were interested in helping at all. I mentioned that I thought maybe one of them could particularly help with a little writing part, and the other friend said to me, "But you're the writer."

While I didn't think anything of that comment in the moment, other than maybe he was right that it was kind of silly for me to ask people to write things for me, later I thought more about it.

The new year is often a time when people think about who they are and who they want to be. Right now, I often feel like I'm in an odd spot. When you're a teenager, you have every possibility open to you. You make choices that will affect you for the rest of your life. Right now, I'm 15 years old. I still have several years before I have to make the big decisions (college, jobs, etc.) that will change the course of my life. But I'm still at a point in my life where I can decide who I want to be, how I want to be seen, and in what direction I want my life to go.

Who you become is something you can change, but it's also a group project. There are a lot of people in my life, both kids and adults, who I think have a hand in that process. When my friend said to me last night, "You're the writer," while he probably didn't mean that much by it, it showed me part of how he sees me. When my friend's mom asked me how late the library was open on Tuesdays, fully expecting me to know the answer, that showed me part of how she sees me.

To make this even more confusing, I've been realizing that while how other people see me is important, there are sides of me that none of them have ever seen. Parts of me that I'm not sure I want them to see. There are parts of me that are unsure if I'm up to being "the writer" or the responsible person other people seem to think of me as.

But I rise to the occasion when I need to. When I need to be responsible for other people, or when I need to rise above my own fears, I can if other people expect it of me. There have been times when I'm not sure if I can keep it up. I have a reputation for being an overachiever, and for being on top of everything, but the reality isn't really always the same as the reputation. Sometime it's hard because I can't keep up with the way people think of me.

Sometimes I realize that I'm caught between who I want to be, and who I am. Where's the balance? Where do I want the balance to be? Is there even a difference?

What I'm trying to say here is that I'm realizing that how these people see me affects the person that I am, and that I have to decide if that's really the person I want to be. I have the ability right now to be anything. Do I want to be the writer? The booklover? The overachiever? Sometimes I'm not really sure.

Right now, I can decide who I want to be. I will always be "the writer." That's a title I'm proud to have. I'm thrilled to be considered a booklover, especially by my friends who are better read than I am. That's just one side of me, but it's a side I'm happy to let people see. I'm happy with who I am, but I'm also happy to think that that person isn't set in stone.

Thanks to my friend, whose comment sparked this post. If you're still reading at this point, you deserve a prize!

Life Update {Illness, Dancing, Singing, and Writing}

Hey guys! It is way past time for me to write one of these. The last month was INSANE, and I know that the one coming up won't be much better.

I have been really sick this last week, and in fact had to stay home while my family went to Thanksgiving with relatives. As a result, I did no school, and am quite behind there, and not a lot of writing. In fact, I was pretty sure that this was going to be the year I didn't win NaNoWriMo, but I managed to pull through in the end, which was a bit of a miracle.

Since I know that there are some of you in the Bellingham area who read this (and some family and friends who may be interested in coming), I thought I would post the dates and times of some of my performances for choir and dance over the next week or so.

On Saturday, December 7th, our Scottish Dance group will be performing at the Port Festival at from noon to 1pm. There will also be an Irish Dance or two from those of us who do both types of dance.

On Tuesday, December 10th, our Homeschool Choir will be performing as part of the Whatcom Homeschool Association Annual Christmas program, which begins at 7pm, and includes many performers. This will be at Kulshan Middle School and is open to the public.

There will probably be more choir performances, but they have not been finalized as of right now.

I have a lot of practice for all these, and overall I am swamped. I am really glad that NaNo is over, because if I am this overwhelmed with out writing 2k each day, I would be going crazy trying to fit that in too!

In the past week, I also saw Catching Fire (review coming soon) and Ender's Game (read review here). I also watched 5 episodes of Lost on Thanksgiving, and I am finally up to the beginning of Season Five. It's only taken two years. Oh well. At the current rate, it'll take almost another year to finish.

Also, this might sound a little crazy, but I want to try to put up a blog post every day for the rest of December. I really want to see if I can manage it. It will be a mix of holiday stuff, book and movie reviews (I have a ton stacked up waiting to be finished), some school stuff (I haven't done a HF post in weeks!), some other fun things I don't want to talk about yet, and some general chatty life update posts for the days I don't have anything else.

It should be fun, and crazy, and I might not make it, but I also might. I really just want to see if I can manage to do it. On that note, I have some ideas of ways things may be changing a little around here in the new year, but I'm going to wait a little while to talk more about that.

I hope you are all had a good Thanksgiving, and are enjoying the coming holiday season!