I Don't Understand Daylight Savings Time...

Seriously. I question it.

It makes no sense. Who in their right mind decided that people should wake up an hour earlier than they normally do? Nothing really changes. People are just crankier because they don't bother to go to bed an hour earlier.

So what's the point?

I know that it was created because it would add more hours to the day, but wasn't it created back before the light bulb wasn't invented? Therefore, it makes it unnecessary to a civilization that has industrialized many, many years ago.

I have light bulbs at my house. Lots of them. I think a lot of normal people do. So... use them. And don't wake me up an hour earlier than I want to be up. >.>

30 Hour Famine

This past weekend, I participated in my youth group's annual thirty hour famine to raise awareness of the poverty in third-world countries. This was my third year in the famine, but our youth group joined up with another. My friend Arianna was there with me (it was her fourth year) and so was my boyfriend Nathan (it was his first year).

The famine took place at a church in town that used to be a movie theater. There were a lot of students who participated in the famine, much more than last year's famine and the year before.

I have to provide a bit of background information before I move into the next part. There is a girl that Arianna and I have known since middle school. She has a mental illness and has a different mind process than most people. I'm not going to give her name out over the internet, but she's been called "crazy" and "creepy".

This girl was at the famine. I'm not particularly fond of her, so I just avoided her. However, she grew quite attached to my boyfriend. He and I didn't arrive at the famine together, so I was there before he showed up. When he showed up, she started to flirt with him and try to hold his hand. When I had a free moment (we were in the middle of a discussion about the famine, I believe), I walked up to him and greeted him with a kiss, just to subtly let this girl know that I was dating him.

He and Arianna told me that I was jealous.

There was a band that agreed to perform for us, and during the middle of the show, this girl starts to cry. She tells us that she had a friend who killed himself two years ago. My boyfriend just so happens to remind her of this friend. Once the band was done playing and we had about an hour of free time, she wanted to talk with Nathan. Another girl who was part of my youth group insisted that I was not in the same room. My friend Brittney knew that upstairs, there were windows that we could see them through because she knew that I was just concerned.

She and I go upstairs, and I see her cuddled up against him. She took his arm and put it around her and with her other hand she grabbed his hand. He had a confused look on her face but I could tell that he didn't want to upset her (she was somewhat emotionally unstable at the time). Brittney told me to notify her if I felt uncomfortable at all and she would run down there and tell them to stop it.

I was very uncomfortable at this point, but I didn't want to be seen as a jealous girlfriend, so I had to keep my mouth shut. The next thing I see is her taking out her phone and handing it to him. I presume that she's asking him for his number. I was incredibly uncomfortable with all of this and I asked Brittney if she could just get her to stop cuddling against him.

An adult walked into the room shortly after, but since I couldn't hear through the window, I didn't know what was going on. They leave and I go downstairs to meet up with Nathan. He was almost freaked out by this situation, but like always, he kept his composure.

Things settled down for a while. We divided up into "tribes". I was in the same tribe as that girl, but the adults were nice and switched out my tribe card with someone else's to make sure that I wasn't uncomfortable. I was in the same tribe as Arianna, so I was happy. We were called "Carrefour" and it was so much fun when we made our banners.

After we made banners, it was time to go to bed. They put on Finding Nemo and you could either watch it or go to bed.

Carrefour Banner

Things started to get psycho freaky. This girl became obsessed to the point where she was threatening to harm herself if she couldn't talk to him. She attempted to pierce her lip and her bridge with a thumb tack. I wanted to confront her at this point and tell her to back off, but I was smarter than that. After all, we were all going to be spending the night together. If she wasn't afraid to go after her own face with a sharp object, what was going to stop her from going after my face with a sharp object in the middle of the night?

However, she left around midnight or one o'clock. I guess she became frustrated that she couldn't talk to Nathan and wanted to go home to be alone or something. I don't know. What she does is none of my business.

The rest of the thirty hour famine was great, though, despite the occasional "I'm hungry! D:" Comparing the activities and games that we played to the ones at the thirty hour famines of the past, they weren't as good. There were three games altogether, I believe. The first one was a riddle. For the second one, we had to put dirt in a sock, dump the dirt into some water, get water into our sock, and then squeeze it into a container. Whoever collected the most water in 5 minutes was the winner. The last game was my favourite. We had a bunch of slips of paper and we had to figure out what they said. It was sort of like the game Mad Gab (right? I've never played it but someone said something like that).

We also did a lot of community service. We helped out at a senior center. There was a man there who was really good at playing pool.

We also helped out at a charity. I didn't care for it that much because they made us pull weeds. Arianna had a mild asthma attack and I was beginning to feel nauseous. (Read Blood Drive to understand the icky feeling I get occasionally.)

At six o'clock Saturday evening, we were allowed to eat. The team that had earned the most points was to get their food first. My team won, but I don't think that it was fair to make everyone else wait while people were starting to eat.

In all honesty, I liked the other thirty hour famines better, but that was also probably because I didn't have issues with a creepy girl at the other famines.

But I liked going home with Nathan (he came over to my house), eating fried rice, and passing out on the couch. (:

Blood Drive

There was a blood drive at my school today, and I decided to try it. This was the second blood drive I tried and would have been the first I actually donated in. The first blood drive was a no-go because I was anemic (my red blood cell count was too low). It wasn’t too serious for anemia, but the levels were low enough to where I was not allowed to donate.

For this blood drive, my red blood cell count was up (yay! no more anemia!) and so I was ready for the legit 16g needle to be shoved into my arm. My veins had another plan. The vein that they wanted to puncture decided to act like the Italian army (Axis Powers Hetalia reference), and they saw the needle as the British army. It ran away from the blood drive people and hid.

Normally I am terrible around any sort of puncture to myself to get my blood. I’ve been squeamish for a long time, even when I was in the fourth grade and had to get blood tests done. Crazy story but all in all I freaked out and didn’t want them stabbing my arm. During my sophomore year (the last school year) I was fine when my biology class did a blood typing lab. This year, in Medical Science I, I wasn’t doing so well. During the training we had to go through before we could work with blood at all, I had this nasty nauseating feeling and ended up puking in a trash can (which has become the new joke between my friends). For the first blood lab we did, I was a bit squeamish but was able to participate in the lab. The second lab was a blood typing lab like last year, and I was perfectly fine. When the blood drive people punctured the needle into my arm, I started to feel nauseous. It wasn’t as bad as when I puked in the trash can, but I was nervous that I might end up getting sick, so I asked them not to stick me again and they didn’t. So hopefully during the next blood drive I am well both internally and mentally to donate…. even though only two people can safely receive my blood.

2010 / New Year's Resolutions

Overall, I have to say that 2010's been okay. Thinking back to the beginning of the year, I remember the good times from the end of sophomore year. Spending time with my friends was easy, much easier than this school year when I've been swamped with AP work. I enjoyed life more during Sophomore year. 

Summer was okay, there was just more work for the honors classes than the summer before. I still spent a lot of time with friends, but towards the end of summer was when the work started to get in the way. I had tried to get into a chemistry class at the community college, but due to the class size, I was one of the ones who was dropped.

It's okay, though. So Junior year started. Medical Science I, Chinese III, Orchestra Winds, AP US History, Pre-Calculus HP, and AP English and Language Composition filled my days. I always knew that my history class was going to be the most difficult. History was never my strong suit. Turns out, though, that the worst class ended up being English. Who knew that one "this isn't a real essay" would turn my C into an F. Now I have two weeks before the end of the semester, and the teacher said that the best grade I can hope for is a C. 

Drama's been great. The recent play The Matchmaker turned out to so far be my favorite from all my past plays. It was a costly production, but hopefully next year's productions can be just as great without so high a cost. 

So now for my resolutions. I'd like to stop procrastinating. Even over break, I procrastinated. I have to finish chapter seventeen of the cornell notes for my history class, and I'm in the middle of chapter fourteen. Wonderful planning. 

I'd like to get more work done, but that sort of ties in with procrastinating. I'd like to finish up at least more than one cosplay. I just need to keep myself focused and stop distracting myself with my phone, games, etc.

A few weeks ago, I started to feel really depressed, and I guess it's because the holidays have always been a depressing time for me since it was only in 2007 when my father passed. I'd like to be sad once in a while, yes, because it's sad, but I don't like feeling depressed.

Hopefully 2011 turns out better than this year, even though 2010 had some really great times.

What Happened to DeviantArt?

deviantART Loves You by *akreon on deviantART

I would have never found out about the issue going on on deviantArt if I had not browsed a page, saw this comic, and decided to read it. This comic changed my entire perception of the art site I once loved. I decided to check out the article that was mentioned in the artist's commentary. What even adds to the irritation is how much space deviantArt took in this blog post and only about half of that area is given to the art.

I'm irritated because as an unpopular artist with mediocre work, this limits my artwork from expanding past the pages of the internet. Sure, I could post it up on here, but out of my three watchers (all friends from school), does anyone even look at this? This is depressing.

On one hand, I feel trapped. All of my artwork was posted on deviantArt, with a couple exceptions where it was on my photobucket and from there linked to sites like gaia or facebook. I used to post my art on myspace, but stopped after myspace died (as well as the fact that I went on myspace only once a year). I feel like my work has less of a chance of recognition now. My most popular piece, below, has been featured in two journals and used as part of the heading on a website (you should check it out!). While this brings me happiness, it also saddens me, for it was a photograph. I do enjoy photography, yes, but the main reason I joined deviantArt in the first place was to share my artwork, more specifically my drawings. This should encourage me to leave deviantArt and find another art site, since I was feeling trapped on dA anyway. But that's another reason on how deviantArt makes me feel trapped. I would be completely new on another art site. I wouldn't know where to start, I'd have to learn everything all over again.

Three Roses by *PrincessPomeranian on deviantART

 This is where the other hand feeling comes in. Maybe finding another site is the key to stop feeling trapped. I've felt trapped by my artwork for a long time now, but I think most of that has to do with my OCD. The only reason my most recent deviations have been photographs is because I don't have access to a program to color my drawings. My OCD kicks in with my drawings because I refuse to let myself post them out of the order that they were drawn in. If I were to start over on a new site, I wouldn't have to update it with drawings that should have been posted a year and a half ago.

I hate having multiple accounts and I know if I get an account on a different art site it'll be just another thing to check and a different account may be discarded for the new art site, as has happened in the past. I certainly don't want to leave deviantArt for good, either. I have friends on there, I have added artists that I met at anime conventions to my watch list. I've been on there for well over two years (I would have an exact date but I can't remember my previous account's username) and through that I've been through much more than just posting art. There are actual people there that I enjoy having conversations with. DeviantArt has become part of my daily routine, in fact it's the first tab that's opened up when I log in on my computer. Leaving deviantArt would only make me feel more trapped by it.

Or it might not. Oh, goodness, I'm so confused right now. I know, I know. I'm just a teenager, my words mean nothing. But thank you, to anyone, if you've stopped by, thank you for just reading even a sentence or two, and a million thanks if you've read all the way to here. (: