Updates

Another quarter has ended at UCR. It was rather hectic, in the sense that I made it rather hectic. I tend to assume the metaphorical, and sometimes literal, fetal position every time I have to work on a homework assignment (see: procrastination). Sure, I destroy the opportunity to work comfortably, but I'll still do the job - once I'm sufficiently worried about passing the class.

It's like I want to see how much I can screw myself over before I finally get to work. Some people call it a fear of failure. A really smart professor had called it the fear of success. Either way, I've kept myself so busy from anxiety that I couldn't write here. Yet, I wonder how much I would write, even without the anxiety of school...

At any rate, here is a list of highlights:

• Had a couple of English classes last quarter which practically beat a habit of reading into me. I read every day now. However, I think I'll shorten my leisure reading to twenty-five or fifty pages a day, instead of the one-hundred and fifty pages a night I had to read for class.


• I can safely say that my writing has improved from a summer of reading and practice, along with last quarter's readings and practice, to the point that:
  
  
  • I wrote a story that seems to have the potential to be published.
  
  
  • I wrote a story that seems to be publishable as is.
  
  
• Oh yeah, I moved to Riverside. Life has been more tolerable ever since.

A teacher suggested that I send one of my stories to a specific venue. I'm not sure if I should send it there, as I have read some of their stories and I think that my story would be a downer for them. I have doubts. Then again, I always have doubts.