Somewhat Better Now

This time last year, I was worried.  I had barely told anyone about my plans to go to graduate school.  I didn't know how I was going to apply, as it seemed that there was so much I wasn't able to do.  I felt alone and near hopeless.  Now, I am technically in grad school, just not the one I was planning on.  I still plan to apply to the type of program that I want, but plans are still up on the air.  My biggest challenge at the start of a new year is that I could soon be unemployed.  Yes, I am self-employed, so you can put two and two together to figure out what might be happening.  I don't want it to happen, but the decision might be out of my hands.  The problem is that I have hardly been the one in charge of buy own life.  Someone else has always been the one planning my life, leaving me aimless, not following any of my own dreams.  Now, just a month from my birthday, I feel like I have been left behind.  I am not sure what my next steps will be.  While I don't feel as helpless as I have been in the past, I need guidance.  Real guidance, from people I feel a connection to that I can fully trust.  So far, I don't know who this will be.  I feel alone at times, social media and online classes a poor substitute for actual interaction with real people in real situations.  Loneliness has plagued me my whole life, never being able to be around other people, always feeling an outsider, even when I am around others with the same likes, abilities and/or aptitudes.  When I was younger, I didn't have this problem.  However, as I have gotten older, this lack of social awareness had gotten worse.  Just the thought of having to spend days stuck at home again threatens to derail me.  Four years, I basically stayed at home, with almost no one to be around with.  No one tried to get in touch with me, or I brushed off the few who tried.  I felt clumsy, out of touch, embarrassed that I didn't really know what to do.  At least for the past eighteen years, I have had the opportunity to almost be around others, even if I didn't really do so.  Some have thought that I was shy or quiet.  It's just the opposite.  I just need to feel comfortable enough to be myself.  That's hard when I don't trust or connect immediately with those around me.   My naiveté about the world, from not being allowed to interact with large parts of it, has compromised me.  I have been kept too safe, instead of being allowed to live.  I am messed up, but not in a bad way, just a sad way.  I might have a seed of darkness, evil, shadowed within my soul, but it is a light one, but still I wonder what would have happened if I didn't have hope, the cornerstone of my personality.  Even at my lowest, I knew that someone was out there.  Maybe they didn't know it, but they were there for me, the possibility of another chance egging me on.  Thank you.  Onto the next challenge.  Tomorrow is on its way.

Baby, It's Christmas Outside

So, it is less than a week until Christmas.  The radio stations are playing more Christmas songs by the hour, making it difficult to listen to anything else.  The last drifts of snow from last week's storm are still hanging on, only because some people think it is better to pile it up right next to my parking spot than spreading it out so it can melt faster. The next round of gifts and extra decorations for the store has just begun, including the invites to parties.  None of which I am expecting to go to.  I just don't really feel like celebrating.  In fact, I almost titled this post "It's the Negative Sixth Day of Christmas" just to add my usual layer of snark.  For some reason, I don't feel the "holiday spirit" in any form.  I am catching up on all the books I had been putting off due to the thirteen books, half dozen or more short stories, and hundreds of poems I had to read for my classes.  This doesn't include the extracts, reports, and other non-fiction I had to read in preparation for my classwork.  (By the way, I got one 'A' and all the rest 'B's.'). I am just glad that I am not taking any literature classes next term.  I will be writing more than reading.  I hope.  Then there is the big thing I had been dreading that I won't talk about until later.  I just have so much to catch up on, as well as everything else that is starting to pile up.  New books and magazines, a third puzzle book that I need to start, not to mention work-related issues that pop up at the end of the year.  At least I will have a week off from comic books, although that isn't exactly the kind of thing I would want to happen.  I have been unable to watch many of the Christmas themed specials that I would normally watch.  The usual year-end big news stories that surprise everyone have started popping up earlier than I expected.  I could bring up the 'controversy' over the Christmas song that I hint at in my post title, but let's get real.  It is an award-winning song from a movie called Neptune's Daughter.  The film is in no way Christmas related.  The original scene had Ricardo Montalban 'singing' to Esther Williams for goodness sakes.  How it even became a Christmas classic is beyond me.  I am overwhelmed with Christmas goodies; there was a mistake in ordering, and they all showed up at once instead of being reasonably parsed out.  Sorry for rambling, but I am just too overwhelmed with stuff to write clearly.  This will mark the first week around Christmas that I will actually not have to take a week off, since I got my MacBook.  Anyway, this means I will be able to have a post next week, instead of having to schedule beforehand or skip the week.  Guess this means I have to write "See you next week," and really mean it.  Oh, and
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

It's the Year-end Countdowns

It is that time of year again, the time for many people to come up with their "best of" lists for the end of the year.  I don't always fall into this sort of thing, with one exception.  I have been following the Billboard charts for decades.  Normally, it is just the weekly top-ten, but the year-end lists have been a great favorite of mine.  I even try to calculate the top songs of the year based on my own interpretations on what I have seen in the weekly lists.  This year, there is only one thing I am absolutely certain of, the "Meant to Be" by Bebe Rexha and Florida-Georgia Line will be the number one country song of the year.  Literally, it was the number one song for almost the entire year on the country chart.  About fifty weeks!  I have never seen such dominance.  As for the regular Hot 100 chart, things are not as surefire.  I can guarantee that Drake will have at least two songs in the top ten, but beyond that I cannot be sure.  There is a really good chance that one of his three number ones from this year will end up as the top song of the year, but it is not a lock.  See, it all is based on how the chart is tabulated.  When I was younger, the charts were determined solely on two components--physical sales and radio airplay.  Now, there are a some digital components as well, including downloads, streams, shares, and video airplay.  While are can skew the tabulations, the last one can really mess things up.  A song can preview an official video and have it played thousands of times before it even gets into heavy rotation on radio stations.  Add sharing and multiple downloads, and a song can debut at number one and stay there a month before radio airplay catches up.  That happened with Drake's songs this year.  They debuted high and stayed there, but I barely heard them on my regular top 40 radio stations.  Then, the songs slowly dropped.  For year-end charts, weekly totals are added up, with points given to a song for each week that they stay at a position, with more points given to higher charting songs.  This means that a song that takes longer to hit its peak and then stays there for awhile, could out-perform a higher charting song that debuted there, but quickly fell once it left.  This means a song like "Girls Like You" by Maroon 5 with Cardi B, could take the year-end number one, or even a lower charting song like "Meant to Be."  I won't be calculating my totals until next week, but if I turn out to be right, you heard it here first.