Long overdue update
I'm gonna start by complaining about my sleeping habits. I seem to have trouble going to bed before 1:30 these days. this is unfortunate since school has started and I have a 9am class 3 days a week. the other days I have 11 am class but it involves watching movies and it's hard to stay awake cause I'm not moving and not actively engaging my mind. The being in a dark classroom aspect probably doesn't help either come to think of it. The other night I was tired and decided to try to go to bed around 8. I woke up at 10 and couldn't get back to sleep till 3. Blah. I'm trying my best to improve this situation, but I think it's gonna be a few weeks. Till then, no more napping unless I feel nauseated or something (cause sometimes that happens when I feel really tired). I guess I'll work on other habits too, like not laying in bed so much during the day. Right now I'm sitting on the loveseat in room, so that's a good start.

I feel like that's kinda a good segue. But this turned out to be a long entry so I'm gonna put everything under cuts. I've been living in my new place for about a month now, but I haven't posted a single entry since before then so this is all new info for LJ. I moved again. In Feburary/March I moved out of the apartment where I lived with Lisa and Jared. I lived in a townhouse in walking distance from school for about 6 months. However, when my lease was up my landlord didn't want to renew it to only me because previously his daughter had moved out. Since she had been living there and she was able to collect rent for him and it made more sense to just be finding roommates. He decided that since his daughter was no longer in the equation there was no reason to rent to multiple people, so he wanted to have a contract with only me and have me find 3 roommates and be responsible for the entirety of the rent. I was kinda displeased with how lazy this was of him, but I did think about it cause I'm lazy and I didn't wanna move. In retrospect, I guess that it wasn't that different from how one has to find roommates when they lease out an apartment, except in that case multiple names are on the lease/liable for things, and the real problem was that he only wanted to have my name there. But I digress. And probably repeat myself...

So I decided to look for a place to live and fortunately ended up with this place. The rent for a private room here isn't significantly more than what I was paying to share a room about half the size at my old place. And my roommates are much nicer. At least one is for sure, I haven't talked to the new one much yet. She just moved in Saturday. I'm a little nervous around her, but I think i was with the other one too at first, and still kinda am. I'm way more awkward than most people know. But anyway, this place is also much nicer. There's places for company to park that don't require permits which I love. It's a condo like my last place, but this is more like a real house while the last place was a townhouse. And again, the room is much bigger and I don't have to share! I'm even able to keep a loveseat I took from my parents house in here (they had it in my bedroom there since there was no longer room for it in their upstaris room that basically has become a home gym). So I'm super happy with my room now since I have everything I need (except a kitchen) in my room. Tho I'm still having trouble keeping it tidy. I have a decent amount of floor space but the tidiness issue persists. Victor and I thought about buying rock band and keeping it in here, but I can't help but feel like it's just not clean enough. But I'm working on a sewing project right now and that might not be helping.

Which works as another segue to talk about how I'm sewing Halloween costumes this year! I decided to actually make mockups first since it seems like whenever I sew a costume for myself there's a problem with the fit. In this case I'm super glad that I did beacuse the pattern I picked up was problematic. I found someone talk about the process of making this costume on their blog and she said that she encountered problems too. She stared by trying to make the pattern for herself and couldn't figure it out, so she bought the pattern online, a different version than the one she was thinking of. I was very happy to see that she also said that the sleeves were entirely too small, cause I was really despairing when I first tried to put my mock up on and i couldn't get my arms in. Tho she also said that the torso area was ridiculously short and she had to drop the waist on it. I looked at all the diagonal seams on that thing and decided that there was no way I could figure out how to just drop the waist on it. I stared at the picture of the other version for a long time and decided that the seams looked rather simple and I should just try to make it based on looking at the seams. I noticed that in certain areas it's similar to my bridesmaid dress from Lisa's wedding (which I also haven't talked about here...'^^). So I used that and the original pattern to make my new mockup. So I think it's kinda funny that I thought it'd be easier to make my own pattern and the other girl thought it'd be easier to drop the waist, but then again, I had the pattern to help me too.

I dont think I lined up the pattern quite right when I was figuring out how to do it tho, cause it still fits funny and doesn't look right. I have some marks on it, but I decided that it would be best to just make a duct tape dressform and play with it on there. When I was making the pattern I thought it would be easier if I had a dressform too, but I didn't wanna go to the trouble. However, this weekend I decided that I really wanted one, and Victor agreed to help me. The only problems were the fact that we didn't have enough duct tape (we had a 60 yard roll) to wrap it around 3-4 times like the instructions say. we got it around almost two times. We also rushed into doing it as early as possible since we don't have AC at my place and it gets hot, but I hadn't eaten anything so at the very end when I was getting cut out I felt like utter shit. Good timing since it was right as we were finishing, but still lame. I'm kinda worried I stretched it or something at some point, but it should be a close enough measurement of my body. I'm not sure if we're gonna try to add more layers at some point. It's not finished since I don't have anything to stuff it with. I'm thinking newspaper, but I don't have access to any right now. I'll probably think about it again this weekend. My weekdays are a bit hectic right now. I decided to take 20 units this quarter which means classes in the evening 3 days a week, and my mornings are pretty full too. Which kinda segues into...

I've been seriously contemplating graduating early lately. I even added a class to open up the possibility. It was one class that fills two requirements, so it means instead of having 4-5 class left after this quarter I only have 3 left. I decided that it was better to add this class instead of any other class to leave my schedule open. I still have two classes of math requirement left next quarter and I need to leave my schedule as open as possible to be sure to take them. I previously hadn't taken a math class cause they always seemed to be during a class I had to take for my major, so I thought it'd be a good idea to get this class out of the way now. course I'm taking an evening class and most general ed classes like that are during the day... but i'd still rather hedge my bets a bit. My parents are ok with the idea of me graduating early. We had talked about it before but my parents thought it might be better for me to stay and try to learn more/do more internships. This actually sorta relates to another problem of graduating early which is the fact that I'm not sure exactly what I want to do or how to get there.

I keep on thinking that maybe I should do something that would require some sort of vocational/higher level learning training because it would be easier to get a job that way. However, I don't really wanna go to film school. I know film is my major, but I switched cause I liked analyzing movies. I haven't done any analyzing of movies in class since that quarter tho, but I do have a class this quarter where I get to do that again so that's nice. The problem is that analyzing films has two options: film scholar or film critic. I don't wanna be a scholar. I'm not sure how I'd become a critic, or how I'd make a living from it. I do have an idea of something I can do that is sorta in that direction however. I can practice by writing reviews for movies I see and then post them on my own website (or a blog). Hell, I could even scrape by a meager living doing that if it became popular enough somehow (unlikely, but a nice dream). I'm not sure if I have the discipline to start that however. I don't think I really know the first thing about writing a review either, and I imagine I'd just get self conscious about how basic and unprofessional it was when I started. I'm thinking that I might try to revisit this idea a little bit if my writing class this quarter inspires me to. Right now I'm not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the idea of being a critic.

When I was taking production classes I decided I like to edit. I still like to do that, but I'm concerned that it's a ridiculously competitive field since anyone who's willing to spend some time looking on the internet can figure out how to edit. At least that's the extent of my skills. Perhaps this would be a reason to go to film school? But I'm not sure exactly how that'd work. I think it's partially a question of confidence, I don't think my previous projects can really get me into a very good film school. I also know if I was really passionate about it I wouldn't have to go to school to learn about that kind of thing. My second quarter final project about the Zombie War was really fun and I was proud of it. But my last project for the year wasn't as satisfying. The pacing is off and the camera work is stale. Part of it is the limitations of the location and a lot of it is the fact that I never did refine my script. It's just kinda poorly written. I like parts of the action scene, but on a whole I'm not happy and I got very sick of watching it while I was editing it. I got sick of watching my other projects while I was editing them too, to be fair. I also get sick of watching parts of plays I'm in sometimes. I'm not sure if this would be the case if I was editing professionally, or if it would matter that much because of different factors such as not having to edit work I filmed myself. I'd really like to try my hand at editing something that someone else shot one day. I think I'd like to edit documentaries for the history channel or national geographic, but I don't have the slightest idea of how to get into a job like that. I'm also a little unsure if I'm sufficiently passionate about it, but I've realized that I'm not passionate about a lot of things, potential career wise. I kinda don't see myself being passionate about a job. Tho this could be a transient mood thing, but I think its also cause I know I get passionate about weird things in weird ways. It's hard to explain. I guess I'm only passionate about personal things, but sometimes I inadvertently make things personal that shouldn't' be and that's really a problem. I digress. Anyway, I'm really unsure about the whole film/tv industry thing in general.

Lately I've been thinking more about how I might need to just get some random regular person job. There's a lot of jobs that just require degrees to get. Nothing too specialized, just something that's stable and that I don't hate. I haven't started looking yet, but I'm already falling into the "as long as I can pay rent and eat" mentality. I think it's a weird specialized type of low self esteem... which I guess is often known as "no confidence". I wonder if part of it is just I'm not sure what I have to offer the film world, so I'm not sure i wanna be a part of it. I find myself in a weird paradox of being creative in some ways but not in others. I don't feel like I'm creative in a way that would help me out in a "creative" field too much, but I know I'm creative somehow. I think I'm more of a creative problem solver. Figuring out unconventional solutions is fun, but that's more of an emergency situation type of skill, and that can be applied in any field. I guess I could be a professional go-for/personal assistant... but that doesn't really sound right.

Lately I've been thinking of going into costuming. Working on Halloween costumes this year (see above) has sparked my curiosity about patternmaking. I also really like the satisfaction of making something tangible that can be seen (short films, costumes, even ridiculous silly drawings). I worry that part of this desire is too much Project Runway, but I'm not really terribly interested in being a fashion designer. But maybe a costume designer. Or even a dressmaker. Tho I'm not sure who uses dressmakers these days...

I also think about culinary school from time to time. I like cooking. Not much to add to that really. I guess that, like with sewing, I find it relaxing and satisfying. Tho also like with sewing, I feel like I'd be wasting the time I've spent so far in college. I'd have to go into an entirely new kind of schooling. And I don't see myself doing anything particularly noteworthy in either field.

But I'm not sure I see myself as noteworthy in anything. I've been told my writing is good my entire life, but I don't like the idea of trying to make a living off it, and that's a profession that requires a lot of luck to become successful in. I don't see myself as more than moderately successful in either cooking or costuming. But I could see myself enjoying a lot of it, probably. And that's the real problem. when it comes down to it, whatever it is I have lots of doubts. Maybe that's why I keep on going back to the idea of the "regular person job," it sees safe and easier to excel. But I think it might also be cause my dad kinda fell into his job and it turned out to be something that he's really good at (and he's a nationally recognized expert in part of his field, which might be part of the reason I want to be very good at whatever it is I do). I want to fall into the career that's right for me without all this wondering about it. But I know I'm being stupid because I'll probably have to go through the lower ranks of whatever career I choose to go into and on some level I'm way ahead of myself.

And I just wrote way too much. And I'm tired. Maybe I'll be able to go to bed earlier tomorrow now that I got this off my chest. Or maybe I'll whine a bit more.