Welcome to America, please hand over your hope and sanity at the door

When I was little (third grade, to be exact; I wrote it down), my favorite movie was 1776, the absolutely fantabulous musical about signing the Declaration of Independence. Also, I like living in America. There are few places that I would consider living other than right here. This is my home, I admit that.
However, I don't know the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm seventeen, a senior in a public high school in a good suburban neighborhood, and yet it's true I don't know the Pledge of Allegiance. Does this make me unpatriotic?
In America, we're supposed to celebrate the Fourth of July with outdoor barbeques and parties, it's a day during which American children around the country should be waving around those cheap little flags and adults around the country should be proceeding to get drunk on good old American beer. Then the whole of America should be lining themselves up on sidewalks and in parks to watch the fireworks spectacles that pollute our skies. I missed the fireworks entirely last year, and there's a good chance that I wasn't wearing red, white, or blue. Does that make me unpatriotic?
The Star Spangled Banner was the very first song that I was taught how to play on the french horn in my middle school band class, and I played it with very few mistakes during every concert following. Yet the song bored me to death and ever time we played it all I would think was that I wanted to get it over with so that we could get on to the real exciting music. Does that make me unpatriotic?

Well to be honest, I feel a whole lot more patriotic than most of the country right now. Why? Because I look forward to my future.
Americans today are still slowly recovering from an economic meltdown, which I am reminded of every time I read Time magazine, or read a newspaper, or take notes in my Psychology class. Trust me, it's been drilled into my head so deep that I'll be thinking that we're still recovering from that same meltdown when I'm 80. I've got sympathy for my fellow Americans out there that are having a hard time, finding it near impossible to get by. I know the economy could take a decade or more to fix, and I know that our jobs crisis is a very real one. I know that our banks could still fail, that our economy could crash again, that my parents could lose their jobs and I could lose the standard of living to which I've become accustomed. It seems that I've grown up in an America where everyone's been telling me that it's my generation that's gonna suffer, that's gonna have to clean up the mess of the economy, the environment, the whole freakin' world. I've been given more than fair warning about the troubles that lie ahead, we all have.
But the thing is, I have in my possession one crucial feature that all you so-called patriotic Americans don't. I have hope. Why does everyone seem to forget that America has gone through the Great Depression? That it's survived countless wars, even those against its own people? We, as Americans, are stronger than we know. I know this, and I know that although things can always get worse, I also know that things can always get better. I know that I can persevere through whatever is thrown at me and come out better on the other side. Do you know what happens when you lose your job? You look for a new one. You learn to live below your current means. Americans should be resilient. I hope to be resilient, and I know I am I fighter. I hope for a brighter America and I am willing to work my way there. We have not lost the fight until we have lost everything. And we have not lost everything. Not by a long shot.

Organization

What exactly is it? About organization and cleanliness, I mean. When I was little, I was always a mess; no one could get through my room without injuring themselves, the livingroom would be covered with my toys until Dad made me pick them up, and the library (aka my art room) was just a pile of my art supplies, because whenever I would draw something new or get new supplies, I would just dump them on the pile of stuff on that little wooden desk when I was done with whatever it was (or when Dad told me that it had to be out of the livingroom before I went to bed). My schoolwork, even, was a mess! I never cleaned out any of my folders, so there would be papers in the back from the first day of school! Or when we has place mats on elementary school, I would have so much artwork stuffed under them that the place mat would literally be an inch off of the table. I was always a disorganized mess.
So, whatever changed in me, is it normal? I'm organized now beyond belief, I have compartments and folders and drawers for every little thing, even for those things which I don't have yet! I cant stand having a messy floor in my room, and every week I go through my school folders to see what stuff I can take out and recycle. Does everyone go through this change? Is it just a fad that will fade with time? Am I going to go totally nuts in eight months when I get a roommate who may or may not be as clean as I? I know some people will always be a mess, and until just recently I figured I was going to be one of them, yet here I am with my nonfiction in a separate bookcase from my fiction, and my manga organized by genre. Was I always going to end up this way? Or was is a conscious change I made at one point?

Reinvention

What does it take to reinvent yourself?

I don't know if that's really what I'm trying to do - reinventing myself, I mean. But I just don't really like the way that I've felt portrayed lately. I've felt messy, disorganized, a little childish. But I want to mature a little. Get my act together, organize all those references of myself that are out there, improve all those long-outdated accounts of mine that I have had once upon a time.
The first thing I've done is to get my school work organized. I know my due dates now, I've always got my homework in order, my due dates written out in a convenient location where I can easily locate them and cross them off with a satisfied smile when they're done with. So my school work, at least at the moment, is a check.
The next thing I've done is to organize my room. It's clean, even my mom admits it now. I've got a place for everything, and everything is either in its place or hidden in my closet (a work in progress). It's not perfect - I still have a completely empty bookshelf that I don't know what to do with, and a couple other shelves that I don't really feel like as if they're organized to my satisfaction. but it's clean and I'm keeping it that way, it's organized too, I can tell you where to find almost anything in my room (with the exception of my buckeye merchandise apparently).
Now, the next part of this reinvention, or reimaging, or whatever you would like to call it, is organizing my internet sites. My blogs, my accounts, my artwork, whatever. Now, I'm not really sure how to efficiently do this, so I'm going to do it through this blog. So congrats, you guys get to learn more about me than you ever wanted to know. I'm going to start this process by listing all of my accounts here, and going from there to update and remodel them.

TheHeadOnCollision on Blogspot
Collision Quotations on Blogspot
Earthangel Nathaniel on Blogspot
Chikurika on Livejournal
TheHeadOnCollision on DeviantART
TheHeadOnCollision on Free Rice
Rhulaine on Fuzz Academy
StableGirl13 on GaiaOnline
Rhulaine on Neopets

I Like to Think That This is the Twenty Second Century

In approximately one month minus eight days plus however many seconds you care in which the answer is November first, there will be quite a joyous celebration. Joyous and frantic that is. Why? Because November first shall be the first day of NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. This will be my third year (at least) competing, and perhaps this year I may even get close to finishing what I started!
I've gotten a better start already this year than I have in the past; I have discovered the joys of an outline. Now, let's not mistake ourselves and believe that my outline is at all organized or readable, but the important thing is that it's purple, and so far it fits all on one page. Also it's illegible, but I think that may fall in the "negatives" category.
I haven't actually decided if this story will be prepared enough to be my official nanowrimo novel, but here's hoping. If not, of course, I'll have plenty of back ups, but I feel good about this. This may, for once in my life, go somewhere. Wish me luck.
I'm organizing everything into my EarthAngel Nathaniel blog, so check there to see what's happening with that, and where it's going. I promise nothing, as always, for I am less than reliable in anything pertaining to deadlines, or even finishing anything. But there's hope. There's always hope.

Oh, and the twenty first century is gone. We're in the twenty second century now. How else can you explain how amazing photoshop is?

I Just Wanna Update This

So it's 10:25 at night and I should be asleep, or at least in the process of getting a shower, you know? But I'm not. Hopefully I will be soon, but I really feel like I wanna blog something of some kind, so here I am! I shall make it fast!

I always wonder what it would feel like to be professional. To be one of those people that knows that you're being watched, that what you say is actually getting through to someone out there. It must be an incredible thought, to know that your opinion matters, even if it is just to a select few. To be one of those people that's good enough at acting like you have it all together that people actually believe your little act, maybe even to the point where you start to believe it as well. Yes, I'd love to be a professional, but my life is just too full of that familiar, comforting chaos to get anywhere past the opening scene of becoming an expert at anything other than my own thoughts. No, even that is too complex and unintelligible for anyone but our own creator to really understand. Ah well. Better luck next time.