Short response 2

Culture, for me, has never been an important part of my life. The strongest part of my blood heritage is Italian, but because I am not close with many of my family members this has never had a significant impact on my life (aside from my love of spaghetti, ha). Though I suppose this may be the reason for my aversion to physical contact. When I was younger I was extremely shy and greatly valued my personal space, so as you can imagine being in a roomful of boisterous, affectionate Italians was like the 9th circle of hell for me.

As far as religion goes, I suppose I could be labeled a Baptist. While I occasionally participate in the more common aspects of said religion (like prayer and whatnot) I am much more relaxed about the ‘rules’ than a lot of my fellow believers. Again, this may be because in my early years I was shifted from pillar to post in my church life, I guess not much besides the basics stuck with me. I don’t believe I ever fully grasped the meaning of ‘fellowship’ that seems to be so important to this religion, so I imagine that hinders my church growth as well.

As far as subcultures I’m involved in, I cannot pinpoint a specific one. I like to believe I’m a little bit of everything. That being said, while I’m not necessarily goth or punk, I enjoy certain aspects of both scenes and they are the two cultures that I can most identify with. One of the main reasons for this is I love a lot of the clothing styles, from the chains to the corsets (though this latter one may be because I secretly believe I was born in the wrong century, but that’s a whole other story).

Short Response 1

Writing has always been an extremely important part of my life, whether it is me actually writing something or simply reading something someone else has written. While you may think reading and writing are two completely different ideas, I find that they are closely wound together. In order to write something worthwhile, you must read and analyze the work of other writers in order to gather an appreciation and understanding for how complex and beautiful the written word is; for if you do not have the right flow of words, your message will lack any true significance and the reader will be left disgusted and/or bored to tears. It is for this reason I detest letting my own work be viewed: I fear that I have not adequately expressed what I was trying to say, so I end up throwing it away and starting over. Since then I have learned to simply write for my own enjoyment, as I find it to be quite cathartic. Writing for me is extremely relaxing; I am able to expel at least some of the millions of thoughts swirling around in my head. It is also an excellent way to step into someone else’s shoes and confront my own fears without any lasting damage to me or anyone else. Becoming someone else for any amount of time will also give you a greater appreciation for the human psyche and for humanity in general while also coming to grips with emotions you weren’t even aware you had. In these ways, it is truly an art form.
Most of the things I write can be boiled down to something called ‘fan fiction’. This is taking characters from movies/tv/books/etc. and temporarily making them your own by throwing them into a plot of your own choosing. It is quite fun and less time consuming than other styles of writing because you don’t have to take the time to create characters of your own, you just borrow someone else’s. The only one “rule” (I use quotation marks because even this one “rule” is negotiable) is you have to keep the basic foundations of the character; you can’t make them unrecognizable. For example, if your characters supposed to be morose and melancholy, making them an energetic ray of sunshine is just uncalled for and frowned upon. There are many, many people involved in communities that specialize in these types of writings, so if this sounds appealing to you it wouldn’t be hard to pursue this interest. While I guess these stories I write could be considered an assignment I undertook of my own free will, I will go on and mention one other, just to be safe. I also occasionally dabble in poetry, so when I was about eight years old I wrote a Christmas poem which was apparently so good my mother had to make it into a card and send it to all our friends and family (as I’m sure you have already gathered, I was mortified when she suggested this but alas, I could not dissuade her). I have long since lost this poem, so I will not be able to post it along with this blog, but it was actually quite lengthy; I imagine I was a tad overzealous, like I believe I have been with this blog :P. So I shall now bid you adieu, and wait for my next inspiration to strike.