Soak Up The Sun

So I'm not a freshman in high school anymore. I'm a rising sophomore, or a 'stale' as my friend calls it. And today was my last day! So now summer starts, dragging me back into a time of late nights and late mornings and books and tank tops and the worst weather and the best moments...

I started off with a movie. It's called "The Invisible", and it's about this guy who gets beat up by a gang of people and his spirit detaches from his body but he's not dead. He has to get people to find his body before he does die. And the only person who can hear him is the leader of the gang. It's a really damn good movie.

Anyways. It still hasn't sunk in yet that it's summer. I've caught myself, multiple times now, trying to remember what kind of homework I have. And then I'm like, "Oh wait. I don't HAVE any homework."

And then I feel all happy inside.

All these things that I've done

At what point do we know who we are?

When I was in seventh and eighth grade I would sometimes become very frustrated with myself because I had no idea who I was. I mean, I knew WHO I was. I knew what I looked like, who my family members were, who my friends were, and my basic interests. But who was I really? I didn't know, and it pissed me off. I was somewhere between being a little kid and being an adult and I knew that I was different from everyone else on the planet but how different? And in what ways? Everyone is different to some extent. How was I an individual?

I have no idea when I answered that question for myself, but it set in about a couple months ago. I was having a conversation with someone and they asked me a question. It was one of those "Really?" questions like "Are you really going to do that?" or "Is that really how you [verb]?" One of those questions in which the answer may or may not be used against you later on in life. And at that moment I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin and said, "Of course. I'm Susan Peevy. What do you think?"

So there I was. Finally an individual. I had a personality, a character, one of the many players in the game of life. It continued from there. "Why are you even asking me this? I mean, who do you think you're talking to?" I was developing, finding myself, pulling out scraps of memories and stashing them in a box labeled "Experiences".

I know who I am now. But when did I first begin knowing? Was it a while ago? Was it at that moment when I first used my own personality as an excuse?

And is it possible to change your personality once you've found it?

Not that I'd want to. I mean, I'm Susan Peevy. I don't change that easily.

(Isn't it amazing that I'm able to say that?)

Kick Ass

As I promised, here's a post about someone else. Well, technically it's about multiple people.

I have a fairly small family. I don't know a lot of relatives, and I don't like even more of them. But I've got my siblings and my parents and I don't need anything else. See, my family is really awesome. I've got my two brothers (one of whom is an in-law) who are both masters on an X Box, my sister who is a MAC pro, my blind father that manages to shock those that he meets with his brilliance, and my mom who makes friends at bus stops because everyone loves her, even if she doesn't love herself.

Nearly every Sunday, we all get together at somebody's house and have "family night". Generally my siblings will tease me mercilessly and poke fun at everything I do, though I don't mind it. I grew up around that, y'know? My mom'll sit in her chair and my dad'll sit in his and everyone will just sit around eating whatever dinner has been prepared and cracking jokes.

We even have family songs. There's "Tubthumping" by Chumbawumba that inspires the will to keep going and the desire to blast music in the car while driving down the freeway with the windows rolled down. There's also "Baba O'Riley" by the Who (most people think the song is called "Teenage Wasteland" when it isn't) which is about hard work and earning the goddamn right to live.

Everytime someone comes over to my house on family night, they generally end up either completely shocked at the way we do things...or they can't stop laughing. We do that to people. They either stand in the doorway with dazed expressions on their faces or they just grin and grin.

We're the Peevy family. We're Irish. We're hilarious. We're hard working and we totally kick ass.

Unwritten

When I was little I was tested twice for the GATE program, which focuses on those who are part of a sect of intelligence that are able to solve puzzles. I passed both times, the second time shocking my school into submission because they hadn't gotten the records saying that I had already taken the test before.

"Oh, I guess she really is a GATE student." Ya think?

So anyways. My parents expected for me to grow up at become a scientist, a doctor, an engineer, something like that. Maybe even a Mathematician, though I've never quite had the patience for all of those equations. Instead, I began devoting my life to the arts. From the age of eight I've played the piano (even though I can't really read music sheets), I've been writing stories since I was six, I've been writing poetry since sixth grade, and occasionally I draw something that looks right. For years my parents tried to persuade me to follow the path of the engineer because they wanted me to make a lot of money, but I wouldn't have it so eventually they just gave up.

So here I am now, in ninth grade, constantly improving my skills in art and possibly reaching out to the path of the Psychologist. Why is it that I, a puzzle solver, would rather write about all the different ways the light may glint off a bowl made of glass instead of figuring out how the wooden table underneath it was constructed?

Sometimes I really just don't understand life.

Also, it has occurred to me that so far on this blog I've only talked about myself. The next post I make will be about someone else, I can promise that.

I'm Only Sleeping

If there's one thing about my personality that is very important to know, it's that I am addicted to sleep. Yes, I'm also addicted to chocolate, but I love sleep a lot more. As in, I hit the snooze button five or six times every morning because I love sleep so much. And I don't even have a comfortable bed!

I don't know if it's because of this love of sleep or something else but I've always been really interested in dreams. In fact, in second grade I went with my mom to the bookstore and instead of asking to buy a book about Curious George or any of those kids books, I asked for the first few books of the Cirque du Freak series...and a book about the meanings of dreams. Of course, I don't know how accurate the book is. In fact, I'm sure that it's fairly inaccurate. But it's still very interesting.

Anyways, recently I've been talking to a lot of people (mostly my English teacher) about dreams, dream patterns, and lucid dreaming. So my current quest is to somehow document every dream every morning (which has thus far proved to take away from my sleeping time since hitting the snooze button will actually make me forget my dream). Yeah, I've got that taken care of. Got a voice recorder on my phone. It's great.

So far my dreams have been about houses and finances. Oh, and dogs. Adorable dogs. Who turn into clay, like those Wallace and Gromit cartoons. And in my dream I was like, "Yeah, okay, that's natural." And then I woke up and I was like, "That is not natural."

Find My Love

For some reason, all of my classmates (apart from a select few) seem to think that romance is currency. Hugs and kisses are tossed this way and that and declarations of true love are written on the backs of crumpled assignments. And if people aren't already deeply and madly in love, they're jumping into any and all relationships, desperate for some kind of commitment. I must admit that even I long for some kind of boyfriend or girlfriend, though I'm not grasping at straws to get one.

It became clear to me the other day when I was reading a novel, actually, built for teens my age. The protagonist is a bit of a Mary Sue, really, and by the second book she's had two boyfriends (a human and a vampire fledgling) and she's lost her v-card to a vampire professor. She falls in love in a matter of minutes and decides that yet another boy is her soul mate after knowing him for all of a couple hours. It's ridiculous.

Of course, while reading this addicting paper soap opera, I couldn't help but compare it to my own writing. In the novel that I'm writing, the protagonist does not simply fall in and out of love with multiple people. Having a young and ignorant mind, she lets herself be seduced in the beginning, but she understands that she does not love him. Her real mate is introduced later on, but romance comes slowly, building up as the book progresses.

Which brings me back to my earlier topic: my classmates. They seem to think along the lines of the other author I was speaking of, that love is something they can just manifest out of thin air where and when they happen to feel like it. They don't understand that romance is not something tangible, not something that can just be bought at the local supermarket or the corner liquor store. Love is like a house—it takes a long time to build.

Let Me Introduce Myself

I was going to write something about how I love new beginnings when they belong to someone else, because beginnings always sound awkward when I write them. Maybe it's because I'm a teenager—we're generally awkward in all aspects, stumbling our ways through school and puberty. Or maybe it's just something I've been cursed with, one of the many distinct flaws I always notice in my blog posts or short stories.

So why don't I start by introducing myself? My name (the one I was born with legally, that is) is Susan Peevy. I like my name. I won't go into depths about where the different parts came from (I've done that before and it took too much time for my liking). My favorite color is purple. I write short stories, poetry, and blog posts galore. I'm also in the middle of writing a novel, which I may or may not share info about on here. I watch crime shows with my parents and play video games with my brothers (well technically one of them is an in-law but I've known him for years so screw that), as well as occasionally indulge in letting my sister make my face pretty. I have problems getting along with other people my age.

As introductions go, I'm pretty sure this one was crappy, but I'm sure my parents would be thrilled if I went into any more detail. [/end sarcasm]

Anyways. My main reason for creating this thing (be it a sweet, sweet child or a horrendous monstrosity) was that I wanted something that wouldn't be clogged up with school assignments and pieces of writing that I barely managed to vomit onto the paper. (I bet I seem like the pleasant type, eh?)

Hopefully something good will come of this, something I can print out and store in a box and take out years from now to wave under peoples' noses exclaiming, "See? See? I didn't just waste my teenage years away!"

At least, not completely.