BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL

Sitting here drinking wine (as is evident by the title) in an effort to stop thinking about the things that I am currently stressing over and I ended up thinking about a bunch of other things.  Pick one and tell me your opinion... Love to hear other people's thoughts on any of these especially if you're drinking wine too.  

1. Why is it that all the things that taste so good are all the things that are so bad for you?
2. Why does black hair take so long to grow?
3. Why do babies smell so good?
4. Why is weight easy to put on and hard to take off?
5. Is it better to be a jack of all trades OR a master at one?
6. Why do people spend so much time talking about the sin of premarital sex and homosexuality instead of the things that really hurt people like judging, sloth, and jealousy?
7. Why does it sometimes take a disaster to bring us closer together?
8. Why does it take most men longer than women to be ready for marriage?
9. Why does TV feed girls these perfect fairytales and ultimately fuck them up emotionally?
10. Why does God love us so much when we don't deserve it?
11. Why are some women so dependent on a man that they can never be single?
12. Why do some women/men become so weak for a man/woman that they will allow him/her to treat them like shit?
13. Why is this new generation of students so damn unmotivated to succeed?
14. Why do I still have to work harder than a man?
15. Should we go into situations with immediate trust or should we make people earn it?
16. Do you wish on stars?
17. Is it better to have goals and never reach them, or to be content with mediocrity?
18. What is about to happen to education in America?
19. When God shows you that people in your life no longer have a place there, how do you just let them go?
20. Is everyone ELSE fucked up, or is MY idea of friendship just wrong?
21. Why do I need to be in control?
22. Am I ever going to pick one career or am I going to be trying something different forever?
23. When is the idea of "beautiful" going to change in the media?
24. Does always wanting more mean that you can never be happy?

I plan on writing a follow up to this and answer all of my own questions... but not now. Now... I load up on wine to stop my mind.  BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL I must free myself from mental anguish.  

Fear of Failing or Fear of Success?

I’m sitting at the computer attempting to contact the editor of “____” magazine about publishing one of my articles.  I already have her contact information and all I have to do is pay the $5.99 to join the website that will get me in contact with her and a number of other editors.  I’ve been looking into it for about 3 days now, asking myself, “what’s the big deal Shaina, you spend more than $5.99 on- EVERYTHING”.  I keep refreshing the page; going back and forth, looking at some of my really good work and wondering which one is good enough.  Then it hit me.  I am scared shitless.  I am scared to put my heart into something and fail.  As I’ve said before, I get really tired and bored with things so quickly, but never have I tired of writing.  Along with reading, it’s the one constant things in my life that I have always had a profound interest in, but then the questions start.

“What if I’m not good enough”?

Sometimes my grammar sucks.  “What if they think I’m horrible”? There are so many writers that are better than me. My desire brings me back to the website but the questions I have take me back to bullshitting on Facebook.  I have never tried hard at something and failed, nor have I ever attempted to be publicly recognized for my passion (on a grand level).  Writing has always been my little secret- the real stuff anyway.  I’ve kept it under lock and key, hidden in the special folders on my computer so no one would stumble across my little "hobby".  I’ve been "writing books" since I was 8.  But what makes me good enough?  “Why would anyone care about your story shaina” I ask myself all the time.  “What do you know that no one else does”?  

But I believe that it’s not that I think I know something you don’t know, I think I just have a very real way of addressing situations that can sometimes be considered taboo in everyday discussion.  I think my allure is that I say what you are thinking in the exact way that you want to say it but are afraid to.  But what if I fail?   What if I pay this $5.99 and come up with every excuse in the book as to why I shouldn’t do this, or how I should try to spend my time trying to find a job instead of sitting around and writing?  What if I put my all into it and fail and fail again?  I don’t generally fail, and when I have, I changed that failure into success in one way or another.  But this is my thing, my passion, my Shaina thing that I’ve been telling myself that I’m good at for the last 17 years, so what if I find out I’m not?  What if I never get 10,000 hits a day, never beyond this blog, and remain in the same situation I am in now?    

The more I type, the more I realize that this is unacceptable.  This is not diva-esque Shaina.  Fuck what if.  I live in South – Muthaeffin - Korea.  I have a Bachelors AND a Masters Degree.  I’ve worked 2 and 3 jobs at a time and paid my way through college…TWICE.  So what if they think I suck.  So what if my grammar sucks and I need Ciara to tell me where to put colons and hyphens, I'll read some books and be the best damn grammarian on the planet.  So what if someone is better than me, someone will always be better at something.  So what if I am not as good as I think, that will just drive me to do better.  I don’t fail...it just takes me longer to get to success sometimes, but I get success nonetheless.  So instead of asking what if I fail, I am going to start concentrating on something else.  What if I succeed??? - and that scares me just as much.  $5.99 huh?? Where is my debt card?

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

--Marianne Williamson

Reading for writing

I admitted to myself that I really want to write.  I have been writing forever but I very rarely allow myself to get to deep into it because of a little thing called "fear".  What if I give it my all and I fail?  What if I sit in front of the computer screen and I can't write anything?  What if I think it's great but everyone else thinks it's horrible?  These are the questions that I continue to let plague me and ultimately keep me from one of my greatest desires, but no more.

I picked up The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes because I didn't  read all of them when I was younger; a few here and there, but not all of them.  I couldn't put it down.  It was, and is, a constant reminder of what I want to do, and the way I want to do it.  Conan Doyle conveys his characters so well by only using minor details and a captivating story line.  He paints a picture that can easily be followed, yet at the same time forces the reader to stay on their toes.  It's not just the story itself; its the way he expresses it.  Rereading the stories has made me look at my own writing differently; both where I am now and where I want to be.

This made me want to reread more of the classics.  There is such an abundance of great material out there and I have barely scratched the surface.  I am going to keep writing, but right now, I am going to focus on broadening my literary horizons so that when I sit down to finish (and ultimately rewrite) my untitled autobiographical love story, I will be confident in my knowledge and my abilities.  I am so excited about what I know will end up going into my mental "Success" files where I keep all the things that I have accomplished.

My book cue is posted on my blog to the right.  If you have any books suggestions please let me know!