Guilty as charged
For not updating
Again I am.

That being said, here are some news on my ever-exciting life (read: completely boring).

- I participated in a conference (astronomy and culture), and now I have two academic papers to write. Those will be my first papers ever published, because the one I wrote for the last conference failed since my co-writer never bothered to write her part. Lesson learned: I am not a team worker. (Read: I don’t know how to make other team members to cooperate).

- My dear hamster Polina died on April 26th. She was more than two years old, and that’s an old age for a hamster. I’ve written more about it in my Tumblr, so please read if you’re interested. I got pretty emotional even though the writing doesn’t really reflect that.

My hamster Polina died (Tumbrl post)

- I suffer from insomnia. Well, it’s not really insomnia as much as it’s a weird sleeping pattern. I get really sleepy in the afternoon but when 2AM comes, I am wide awake and full of energy. I end up doing stuff till 7 AM without sleeping. Then I fall asleep and I sleep all day. Not healthy. For example, yesterday I went to bed at noon and I woke up at 1 AM. I also gained a lot of weight – I’ve never been heavier, and while I don’t give a fuck about my sexiness, it is a lot, people. And I don’t eat that much at all. It has to be connected to shitty sleeping pattern. I’m also anxious and depressed and it’s also spring, so I get my allergy from time to time, which means horrible migraines. My IQ also seems to drop by at least 20 percent. I couldn’t remember how to spell Ian McEwan the other day (and I’m not even sure I spelled it right now). All I can do is watch movies and theorize/analyze them. Which isn’t at all that bad if it’s productive (one of the conference papers was about the way astronomy is portrayed in disaster movies), but most of the time, it isn’t.

- I feel guilty for not updating my blog, or visiting other people’s blogs, or replying to emails. There’s so much I have to do, and I just… It doesn’t seem I have time. Well, if you sleep for whole day and walk around like a zombie you wouldn’t have time for anything either. I hate this, you know? I hate when I don’t have anything to do, because I’m a big procrastinator and I can’t function without a deadline over my head and the panic it creates. When they give me specific tasks to do, I do them, PLUS I find time for creative stuff and quality time with my husband. It seems like I manage to find time for everything, even if I have less free time. But if free time is mostly what I have… Forget it. I can’t manage to do anything. It sucks a big time.

So, what’s new with you guys? (Assuming there’s anyone left here because I don’t update often). As usual, I’d like to update more, and I actually have plenty of ideas for new posts. But, you see, time managing and all. Makes no sense, I know. But oh, it sucks.

This is something I get asked a lot. For all the crap that’s going on in my part of the world, race issues aren’t one of them since basically only one race lives here. Also, due to the way things are constructed, people are more concerned about someone’s ethnicity than race. Plus, we are white. Racial issues are of no immediate concern to me. So, why do I bother? It has nothing to do with me.

It would be nice to say something like: “I am interested because this issue is something that should concern all people”, which is partly true, but it’s not the complete answer.

The thing is, it does have a lot to do with me, though in an indirect way. But since some things are too close to home to think about them straight, it’s good to think about stuff such as privilege, oppression, collective identities and various mechanisms that guide human actions through a different way they manifest themselves.

I guess this is what makes the race discussion so familiar for me even if it doesn’t have much to do with my own culture. This is what I found interesting: with all the unfamiliar stuff there were always things that I was familiar with.

It also helped me in other ways. It made me understand America (= USA) better, for good or the bad, since my previous experience was either through Hollywood, my culture’s views on it or its views on my culture. None of it speaks much about America the way it is.

Plus – and let’s not forget about it – I’ve met many great people through these websites.

That being said, I am not active on the “race” websites anymore. I guess that I got too involved at one point, and when I get involved in any sort of a political issue, I usually run away. When I start feeling it concerns me, I stop discussing it and writing about it. This is the main reason I don’t write about Balkans or my experience with it. I guess it’s too personal. So maybe that’s the reason I’m not that involved with the race discussion websites anymore? Or maybe it’s because most of my friends left?

In any case, that doesn’t change my motives for dealing with this issue.

I wanted to write a clever post on why I don’t update so often. It’s not like I don’t have time for my site, and it’s not like I’m not interested in jefflion.net anymore. And it’s not like I don’t have ideas: I have tons of ideas.

I just… Can’t. It happens to me when I’m depressed, or anxious, or when I worry. I become so fucking unproductive in those situations. I also suffer from insomnia. I can’t sleep at night. I just can’t.

But to make this post somewhat positive, here are some post ideas:

- Race & yours truly (race blogs, racism, and what’s in it for me, because I’m white and I’m non-Westerner, so it’s not an issue that usually affects people in my part of the world. Unlike, you know, almost all the other issues you can think of).
- Movie reviews (I love doing movie reviews, and I don’t even care if a movie is new or not. I’ve been planning on doing a review for In Bruges for so long, and there are also some new films I’m interested in: new Sherlock Holmes or Tin Tin, or just some little independent movie I watched and loved).
- Stereotypes about Eastern Europeans (that are actually true).
- Novel writing (How to and How Not To)
- Vampires and the Balkans (and the way popular representations of vampires, based on stories about Dracula, were actually formed as cautionary tales about the wild Balkans, a dangerous region that can corrupt the West – yes, that’s right kids, there’s an ugly story behind this).

Anyway, this song always makes me feel better for some reason:

There’s a reason for not blogging so long. I’ve been busy with NaNoWriMo, first outlining and doing a research, and then writing. To be honest, I’m still busy, but I felt like ignoring this blog wasn’t the best idea.

So, I present you my NaNo novel, The Demise of the Elm Trees (it’s a working title but I like it).

This novel is special for a couple of reasons. This is the first time I write in English (and yes, I’m shit scared of it, thanks for asking). My level of language self-esteem is quite low to non-existent. But if I ever think to grow as a writer I need to learn now to do this, so NaNo seemed like a good opportunity to try.

It’s also the first time I write a YA (Young Adult) novel. Consciously, at least. I believe many of my early novels (those beautiful and embarrassing and amazing and face-palm and nostalgic teen efforts) were also YA, but I was unfamiliar with the label back then. Why YA? In part, because I’m a sucker for coming of age stories, and in part because YA doesn’t require complicated style or advanced English.

I’ll share more about the story later (if there are people interested to read about it), but for now, I present you the writing rules (or you could say it’s more of a process?) I set for my NaNo novel:

1. Write now, worry about grammar later. Try to record your thoughts on the electronic paper without worrying about the grammar structure, appropriate words and idioms, and especially not about that fucking thing called “past tenses in English language”. (Or the most evil aspect of them, the Present Perfect vs Past Perfect issue). Oh no, don’t worry about it now.

2. When first draft is finished, write a second one. Fix the plot, characters and stuff.

3. Check your information Do your research again. Check every single thing, from school policies, drama classes and copyright to pop cultural references and important events. Make sure everything is plausible.

4. Speaking of which, make sure it seems like 1994. Do a double check on slang (especially regional, including, but not limited to Seattle). Do a double check on technology. Fashion. Pop culture all over again. And then, slang one more time.

5. Fix your grammar the best you can. (There’s no point in doing this before the step 5 if you need to change your sentences and write new ones).

6. Grow a pair and ask a few unsuspecting victims beta readers to read it. They will have a demanding task of checking your story/writing, your information and your grammar, but that’s what friends are for, right?

Today is Jefflion.net’s birthday! I registered the domain in 2007 (I can’t believe it was 4 years ago).

Just a reminder, “jefflion” is short for “Jeff Ament looks like a lion”, and we all know how important that fact is, right?