30 Days of NaNoWriMo

As I mentioned in the Camp NaNoWriMo Winner post, I’m still missing the last 8 days in my 30 days writing adventure (see 7 Days, 14 Days, and 22 Days of NaNoWriMo for the previous days). Well, here they are!

• Day #23: If you pretend you’ve just started writing, would it become easier?

The main issue with WriMo, at least for myself, is how the whole thing become excruciating the longer you’re doing. The start is easier because you’re excited, you have an idea you feel great about, it feels like sunshine and rainbows. But as you dwell deeper and deeper into the story and spend more and more time writing, you feel the need to put it aside. Yet the whole point is not to do that, so whatcha gonna do?

• Day #24: Just 1 week left… Which sounds like torture, considering I’ve been doing this for 3 weeks.

It. Does. Not. Get. Better. You’d think being near the end and reaching your goal should give you the mythical boost you so need right about now. Maybe you’re too far away from the end? Yeah, last-minute boosts are more like your thing, but you can’t really complete the 30K words on the last day.

• Day #25: Mercy, mercy! Just shoot me already.

Chinese water torture has nothing on monthly writing months. I feel like Dolores Umbridge’s sitting next to me, chuckling at the sight of horror I’m in while attempting to catch up with my word count. Except the word count’s not my issue, but the inability to move beyond some plot points. The failure to continue writing the story I wanted to tell.

• Day #26: What was I supposed to be writing about?

By now my brain has probably gone into retirement and I’m more zombie than human. I can’t think, I can’t function, but we’ve got just a few days left and somehow I’m still typing. I say typing because I’m not sure the stuff that’s coming up on the screen can be considered writing.

• Day #27: If no one wants to shoot me, I’ll just start breaking stuff.

If you believe I’m joking, that’s some serious wishful thinking. When you spend a month doing heavy writing you start feeling like the Hulk. Enraged, full with strength you want to throw around at any chance you find. Starting from the not-so-lovely place you used for writing in the first place.

• Day #28: Don’t stop the music writing. 

Maybe if you drink another bucket of coffee and stay up all night you’ll get ahead of your goal in a single day. Or maybe you’ll put yourself in a coma and sleep through next year’s writing months. Both options sound appealing so you give it a go.

• Day #29: I CAN FREAKING DO THIS!!

Since validation can ultimately be done on the last day at latest, the 30th is never that important for me. My goal is being prepared for that day, so that I’m not frantically trying to come up with crap just to finish the whole event before the last minute clocks out. It also lets me enjoy that last day with joy and gratitude while looking back at what I’ve accomplished in the previous days. However, it also means that I’m one day short in the month and that my 29th day is always a witch with a B. The only way to get through such a day, is to remain hopeful and keep yourself motivated.

• Day #30: Best month ever!

[Yes, I’m using an Obama gif for this] IT’S OOOOOVER!! Okay that thought makes me sad about it, but I can just glance at what I’ve written and it puts a smile on my face (that’s when I’m reading stuff from the early days, the writing from the last couple days make me want to hug the desk with my face). If I wasn’t tired I’d be jumping up and down with joy the whole day. It’s profound happiness, makes you wonder what other accomplishments feel like this.

As I said in a previous post, congrats to both those who did and didn’t manage to complete their Camp NaNoWriMo goals. Just remember that once you recharge the batteries you should tie yourself to the chair once again (for writing, not for kinky business).Strike while the iron is hot, don’t make your writing any harder by letting the idea fly away.

Of Friends & Foes

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” ~ Martin Luther King

It has now been 50 years since the iconic speech of Martin Luther King, I Have A Dream, delivered on the 28th of August, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Five decades later, and that dream still remains a dream, far away from reality. The racial discrimination has definitely sunk down since, but one can still see the ship right beneath the surface of the water. Even if racial discrimination is ever left in humanity’s past, what about discrimination based on age, sex, religion, sexual orientation, looks, disabilities, and all the other forms of this venom humanity has been using daily for millenniums now? Is there any possibility that every human being can live a single day without the fear of being treated differently? The answer to that lies within each of us, but only when everyone chooses the right answer it can truly become reality.

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ~ Bob Marley

We mark our lives and history with nothing but labels. If one is persistent to put a label on other people, then obviously some can be friends, some foes, and some can remain unlabeled. But are our friends fully “friends”, and are foes fully “foes? My personal opinion, which is similar to Marley’s quote above, is that there exists no human being who completely fits the description of a friend or a foe. Every human being we interact with will, eventually, in some way, hurt us and help us. We might not know how, we might not notice it, but sooner or later it is bound to happen and it is everything but insignificant. Every little details counts toward shaping our lives and with that shaping ourselves as a character.

People are going to hurt us, sometimes more times than they’re going to help us, because it’s how the world works. If they are truly our friends then it will always be unintentional, and if they are our foes then it will always be intentional. But the worst kinds are those in-between. Friends are great as they’re there to return to you the help you give them in times of need, and foes are brilliant as they’re there to keep us motivated and moving forward. But those in-between, there is nothing good in them and relying on them will surely bring you to your downfall. They’re not reliable, they’re never there where you need them but are always there when they need you, they’d never even have anything to do with you unless they didn’t have some use of you or see potential use and are simply keeping you around in case they need you. Those are the folks that would be happy to see your downfall so as long as it ensures they keep going up. Treachery and pain are their main skills, and they’ll use them often and freely.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To trust someone means to be willing to put your life in their hands. It means trusting them with the greatest of all responsibilities — keeping you soul intact. But in this world that is nothing like the one Martin Luther King envisioned, how do you decide whom to give that responsibility to? How do we decide the worth of a human being? The answer is, sadly, you can’t. At least you will never know unless the opposite happens. The saying “innocent until proven otherwise” is how we often see people. We try to keep the best of them in front of us, we try to make friends before making foes. And, although many people say forgiving is all, doesn’t one have to be super naive and frankly a bit stupid to forgive everyone and for everything? Doesn’t that only lead to more pain and suffering? Or well, forgive, but do not forget. If you’re fooled once, make sure you’re not fooled twice.

As it happens, I tend to do the opposite method of seeing everyone as “guilty until proven otherwise”. This was not always the case, but over time in life you learn that nothing is as it seems, it’s usually worse and the worst has yet to come. I’m a Weeping Angel statue ready to send to oblivion anyone who turns their back to me, or even blinks (read: lies) to my face. Once, humanity’s goal was to work together and advance as a species, but nowadays we’re trying to advance our gadgets and technologies and while doing those upgrades we’re downgrading our value as species. We’re no longer what we are, now we are what society wants us to be. I only pity the dreamers such as Martin Luther King, who will likely never see their dreams fulfilled.

What the heck is a Limit?!

• Limit (noun, lim-it, \ˈli-mət\) – a : something that bounds, restrains, or confines; b : the utmost extent

I would like to argue the definition written above, for the most simple reason out there: there is literally nothing more flexible than a limit. What is your limit today, can become your starting point tomorrow. Look at sportsmen, they start as little kids playing a game, and grow up into professionals who get paid because of how far they’ve pushed the limit in their area.  For the human kind the sky we see outside used to be the limit once upon a time, but that is no longer the case. Now that we’ve pushed that limit aside, we get a much broader and rewarding image whenever we look at the sky.

Even scientists might beg to differ and show some lovely statistics to back up their arguments, but what about the exceptions and who decides who gets to be an exception? Why can’t everyone be an exception? The reason is simple, because people fear to push their limits or do not have the conditions to do so. Genetically or even physically, one might not have sports in their blood, but there came the Paralympic Games (and basically versions of all sports played by people with disabilities). The limit was pushed for disabled people. No, it wasn’t pushed, they pushed it themselves. Racism used to keep a whole portion of the human kind as slaves, but that is no longer the case — another major limit that was pushed. The examples are countless and all around us, we just need to look.

As Albert Einstein has said, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” So can scientists and statisticians and politicians and doctors and who else not, tell you where your limits are. But those are not your limits, not truly, because every boundary can be pushed and so can your limits be moved. Why should you stop here and not move further? Because someone else told you to? The world might not be as united as it used to be, so you might need to sink into your own soul to find the motivation and hope to keep moving because everyone around you will keep telling you to stop but you don’t have to. That light at the end of the tunnel everyone keeps speaking about? Don’t let that light be your last stop, move beyond into the magnificence that lies behind it. Grab a piece of the forbidden fruit not because of others or because of spite, do it because you can.

If we all gave up, the human kind would join history alongside the Dinosaurs. Don’t think of what if something happened otherwise, think what if something happens otherwise. What’s done is done, but what’s to come can still be undone. Do not at any point feel bad about yourself, as then you’ll be placing the worse limits a human being can, shutting down themselves completely and on their own. No one said it’s going to be easy but if you just give yourself a little push, you might notice the world moving forward with you. If you fall behind, people will leave you, but if you get ahead, you may even get to help others. Help human kind push the limits it trapped itself with these days. We got from making fire from sticks and stones to possible blowing up countries. Something, somewhere, took a wrong turn, and while we cannot change the present we can aim for a brighter future. Start today by expanding the boundaries society has given you.