Warning! I jump around a lot in this one. Once you get past the "I'm cleaning my room" thing...well, I can't promise more interesting, but I liked writing it better after that.

Today, I started a massive cleaning out of my bedroom. In the nearly five years I've lived here, never once have I done this. Well, of course I've cleaned enough so there's still a floor and I've cleaned certain things at certain times and gotten rid of stuff, but never everything at one time. I started with a corner of my room that's needed a LOT of TLC for several months. I got about 20 books out of my room (not counting textbooks that I don't have any current use for), whether it be to actually get rid of them or if it just means making my brother put them in his room. I found TONS of things that I haven't seen in years and years, including this one CD with anime music that I've been looking for since....well, I think since around the time I first moved. UNDERSTAND HOW EXCITING THIS IS.

While I was cleaning and going through stuff, I found that, number one, I have a lot of stuff. A lot more stuff than I need or use anymore, and most of it is old stuff. Like, "I LOVE NARUTO" old. I found old drawings and notebooks and calendars and references...for the first time in a LONG time I actually threw away an old notebook and a sketchbook. Which is extremely rare and I can't remember the last time I did either...but I decided there was no need for them...I actually threw away a lot of stuff, and I'm only a third of the way through my room...OTL|||

The second thing I realized is how completely my interests have shifted over the past few years. I used to draw ALL THE TIME. That used to be pretty much the majority of my life before we got a reasonably functioning computer. But since then, and after I met so many amazing people in high school, I picked up writing again. I hadn't written anything since first grade aside from school essays, and it hadn't even occurred to me that I could be an author or a poet (which I'm not, having made numerous attempts and found I'm not interested in writing it) or a...what have you. I could WRITE. And honestly...well, I think I've got a decent talent for it. Normally, I'd say I don't, but y'know, what's the point in denying that you know you're good at something in one form or another? It's not a "my friends say I'm good, so I must be" kind of feeling. This is a "whether my friends think so or not, I'm good at this" feeling. That's not at all to say that I can't improve.  I can ALWAYS improve, and I'll keep doing so. Even if I have writers block for years, I'll keep writing something or other because I can. I have things in my head that want to be on paper, fiction and non. And someday, I kind of hope someone will look at what I write and see my soul in there, and think about what it means. That's the beauty of writing. Someone, somewhere will always understand it on some level, and maybe on a level deeper than you, as the writer, can even imagine, and it will touch their soul like it touches yours.

There is one particular thing that I truly think writing does above almost anything out there. I guess anyone would argue this of a craft, but language is so extraordinary that it's astounding. In one of my English classes recently, we were reading Paradise Lost, and my professor read a phrase in which an angels wings were described as being "of color dipped in Heaven." Can you imagine that? It's truly amazing, trying to. He said that you could remember that phrase every day for the rest of your life and each day, you'd picture something different. There is no way to know what color dipped in Heaven looks like. That is the greatest beauty of all. You can have your own picture, and you can effectively describe images through language that you can't get the same way through any sort of visual art. You have a picture that is untainted by anything you're seeing or hearing, and you just have the words. You can take those words and make them into anything you want. And it kind of makes you think about how all art is essentially interconnected and used in other forms of art. The thing that bugs me a little bit is that there are so many people out there who have a pretty black and white distinction between writers and artists. There are people who have said to me, "You're a writer, I'm an artist." And while I totally understand the separation they're trying to make, the fact is that writing IS an art, so I am, therefore, an artist as well. It is a little bit insulting, and I'm not saying that because I just want to be one of those annoying people who has to make everything politically correct and blah blah, but, well, you'll have to excuse me for being who I am. Writing is just as much an art as drawing or painting or sculpting or anything else you classify under "art." It just involves words as the medium.

I digress. Where I'd originally intended to go with this is that my interests are shifting even more from writing to crochet. Ever since my friend started me off a little over a year ago, I've being crocheting like it's my job. In fact, sometimes I wish it were my job, and that I were creative enough to make my own patterns, which, maybe someday I will be, just, y'know, not yet. I'm learning a lot of stuff, though! I've made things from scarves to hats to amigurumis (plushies) and I'm still learning a lot! It's so much fun learning new stitches and then making things and giving them to people who actually want this stuff! I've had friends ask me how much it would be if I made them this or that, and it makes me feel like, even though I'm not terribly experienced, I'm good at something else. Something I LOVE doing, in fact. And I really would like to someday be good enough at it to have people not only want to buy it, but to actually buy it. That is...when I feel I'm good enough to sell it to begin with, publicly. It's really weird, but I've been asked to make so many unofficial projects by more people than I can count - which I don't mind a bit! It's just hard keeping track of stuff when I keep it all in my head. xD Then again, I'm not really bad at that. I still remember requests from here...that I was supposed to draw...like four years ago...*hides in shame*

But really, if I ever do decide to post pictures of my crocheted stuff, it may or may not be on another account. I was thinking over the past couple of days that my dA account is about as messy and cluttered and unpleasant to wade through as my bedroom has been. If this happens, I'll certainly post a link to it here, and probably still use this account now and then (if only because I get so attached to stuff that I don't like to officially delete anything...). Plus, it'll be fun to come back and see what's going on. It's just been that over the past couple years, I've obviously not been very active, but for journals, and who watches people for their journals? Well, someone out there does, I'm sure. But I'm not one of them, and I don't think many of you guys are either. Judging by the fact that it doesn't look like too many people read them. xD Which is fine! I don't read everyone else's stuff either, to be quite honest, so I'm not offended by it. Not to mention, I write about what goes on in my life, and my life is not terribly interesting. I mean, I mostly like it, but I don't expect you to.

So yeah. Once I make something cool (that isn't intended for someone else, because I won't post pictures of gifts on here without permission), I'll make sure to upload pictures somewhere. As I've been saying for the past several months. My interests have largely shifted farther and farther away from drawing to more toward writing to more toward crochet. So I don't really have much to upload anymore, since most of my time is taken up by making stuff for other people. Sorry.