"Falling"

As a freshman and sophomore, I went through a season in my life where I really struggled with a lot of things and I would write poetry to express my feelings. It was an outlet and it helped me process my emotions. I didn't realize how messed up I was then until I went back and read it after I had come out on the other side of that season. I wrote a lot, but after that time, I abandoned it.

My poetry is probably the rawest writing I have. It's just pure feeling strung into metaphors and imagery. I have some worship poetry too, and that arose out of times when I felt intense praise and love for God. As such, it's pretty personal but also powerful. Yesterday, I had a rough moment and the words just came to me. That's another aspect of my poetry: it just flows out, unlike a novel, where you have to worry about character arcs and plot twists.

Just as a disclaimer, my poetry does not rhyme and I don't worry about technical aspects most of the time because like I said above, it's raw expression of my feelings. But I'm super excited to share some of my writing with you and I hope you enjoy it!

"Falling"

My hand is slipping
From the ledge above
My fingers scrape the edge
The ground is far away

I let go
And I am falling
Falling, falling

Air rushes by
Scenes blur past
Sound has gone
I am left alone to spin

The ground opens up
It will receive me
I will never return

A flutter of wings
A touch of warmth
A glow of delivery

Angels carry me up
They set me down
My feet turn away
The ledge is behind

I am free

~Clarissa

Productivity

First off, I must apologize for not posting in awhile. I really wish I could post twice a week (#goals), but I don't see that happening in the near future. I know, I'm lazy. Anyway.

This post was inspired by the fact that I had a super productive weekend. I mean, it was really productive. I haven't felt that accomplished in a long time, and let me tell you it was an amazing. My body is tensing with excitement just thinking about it.

Now, I don't know about you, but I LOVE lists. I have so many random ones and half of the ones that I do aren't even necessary. There's just something great to me about them. I don't know why. So, although you probably don't care, I'm going to give you a list of what I completed this weekend.

1. All my chores (my least favorite thing, but the most necessary)
2. I made up a Google form and sent it to all 30 of my senior classmates. That required copying all their email addresses down. Kinda fun, cuz I like forms too. I know, I'm so weird.
3. I typed up my senior bio for the yearbook and got my mom to sign off for it. Then I sent it in.
*side note I got a checklist for my senior year and that made me so happy. I GET TO CHECK STUFF OFF. I love doing that!
4. Typed up some eblasts to send out for senior deadlines. As secretary of CHEFA's senior leadership team, I am responsible for sending out all the eblasts for senior stuff.
5. I completed my future plans form for the graduation program. I just turned it in today, so I can check that off!
This last thing surprised me. I agreed to go out shopping with my mom at 3pm. I am a homebody, and I don't like going out very much. Also, I was kinda tired. But I went out!
6. I bought my black tri-fold board for my senior board.
(All this stuff was on Saturday)
7. And finally, I bought my banquet dress yesterday. I still might look around some more, but I really like this one. Maybe you'll get some pictures of me after banquet in March. :)

Ok, I just realized that my list took up wayyy too much of this post, but oh well.

Now, the most important point about all this weekend is that I actually felt like doing everything. I had fun doing it. I wanted to do it. That is a pretty amazing thing because I struggle with productivity. I often don't have motivation for doing things. I go through phases. Sometimes it's intense, where I have to fight apathy and lethargy and other times it's pretty easy to overcome just not wanting to do something. If I'm honest, I am rather weak about stuff. If I don't feel like it, most of the time I don't do it. I do recognize it, however, and I'm working on correcting it.

Productivity is a product of your will. Your want and drive to do something results in something being accomplished. Life isn't filled with stuff that is easy to do or stuff that we are excited to do. But this weekend taught me something. The accomplishment of completing a lot of tasks is a rather awesome high. Even if you don't anticipate it and feel great while you're doing it like I did, you can know that you will have a sense of pride and accomplishment over your work, and then you will make it through the days where you don't want to be productive.

As a last note, sometimes we need a break. Everyone does. Don't push yourself to the breaking point. You will be more productive if you know when you need to take a breather.

~Clarissa

My YouTube Aspirations

Ever since I posted my first video on YouTube for a school assignment, I've entertained dreams of posting videos and having a full channel. At first, I dismissed it as becoming reality because I had no idea what to post about. Now, I have a few ideas, but the dream still refuses to look realistic. My ideas are these:

1. Song covers
2. Dance videos
3. Performance sign language videos

The problems with making this happen are many. The first is that I lack a good camera and knowledge of how to shoot different angles and all that good stuff. Good cameras are expensive, and I don't have money to buy one. If I were to shoot now, it would be using my tablet. The second problem is good lighting/location, for all the ideas, but especially the dance ones. Audio quality would be another, though that pretty much only pertains to if I did covers. I don't own a microphone, and those are also expensive. But that's just the technical stuff.

The second batch of problems don't have to do with equipment. There's the confidence factor. I love singing, and I love dancing, but number one am I confident enough to post myself doing those things on the Internet, and number two, am I confident enough to do it in front of the person that would have to film for me? The answer is an iffy yes to the first, and an iffy no to the second. Also, do I have time? I already struggle with blogging enough and I'm not even in school right now.

Regardless of any of those problems, I probably won't be posting any videos until I'm eighteen. But that's if I decide to post at all and if I'm even able to. I have aspirations and dreams, but will they become reality? I suppose we will just have to wait and see.

~Clarissa

Goals for 2017

It's rather common for people to make "New Year's Resolutions" at the start of a new year. A man at my church informed us today that only eight percent of people keep their resolutions. That is a really low percentage. Around Christmastime, I thought that I wasn't going to make any. I haven't ever really, but if I did, I was part of the ninety-two percent of people who didn't keep them.

But somewhere along the line of  the couple of days before New Year's, I decided that there were some things that I wanted to change about my life this year. They were little things and as such, I wasn't sure if they were even worth making a formal declaration about.

I'm not calling them new year's resolutions, because for some reason that just doesn't sound right. Therefore, I'm calling them new year's goals. I didn't really announce them to the world either, just a couple close friends. One of my friends said that they were quite achievable, but as small as they are, I believe that they will present a challenge. However, that doesn't scare me anymore and I am ready for the challenge.

So here are my goals for 2017!

1. Drink enough water. I've had a problem with staying hydrated this past year, and it's at times gotten so bad that I've gotten pretty intense headaches. It's just a matter of developing a habit and inconveniencing my impatient self to drink the whole bottle.

2. Eat less sugar. I think I may qualify for saying that I have a sugar addiction. I eat way too much of it and I believe that it has become a comfort for me instead of turning to God. Eating sugar is also supposed to contribute to acne, and I am going to clear up my skin this year.

3. Stress less. I have a major problem with stress and I believe that the steps I must take to conquer it will draw me closer to God and address some of the emotional issues that I have with my family, fear, and failure.

4. Write 100,000 words. This was just kinda something that I came up with out of the blue, but if I do NaNoWriMo this year, I should have any easy time with doing 50k during the remaining eleven months of the year. (If I don't, I shall be very mad). But the main purpose of this goal is to get me to write more.

I look forward to what 2017 will bring!
~Clarissa

Christmas Magic?

I cannot believe that Christmas is only five days away.....It always sneaks up on me now. It didn't use to when I was little. Back then, the days would drag on agonizingly slow and it seemed Christmas morning would never come. And then came the excitement and screams of delight as I furiously tore into my presents. Now Christmas is rather silent and there's nothing I really really want anymore. (except maybe a smartphone. hint hint.) All the magic has been lost, and that makes me sad. But has it really been lost?

This year, the thing that has me the most excited is that my aunt is arriving on Thursday. I am so happy that she's coming a day earlier than we thought she was. Right now, I am eagerly watching for my best friend's Christmas package to be delivered. Later on in the break, I'll go with a group of friends to see the new Star Wars movie. It was when I thought about all those things that I realized that the magic has not been lost. It has simply changed.

Christmas when I was little was simply about getting all the toys I wanted. It was all about me. I may be sad that I no longer care about decorating the tree, but I think I've traded that for something better.

Christmas for me is now more about the time that I get to spend with my family and friends. I love having the break from school to be able to do stuff with my friends and watch movies with my family and have Christmas dinner and listen to amazing Christmas music that reminds me of the real reason that we celebrate Christmas.

Christmas is truly about reading the Christmas story and knowing that the little tiny baby in a manger would grow up to save the world. It's about the light of the star that was just a taste of the light of the world that we would soon come to know. It's about the wise men's gifts that started the tradition of giving gifts to those we love. It's all about the greatest gift of all: Jesus.

Merry Christmas!
~Clarissa

Writing Ugliness

Inspiration can come from anywhere. I mean, literally anywhere. I've got a new project going that arose out of a conversation I had with my friend Kelton. He joked that he was killing me, we had this super weird conversation about torture, and thus The Blood Oath was born.

I've never written a fantasy piece before. I've recently gotten into Brandon Sanderson, who writes epic fantasy but yet fantasy hasn't really pulled at me as a genre that I would write. But, Kelton writes quite a bit of fantasy and the premise of The Blood Oath really wouldn't fit into any other genre. This piece has some firsts for me and writing fantasy is one. The other is writing in omniscient POV. It's also a bit different because we're writing this together and while I've written pieces with other people before it's always gone like this: I write a chunk, and then they write a chunk. With this piece and its POV, Kelton and I sometimes are writing every other sentence but it provides a lot better cohesion of characters and events. But I would say the biggest first for this project is the ugliness that it contains.

I've always been a bit torn about how much ugliness to include in my stories and I've never really written a story about characters who are truly jaded and involved in deeds that aren't right and good. One of the two protagonists, Hanilov, is a street gang member who aspires to become an assassin. He doesn't care much for anyone, he enjoys inflicting pain, and he's an overall jerk. The other protagonist, Esterlyn, comes from a race that is very violent and barbaric and yet she determines to be different.

Without giving spoilers to the story, there is a lot of bloodiness in the way Hanilov treats Esterlyn. He attacks her, tortures her, and almost kills her quite regularly. There are also several instances of his forcing himself on her. Kelton wrote the first bit of it and I was surprised by its intensity and gore. My initial reaction was, this is disturbing and we shouldn't be writing this.

How far should you go when writing ugliness? There's no need to be over-the-top, but you shouldn't sugarcoat either. The reality is there are people out there who do what Hanilov does every day. It's ugly and yes frankly, it's disturbing. But it should be disturbing. When something disturbs us it is able to move us to action. The second part to it is that without ugliness, there can be no beauty. The ending of this story (which I am not going to spoil, sorry) would not be the amazing and beautiful ending that it will be without all the ugliness that precedes it. The depravity from the fall that is showcased in characters like Hanilov is in all of us. It's only a matter of whether we let it take over or not. It's important to know, though, that it is there. Otherwise, we cannot guard against it. And the knowledge of it allows our ugliness to be redeemed into beauty by God.

Don't be afraid of the ugliness!
~Clarissa

When the Lord Hath Taken Away

"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1:21)

In October, the mom of one of my fellow drama students died from cancer, leaving behind five children all under the age of fourteen. I was not able to attend her memorial service, but it was hard seeing my classmate and knowing what he must be going through.

Mid-November, I went through something that broke my heart and left me wondering how close God really is to me.

Later in November, a father of two boys that we knew died from colon cancer.

Again in November, I found out that one of my close friend's family is going through a tough time.

In December, I heard about a father of ten children who died in an accident.

Last Sunday, we learned that a couple in our church lost their baby granddaughter.

And just today, I learned that a girl in my drama class lost her baby sibling to a miscarriage.

WHY? Why in the world has so much happened in the last two months? There is so much pain for all these people and every single thing has made my heart break and my soul heavy. There is all this awful, saddening stuff happening and so close together. I want to cry just thinking about it now. I'm not going to lie. Pain hurts. Pain sucks. Pain overwhelms. Pain can just grab your heart and break it into a billion pieces until you don't know how it is possible that you are still breathing.

But you know what? I respect pain. I respect tragedy. I could almost say that I welcome it (sometimes). Why? Because pain has the power to transform us in ways that joy never can. I've gone through rough times, and depression, and suicidal thoughts, and apathy, and just hating life in general. All of that is pain. And yet every time, I come out on the other side stronger and better than before. God uses tragedy to change us, to purify us, and to teach us. Sometimes God closes doors and we don't understand why. We scream at Him and demand to know why it hurts so much (been there, done that). However, I choose to believe that there is a reason for every single thing that happens to me whether it's pain or joy. 

I can't pretend to understand what all those families are going through, or even why I went through what I did. But I do choose to believe that God gives, and He takes away. I am grateful for what He gives, and I must choose to be grateful for what He takes away. I must choose to believe that His plan may not make sense to me now, but it is still perfect. I must choose to praise His name in the midst of my pain. It is not an easy road to get there. There will be moments of weakness and doubt. Trusting God will not always take the pain away. In the end, though, God will still be God, and His love and peace and joy will never go away.