Krista Canton

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To everyone who comments on this blog: I don’t need what yer selling.

To wordpress: You know who can keep out spam?  Google.  And google owns blogspot.

Anyway.

I’m thinking of naming my website “Diary of a _________” where _______ is to be determined.

I want it to be adventurous, describe my blog (either my rants about actors/acting, my to-do list when I actually cross things off), and sound interesting and maybe a little off-balance.  Something that is maybe a wee bit embarrassing, because those titles are the most intriguing.

Any suggestions on what can go in the __________?

I am getting kind of lazy with my website.  There are two things I really need to do better: make a layout, and stop posting rants.

I really should sit down one day and make a layout.  I’m going to plan it out beforehand.

• Not too complicated because I don’t want to spend hours on one silly little thing in the css
• Choose a colour scheme, like maybe even do some research
• Choose whether to center it around a picture, as this might define the color scheme – how about Amy Pond from Doctor who?

I’m going to do all this before I start to edit the code.  The only computer-things I’m going to do before I’m done planning is to find a premade layout that can be easily modified to look like my plan, and look at its code.

I also need to stop posting rants.  Like endless entries that aren’t planned out.  Those should go in my journal not my blog.  If I really need to hear people’s opinions on things I should go to my friends.

So, yeah, tomorrow I’m going to get my act together.  Tomorrow I’m going to go for a run, then start the process of making my blog something I want to promote over the internet, something with a wee bit of character.

I feel like the reason I don’t think to hang out with my friends is that I don’t feel like I need them.

I tell myself in my mind that of course I need friends.  That it’s unhealthy to deal with life on my own, and that humans are social creatures and I feel better when I’ve spent time with my friends.

But I think what I do is write in my journal and my blog, and I get the sense that I’ve worked out everything in my life.   That it’s so much easier, so un-embarrassing, to write in a blog and journal.

I just watched the end of Doctor Who Confidential for the episode with Winston Churchill and the Daleks.  At the end they’re discussing how what really saved the day was the fact that the scientist felt human emotions.  (That would be terribly embarrassing, but I guess that’s a small price to pay for saving the world.)

Maybe writing in my journal is the answer sometimes, but maybe occasionally if I’m sad or  blah or something it might be nice to be with friends and have them ask me what’s wrong and cheer me up.  Oh, and I shall have to do that for my friends.

Obviously I’m feeling a little blah right now, but it’s getting better.  I took an advil, spent a bit of time on my own, and decided to pay strict attention to people and what is normal so that I can conform with everyone else for the unimportant things and develop a basis of behavior that doesn’t stand out as awkward.

My stories go through a cycle: I picture a scene, a daydream in which I’m the main character.  I daydream about it, on and off for a while, and it changes into a third-person point of view.  Then I eventually write down the best part, forget about stories, then repeat the whole cycle again.

I’m starting to think up a new story… and I realize all my stories are very similar, except in different time periods and places.

Maybe eventually I’ll take the best bits from each one and write a story worth sending in somewhere and trying to get published…

Names changed throughout the entry.

It sounds disheveled and disorganized, but maybe that’s the way this entry is supposed to be.  A train of thought of someone who doesn’t understand life, death and friendship.

It’s not my lack of organization; it’s just artistic license.

I

Ten years later, I finally feel sad for Amelia’s death.  Just for a moment, but it was good, honest “sad”:  She was preparing for a dance show, where she was going to have a solo, just a small 8-count part of a group number, and I was just laying in bed thinking and pictured her in the show.

For some reason, picturing her in the show she never got to do made me realize what was lost.  The whole sum of who she was, the fact that she could have been just the greatest friend for people.  Like, oh she was such a good person.

That made me realize, where everything else hadn’t.  More than everyone else celebrating her life, more than the times I tried to make myself cry but didn’t actually completely believe it, more than the time I was in the hallway and thought one of her best friends was her then realized she wasn’t, more than the fact that I never wore that purple shirt again after her funeral, more than visiting her sister Nadia who was looking through baby pictures and made a weak half-assed “coping” type joke about wondering if Amelia knew in the pictures, more than the fact that I remember noticing that I’d never seen her parents cry.

Sometimes it’s the small things I guess.

II

I was and still am an unrealistic and sometimes terrible dreamer.  I dream about characters whose friend dies and they channel that emotion into really great acting.

This has happened, actually.  Nadia was the main character in a play a couple of years after Amelia’s death, and I can only assume that’s what she did.  I probably would have  preferred the character’s sadness to be a little more subtle, like as if she were trying to hold it back, but nevertheless surprisingly mature for her age.

Maybe now if she were to play a character like that, she would be able to be able to give me shivers and make it so it feels like my heart is expanding but really I’ve forgotten to breathe and my lungs are pressing in on the rest of the stuff in my coelem.  (You know the kind of acting… really rare, but you know what I’m talking about.)

I dream about something like that happening to me, and a new character (in this case someone I will have met on my travels).

I know this is a bad thing to daydream.  After Amelia’s death I wondered aloud what was to become of her solo.  Bad idea.  I’ve learned since then: keep my terrible daydreams and thoughts to myself.

I’m not sure if that makes me a bad person, or a good person because I keep it to myself.

Image by Tara-Nicole on Deviantart

III

It used to be a chore to hang out with other people.  But it was a chore I forced myself to do for ten years (coincidence).  Because my goal, although shaky, was to have true friends.  I didn’t really know what I was looking for, but I couldn’t avoid people.

Even before grade 6, I made myself hang out with people.  I would be on my best behavior so I didn’t hurt them.

There were a few exceptions to this “chore” rule.  A girl I hung out with in like grade 1 and have since lost touch.

She was in one of my high school classes and I was like “oh, it must be someone with the same name.  Because there are just so many ‘Amber’s with the same last name as her.”  Maybe she had changed within the past decade.  Maybe instead of being the biggest tomboy I knew she was the most rabid fan of cute stuff.

I don’t know why I never got angry at her.  Or Anna, another friend I have kept in touch with.

There’s some sort of magic.  What was different.

What was different?

How was Amber different than others?  How did we magically get along while I avoided others so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself or hurt them.

Image by Libras on deviantart

IV

But, see, I’m not a terrible person.  Just a little awkward because I never properly learned the social skills that are second nature to most people.

I might even say I’m a good person.  I try to help people out, and that’s new.  If I’m working on a problem studying for exams and one of my friends asks me a question, I drop what I’m doing and help them.

Yet I’m somehow worried that my roommates next year will get sick of me.

I wonder why I think this.  Because I’m awkward, and I know that when I hang around awkward people or watch movies about awkward people (I Love You Man) I feel like banging my head against a wall.

No, that’s not it; maybe it’s part of it but not the entire reason.

I think I worry out of habit.

I recently saw an article called “Achievement Porn” describing how video games and even social networking sites seem to offer you tasks you can accomplish relatively easily, then reward you for them giving you the illusion that you’ve accomplished something.

Today I went out to sushi with some of my friends (Asia really likes sushi) and met a girl who’s the girlfriend of a friend of a friend of mine.  She added me to facebook, and I kind of thought “woo another friend.”

Then I realized that’s exactly the sort of false achievement this guy was talking about.

What is a real achievement then?  Eventually everything’s going to die and the Universe will be a bunch of dust, a homogeneous mixture of matter/energy… or something,

Thinking logically enough about life, I conclude that real achievement is four overlapping things: comfort, relationships, happiness, and experiencing the world.  Influencing other people, inspiring them, connecting with them.  Experiencing as much of life as you possibly can.

Can you think of anything else?

Here is my first ever podcast… I was going to put pretty pictures with it but I ran out of time.

• I seem to talk with my hands a lot.
• I just pronounced “about” like “a boot”!  I was fairly sure I never did that.
• I tricked myself, by using iMovie to record my voice and it also recorded my face while I was talking.

I never watched the news, but I think I am going to start… and as silly as it sounds, I am emotionally ready to start watching the news.

My parents don’t watch the news.  My mom reads the paper and I think my dad does but often he’s fairly ignorant about the world.  I just followed suit.

Back in 2005, I saw something on TV about bombs in the London metro, and I decided that I don’t want to know about these things.  People suck, sometimes.

In my field of paper flowers...

Image credits: Scarlet Lillies.

Now I think I’m ready.  As in emotionally ready to watch the news, to see stories about people being killed or hurt and about people killing or hurting.

I realize that there are some things I can’t change.  Maybe there are some things I can change.  What I need right now is the wisdom to tell the difference.

So, it’s time to find out what is going on on this planet.  Time to start watching the news!

I am about halfway through writing a short story.  I think it’s the best thing since 1.5% milk, but I’ll probably read through it later and realize it’s not.  Either way, I’m going to post it here.