Dorienne's Log

**Sigh***
Finally! Back where I belong and everything’s falling into place. For the first time in months, my outlook does not look so bleak. I’m doing what I should be doing and at the end of this quarter, I’ll be taking a long-awaited and long-deserved break. Of course, I’ll still be working, but at least I won’t be working and in school at the same time for a week.

I feel like this over-bearing weight is every-so-lightly lifting off my shoulders day by day, and I really do think that everything will be all right. I attribute 90% of this to going to church this week and making it to Sunday School on time. Everyone was so surprised to see me there, not racing in just before consecration. I start teaching on my own this Sunday and I’m really excited about it. I hope it’s not boring for everybody. I suppose if it doesn’t work out, they’ll either move me somewhere else or fire me altogether, but I’m hoping I don’t let anyone down on this. There’s a Wednesday night service tomorrow and I really can’t wait. I’m half mad since I didn’t get to put my tithes in on Sunday because I completely forgot about it. Usually I just have Mother throw it in for me, but she was busy with her own things and wasn’t there. I’ll have to find someone I trust to put it in on days when she can’t be there.

The written word is in the air and it’s loving me! I’ve been writing everyday and I feel like the well of words just keeps flowing. I’ve never been this in tune with a piece before. I feel like since I’ve completely laid out the plot, writing the details is all the more exciting. I love looking back on my old work and see how I’ve progressed as a writer. I wish this book was 100% my original with all my own characters and such, but all I can keep saying to myself is that this is just my way of proving to myself that I can write; that I can create and stay on target. God Lord! The day I actually finish it, I’ll be singing from the rooftops. I sort of want to delve into some of my other works, but I know I mustn’t. I must stick to this and finish it out; must keep the ADHD at bay! It’s what always kills me in the end. I finally have an idea on what must be done with A Ten-Minute Speech and I’m so excited to start, really start, writing the Luka books, I could just burst into flame. It’s all I want to do and all I want to think about. Sometime last week I found myself daydreaming about my own characters. My characters! That never happens and I keep wondering what it really means. With this fanfic novel, I’ve finally conquered my PC-writing demons. For years, I haven’t been able to writing creatively on a computer, forcing me write everything longhand and spend the next year deciphering my longhand as I type the entire thing. It’s a good thing that I’ve learned this now, because I’ve realized I have the tendency to be quite verbose. I’ve only just finished the first chapter of Flight and the book’s 10,928 words and 20 M$ Word pages. I’m wondering just how long it’ll take me to break my goal of 100K. The first chapter’s just on one day and there’s nineteen days in the first part of the book. I doubt every day will be 11K long, but still…my writing just gets flowery and I while I try my hardest not to ramble, I can’t help but delve into the characters a bit more. I don’t want to just write an episode; I want to create something unique that reads like an actual book and could be taken seriously, were it not actually fanfiction.

So, Dreamgirls…Yay! Jennifer Hudson won her Oscar and I feel oddly proud of her. I guess I just love seeing black women win Oscars, but anyway I’m horribly addicted to the Dreamgirls’ soundtrack. Of course, I’m playing One Night Only to death, but honestly, it’s the reason I bought the darn CD and I’m going to play it until my iPod breaks. I’m also slowly beginning to fall for Beyonce’s Listen, which I really don’t think was worthy of the Oscar nod, but whatever. One Night Only (Hudson’s version, of course), was a far better song, but maybe that’s just me. I’m probably not the most objective person to consider the two songs since One Night Only is currently stuck in my head, but so on and so forth…Obsessions: just the writing and One Night Only. SVU’s even starting to subside, but I think it may have more to do with my not wanting to be unduly influenced by the show as I write. I still need like a crackhead, but I missed last week’s new episode and I haven’t had a break down…yet. Thank goodness for USA network. Keeping SVU fanatics in good health, around the globe.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #2
I’ve been a full-fledged vegetarian now for more than a week and the Wendy’s #6 Spicy Chicken cravings have subsided substantially. I spoke with another vegetarian in one of my classes and she told me I’d probably start feeling weak after a bit, but I’ll stick it out a bit longer before taking a multi-vitamin, especially after that nonsense on the BBC news about vitamins actually shaving off the years instead of adding to them. Oh well. I suppose we’ll all go when we do. But, I’m really enjoying this not-eating-meat thing. Tonight, I made a grilled cheese sandwich with olive oil instead of butter. I’m well on my way to becoming a vegan…except for the fact that I love cheese and yogurt and would sooner cut of my own foot and feed it to my enemies than give up cheese and yogurt. But, the point is, I’m not eating any meat. I wish I could say that I give a crap about cows and pigs and such, but I honestly can’t make myself really care about animals. I just don’t want to like the taste of them anymore and I want to just live healthier. I just can’t see any positives to eating meat, especially since I read something about average humans eating something like six times the amount of animal meat we need to survive. That just seems utterly crazy to me.
Anyway, I haven’t lost any weight to this vegetarian diet, but that’s probably due to the fact that I polished off this entire macaroni and cheese dish by myself as I practiced for the pot luck we’re having at work this Friday. It’ll be Dorienne’s time to shine! I also randomly made a bunch of cookies and frosted them myself. I don’t know where the crazy cravings come from, but they are bizarre. But, cheers to me for not even wanting to eat any meat! And a special cheers to me for at least trying to get back on eating like a normal person should…

Not much has happened in the past week: my step-brother got married, and that was kind of nice, especially since they have two kids together, but the fact is they did get married. The reception was nice though because I got to spend some time with my step-sibs and cousins and it’s always nice to hang out with a bunch of people my own age for a while. I had a little to drink at the reception, but between the ride home with my parents and the sobering conversation I later had with my mother, all was well for the drive home.

Classes are wrapping up, but I feel no closer to achieving anything, so of course it’s time to set some deadlines/goals for myself.
1) Finish A Ten-Minute Speech by 26 September 2006
– this one is not important in the present, but it could mean the difference between doing what I want to do with my life and doing what I have to do just to make ends meet. Not to mention that this is way overdue. I first put pen(cil) to paper for this thing when I was eleven years old, and eleven years later I still don’t have it completed. NO book should take that long. I’ve “finished” it a couple of times, but it’s never truly been complete. It’s not just the act of completing the book by this deadline, it’s the act of completing something in total. I can’t remember the last time I actually successfully completed anything save for a sentence I was speaking. My birthday marks the beginning of my adult years, and if I can’t complete SOMETHING by the beginning of my adulthood, I might as well stop now. If I can’t finish this book, I have no business even pretending like I want to begin writing others.

2) Get an A in my 139 class.
– There’s no excuse for me not getting an A in this class, and at this point I think I simply need it for my psyche. It’s like, if I could just get the ball rolling, then everything would fall into place.

3) Lose ten pounds by my birthday.
– I’ve been trying to lose this weight since I started to gain and now that I’ve got nearly 100 lbs to get off of me, things are starting to look dire. I went shopping with my mother yesterday, I just looking at myself in the dressing room mirror, made me slightly naseous. I remember when not too long ago, I would have looked at someone who looked like me and giggled to myself wondering how anyone could ever let it get so bad. I guess I had never counted on depression weighing in on the subject. Get it, weighing in….Anyway, a month is MORE than enough time to drop ten pounds. It’s the same old, same old: eat right and exercise, but the when and where causes the issues.

4) No more McDonald’s breakfast. Period.
– If I’m ever going to make a dent in #3, this is a must. I must give up McDonald’s breakfast forever. Given that it was the only thing I ever ate there, I think I just have to go with edict that I just can’t eat at McDonald’s ever again. Probably not ever again, but at least until my birthday in ’07. There’s not nutritional value from it and really it’s not even that satisfying. Feeling the grease and fat from an Egg McMuffin or a hash brown, makes me feel my heart actually congealing. I don’t want to put myself in a position where I could have a heart attack 20-25 years before that should even be a concern. I can do better. I will do better. I guess this isn’t so much a quitting McDonald’s idea as a living a better, healthier life.

5) Read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
– I started this goal a few years ago, and got wholly bogged down by the pages and pages of “begets,” but I think that all Christians should read the whole thing from beginning to end (literally). Even if I don’t understand all of it, even if it does contradict itself, even if it inevitably makes me question my faith in the end, I’ve got until 26 September 2007 to get this goal accomplished. I’ve even got a Bible-reading guide. There’s no reason to get this one done.

…and the little things before the end of this year:
a) Finish my The X-Files website
b) Recode my Calvin and Hobbes website
c) Get an A in Ochem
d) Do Something Great

…time to go a-complishing.