Twenty-five

Twenty-five things you must know about me in order to understand me.

1) Colors make me love things. For example, a white and black Algebra II book with a yellow and white cover is completely boring and uninviting. However, if the Algebra book happened to have a colorful red-and-purple hardcover front, it might make me actually want to look inside it. Even if I hate math and will hate math for the rest of my living and breathing life, I will at least enjoy looking at my math book.

2) Many colored sharpies plus myself equal many unnecessary drawing and doodles in very necessary places. For instance, the cover of my timeline book is now decked out in small creatures holding balloons, ironic history quotes written in tiny, brightly colored letters, random dots and stars, and the equation Ch (chocolate) + Co (coffee) = L (love). This forumla explains that if a girl likes coffee, and a boy likes chocolate (or vice versa, however you choose), they will be in love for the rest of their lives.

3) It is indeed possible for something to be both motivating and distracting at the same time. Today, instead of working on my Algebra like a normal child would be doing, I got out all my sharpies and colored my marking tabs all sorts of colors. The pink one meant "Start" and the yellow one meant "End," which I had been intending to simple tell me where my lessons began and where they stopped. But no, just plain pink and yellow were boring and a little intimidating. I drew arrows on them; the Start arrow pointed out, indicating I was to go forward with my lessons, and the End arrow pointed in, showing that I was to have stopped. Even that wasn't enough, so I drew dots and stars to match my timeline, and fireworks shooting out of the end of the End arrow. At this point I ran out of room on the marking tab, and began to do my Algebra, feeling very pleased with my colorful marking tabs.

4) The only time when anything productive works its way into my writing is when I don't need it to. For example, this article would make a wonderful segment in some magazine about creative thinkers, or those diagnosed with ADD (which I do not have, by the way). But no one asked me to write this piece, and I am most definitely going to do nothing with than simply send it to a few friends to tell them many important things about me that they might have already known. Instead of writing this, I should be doing Algebra. But we have covered that before, and we see that I have no intention of doing Algebra at this moment.

5) Work cannot be accomplished without multiple breaks to find junk food to eat, to play music on some sort of instument (guitar, mandolin, ukulele, and piano are usually available), or to write an enjoyable short piece of nothing. This would appear to prove that it is a good thing I am writing this piece, or my Algebra would never be done.

6) Caffeine doesn't really help, but I drink it anyway. It's the placebo effect.

7) Social interaction is vital for survival. This is why I come home from Internetless vacations looking like I've lost 20 pounds and perhaps contracted cholera.

8) Having a calculator at your disposal is not helpful for learning math.

9) It is impossible to work on anything without music blasting.

10) It is impossible to read anything, but especially non-fiction, without music blasting.

11) It is impossible to sleep without music blasting.

12) It is impossible to do anything without music blasting.

13) The number 13 is an ugly, yellow sort of number, and my least favorite of all the numbers. This is an important discovery to only me, and perhaps some crazy psych fanatic.

14) Denial is a wonderfully convienent, but impractical, way to handle things.

15) If you can put up with me in a bad mood, you can put up with me any time, and we're good to go. If I can put up with you in a bad mood, this is an even better sign.

16) People who do not understand computers frustrate me.

17) People who say they can sing and actually can't frustrate me. People who are honest about their singing skills are much preferred.

18) If you like to write fiction, I love you.

19) Even if you don't like to write fiction, I still may love you.

20) I do not understand people who know they cannot spell something, so they spell it wrong anyway. How hard is it to look a word up?

21) I do not understand people (girls in particular) who wear a ton of makeup on their face everyday, to make themselves appear "normal." Um. Acne is normal.

22) I have realized that by the time I have finished writing this list, I will be completely motivated to do my Algebra. But by that time it will be dinner. And after dinner, I won't want to anymore.

23) Also, most of the people I will send this to may not have the attention span to read to the end. If you are one of those people... :(

24) I am not ADD, but I act like it. Bad thing? Good thing? This is yet to be decided.

25) Twenty-five seems like a good number to stop on. I have gotten my creative writing in for the day; unfortunately it was not for any assignment, so I feel as if my skills (if this can be called skill) have just been wasted. For some reason, I do not view this as a bad thing. At least I'm happy.