God, I’m exhausted. I just came back from covering the candidates’ debate with my mentor.
If there’s anything I learned from this mentorship so far, it’s that you should always come at least twenty minutes early to any event you’re going to. Even if you don’t expect a lot of people to be there, you want to make sure that you get first pick when it comes to seating arrangements, or else you’ll be standing up for during the whole two-hour event, taking notes while surrounded by people who you can’t help but feel are looming over your shoulder. When you’re dressed to impress, with a notebook in hand and pencil behind your ear, of course they’re going to know that you’re for a newspaper – people move in closer and can’t help but take a few glances at your notes. One of my biggest pet peeves (and I have a lot of pet peeves anyway, so this is probably irrelevant) is when people look over my shoulder and glance down at what I’m writing.
So that was me – I arrived with ten minutes to spare before the debate began, and my mentor hadn’t managed to snag a seat. I still don’t know if that was because he was waiting for me or because he didn’t think of it – but it was probably my fault, looking back. He made no note of it and was glad to see me, and we loomed in the back of the church, memo pad in hand, ready to take notes. Granted, I don’t know if I’ve got this whole note taking thing down yet – I just write down what facts might seems important, in a sort of chicken-scratch scrawl that might seem perfectly readable to me at the time, but when I go back to look at it, I cringe and wonder just how uncomfortable I had to be to write so atrociously. Meanwhile, while we’re standing (for two hours, may I remind you) the building is positively packed – and that would be fun, except for the fact that so many people smelled of cigarette smoke.
In a
previous blog post, I told you that I’d never turn my parents in if they happened to be smokers and happened to smoke pot. Now, I’m telling you that I definitely would, because my body just cannot handle the intensity of so much smoke in one building. It only took an hour in the debate for my lungs to get heavy, and I started wondering if I should’ve brought my inhaler – I’ve never had an attack, but for a few moments back there, I was genuinely scared that if my knee didn’t give out on me, that I’d start having an attack and just start convulsing on the floor. To make matters word, an eccentric old timer was standing behind me most of the time, and he was probably the smokiest of them all. It wasn’t even just cigarette smoke, but it was this indescribable foul odor, like… fermented rabbit and dog droppings, left out in the sun to stew. It was unbelievably bad, and to be honest, I’m not sure how I made it through the debate at all.
But despite all of that, I can tell you wholeheartedly that the debate was really interesting and intense! It was probably the first debate I’ve ever been to, but, hell, all the issues they were discussing, I was amazed that I actually got what was going on, that I understood all the things they were talking about. Rhode Island’s in a bad state – everyone knows that, you don’t need to be a politician to know that – but did you know that we’re the 49th worst state to run a business? That we’re probably the most liberal state, because we’re so slack with who qualifies for unemployment and who doesn’t? Did you know that our current school committee head doesn’t even know the graduation requirements for seniors?
It was outstanding, really. There was some mudslingers, really inspirational speeches, heated debates over certain expansion projects that a lot of people don’t agree with… I didn’t think I’d like it at all, but to be honest, I enjoyed being able to go and seeing just what exactly is going on with our state. Yesterday, I looked in the mirror and said, “Am I really cut out for this?” Right now, I’m thinking the answer is yes – yes, I really think I am.
But that doesn’t change how tired I am. God, and I might be going out again tomorrow!
Earlier today, I was thinking about making a prompt community that would solace focus on original writing. I haven’t noticed until very recently that Dreamwidth is positively packed with fandom community, and there are very little places that cater to original writers. Yes, I know there are some – but there need to be more, I think. Problem is, while I have a good idea for an original writing prompt community, I’m not sure if I’d have the drive, dedication, and time to run it. Would it be so much work, though? I’m not sure. I’ll be thinking it over this week, but it would really be interesting to have a group of people who loved writing original pieces, and not so much fanfiction. And I’ve nothing against fanfiction, but I’m just not a big fandom person. Okay, that’s a lie – a part of me really likes certain fandoms, like Kingdom Hearts (god, I’m such a big Kingdom Hearts fan, I won’t deny that) but writers who primarily don’t write fandom need to be represented more around DW! Maybe I’ll make one, I don’t know. I’d need to think more about it, definitely, especially since I have so much going on with school. If I were to make one, it’d probably be after senior project’s over and done with.
Also, while I’m not taking part in NaNoWriMo (I’m working on editing my rough draft of Pridea instead) I’ll probably be taking part in
NaBloPoMo – or National Blog Posting Month. The jist of it is to basically post a blog entry every day for a month. Pretty simple, I think – plus, I had wanted to do something like that anyway for October, but I had been iffy about whether not I should move over to DW or stay on Blogger. Since I’m definitely staying here on DW, why not participate in NaBloPoMo? Might as well start breaking in this new blog as much as I can!
I’m off – to brush my teeth, to brush my hair, to go to bed.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
