Jon Furniss

It was somewhere around the time that people started to tell me that I was good at writing that I got scared of it. Once people have expectations you can fail to meet them. I was okay with writing and trying and putting the passion I feel into words before people told me I was good at it. But once people started complimenting me I became utterly afraid of failing. I’ve never seen my writing as anything special, so I was always afraid that people would start to realize that and get let down when they see me writing. Or else maybe they would think that I was all cocky and thought I was good at writing even though I’m not. I don’t really know.

I think that’s the real reason I changed my major. It isn’t because I really hate writing papers. I’m just too scared to try hard, and fail. If I didn’t try on my papers and I got like a B or a B- I was perfectly alright, because hey, I could’ve tried and done better. But if I try and don’t do as well as I expect, then I’m all like, “hey, I’m a failure.” And I don’t like failing.

But writing isn’t always right. No one gets it right all of the time. I need to be able to keep that in my mind and be more than just able to say it. I also need to remind myself that I can still change my writing after it’s already been written and that that is actually common practice and encouraged. I always seem to have trouble going back and proofreading and editing for whatever reason.

The point of all this is? I want to start writing again. I don’t know what I want to write. But I want to write something. I need to write something.

• Ever since I started working at an underwear / lingerie store, I’ve been thinking about boobs a lot. I’m usually very quiet and reserved, and I find it quite liberating to be able to brazenly ask a complete stranger what her cup size is. One of my co-workers insists that I’ll eventually be able to discern a woman’s exact breast size just by looking at her. Neat party trick.
• I need to become more active again. I think about wheelchair basketball players, and one-legged marathon runners, and that guy at art school who broke his leg and used his skateboard with his crutches, and I suddenly feel compelled to go out there and somehow utilize my youth and agility and healthy appendages to their full 21-year-old potential. Pole-dancing, anyone?
• I’m pretty sure I want to be cremated. I read about a body that had to be exhumed, and when it was exposed, an extremely foul and toxic odor escaped into the air and killed whoever opened the casket. I wouldn’t want to do that to anybody.
• A portion of my extended family left this evening to go visit the Philippines for a few weeks. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I’ve set foot on the motherland. I need to start saving up.
• Sometimes I wonder if I’d be a good lesbian lover. Particularly, sexually.
• My most recurring dreams / nightmares involve me being pregnant, getting into a car accident, or somehow screwing up in school.
• Existence. Has. Been. Hard. I am at a point where I feel like I am finally recovering from a terrible, terrible chapter in my life, like having been trampled by a herd of wildebeests, dragged up a tree by a leopard, and then sodomized by a rhinoceros. Time heals all things though, right?
• I need to start shopping for Mother’s Day. I want to surprise my Mommy with something awesome and impractical and unconventional and borderline useless but still really cool. Her bedroom is pretty dimly lit, and instead of garden-variety incandescent lighting, I thought maybe she should just hang this on her wall.

- Joyceline

(Not edited at all from it’s 8am sleepiness)

I am drifting… in and out, in and out, as if my conciousness was the ocean at low tide, quietly lapping at the sand. The seagulls lazily glide around in the sunrise, gently soaring through the sunrise, seemingly mocking me and my lack of sleep. In the background of my mind, or perhaps the foreground and I’m just in the background, my math professor rambles all old-man-like, because he is an old man.

Yawn…

In real life right now, everything is blurry. Blurry rhymes with furry. I like bunnies. I think I skipped a step in that string of word associations. Funnies are blurry… That’s it, or something.

I want to be famous, like a rockstar or actor or politician. And then I want to screw up and not apologize to the world or my fans. I’ll punch paparazzi only if they deserve it. But so help me God, when they deserve it they’re going to get it.

Trying not to fall asleep… How do they expect us not to sleep through this stuff? I mean honestly, I know that I’m lazy and often too tired, but professors should be more exciting or stimulating or whatever.

Right now I’m only thinking with three brain cells, so it’s all good…

Goodnight…