Honey-Badgering

Writer problems: I have a 250-word discussion post due in class, and I wrote 764 words.

I managed to pare it down to 534, but I can't take off any more without having to do some serious butchering. My teacher doesn't seem to mind when I get wordy, but my classmates probably hate me. They all stay within the two paragraph average and my posts stick out like a wall of text among tweets.

I don't care, comparing Troy Maxson (Fences) to Don Draper (Mad Men) was awesome and I'm totally getting an A on this one.

I got a few more videos captioned last week, but I'm still way behind, and today is another deadline, so let's see if they'll meet this one. I'm so lucky my teacher is being flexible, I would be tearing my hair out over this otherwise. I'm sure they're all sick of seeing my name pop up in their in-boxes, but if I wasn't harassing people, I don't think I would have gotten as far.

To keep myself from falling behind while I fall behind, I'm working ahead. I'm keeping myself about one week ahead of my class, at least with whatever assignments aren't dependent on having captioned video. I wish I was further along in my final project, but I'll be doing major research this weekend when I join a volunteer group to help clean a beach. I'm going to interview people and take pictures while I pick up trash, then I plan to write about my experience and do a bunch of internet research to back up my findings. BOOM.

I get a lot of pleasure out of being a honey badger, a bulldog, a tenacious, tough, resilient human being. I like these challenges I've got to face, and how I know I'm going to knock them all down, one by one. I relish the moment a class ends, and I can look back on my success, but no more than the first day of a new class, when it's all new and confusing and ripe for the conquering. And even right now, being in the middle of a quarter of chaos, I'm so in love with this class and my teacher and writing, that I could cry.

When an essay really starts to come together, I experience the most wonderful moments of peace, of flow, of oneness, of joy, it's the most addicting feeling of completeness, I don't know how I ever let myself stop writing. I get a similar feeling while taking and editing photos, maybe creativity breeds endorphins. I still have a niggling fear in my heart that I'll never make anything of myself as a writer, but I know that's just negative self-talk, and won't do anybody any good.

I've decided to take a summer course, which is a brave move for me because the heat makes everything a million times worse, but it's a basic health class, which I expect to be on the easier side. The really good news is, the video content for this class is allegedly already captioned, so I shouldn't have to go through all of these shenanigans during the shorter summer quarter.

Hope springs eternal.

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