Creative chaos will be mine, whahaha.

 I made a bit of a spontaneous purchase today with my dwindling income tax return money. This book was the only reasonable thing on the teen table at the bookstore and I said,"Screw it, I didn't spend much money in Boston, so why not?"* This journal is a really intriguing idea to me.

However, after reading through the tasks, I feel like I will be cringing every time I do one. It just feels so ridiculous to, for example, take the book in the shower with me.

But when I think about it, why do I feel so opposed? I mean, why shouldn't I take the book in the shower with me? It's meant to be ruined, so what's stopping me?

I came to the conclusion that my conventions of what are acceptable and unacceptable things to do are screwing with me. I mean, I can't even write in books with a pencil, usually. I didn't realize how much I restrict myself (creatively and in general) until that crossed my mind. Hopefully this journal can help me overcome some of these, or at least think about why I do and think what I do and think. Between this and listening to Sufjan Stevens a lot in the last week, I really want to go out there and create creative chaos. I think I will limit myself to 1-3 pages a day and I want to do them in order to force a little more creativity on the ones I don't really feel like doing.

Also, reading up on Pride and Prejudice in the last week has greatly heightened my awareness of social conventions, as well as my use of long winded sentences in regular conversation.**

I had a cup of coffee in the car, so I used some of the remaining drips to accomplish this page. It felt so wrong, but now it looks pretty bare and I feel the need to put more coffee on it. I think I'm getting a small taste for (creative) destruction already.

Now to fill in my yearbook application. I think that I should retain a bit of my conventional creative nature for that purpose.

*It's pretty bad when I qualify things as 'spontaneous purchases' that fall in the range of $15. In response to this fact, I'm devoting a day of this four day weekend to job hunting. Intense job hunting, as in I'm printing off 20 resumes and dropping them off everywhere that doesn't have to do with deep frying and/or from where I hear stories of workers being sexually harassed on a regular basis.

**Also, my appreciation for Elizabeth Bennet and how much I relate to her. I want to be as sassy as Elizabeth Bennet when I grow up. By that statement, I'm probably setting myself up to become a lonely cat lady and/or a frightening single English teacher that has set a picture of Mr. Darcy as the wallpaper of their laptop for all the students to see every time it's plugged it into a projector, like my English teacher from last year. She also has a shirt that says 'I ♥ Mr. Darcy.' Fangirling characters in classic literature FTW. This year my English teacher has been more accepting of her spinster fate, as her favorite character from literature is Great Expectations' Miss Havisham.***

*** Also, is it bad that my instincts tell me to write about English teachers in the literary past tense? It's just one of those realizations about what has happened to my brain. Like last night when I took a break from homework at 11pm to troll my classmates on facebook who were considerably further away from finishing their assignments due the next day. What was my brain like before the fateful time I entered IB?

Love,
-J-

My weekends hold strange series of events.

 Saturday:

• I sat by a woman having a conversation with herself as I worked on my annotated bibliography in the library for three hours. My favourite line was "You stole my Oreo, you bitch," followed by a profuse apology and proclamation of love. 
• I may or may not have gotten hit on over facebook by a guy I met this week to prepare for an upcoming youth weekend thing. I actually couldn't tell through his atrocious spelling and grammar. Basically, the worst way to hit on me of all time, with bad grammar. *shudder*
• I attempted to decipher the cryptic art that appeared all over Market square. There's pictures of the city with small text underneath it that appears to be from a Twitter or Facebook post.
• Reeves shaved his beard, leaving only his mustache. He looks like a 70's porn star. The sunglasses didn't help.
• I listened to Ben pretending to be Samuel L. Jackson while reading "Go the F**k to sleep" in Coles.
• Reeves told me that he found a connection between Bob Dylan's music and Dumbledore being written as a gay character. *mind blows up with confusion*
• Six of us had to lay on the sidewalk on King Street because we were playing the dart game and somebody went on a rampage. 
• I went to see a local high school's production of Phantom of the Opera. It was in the fancy theater and it was actually amazing. All the leads were excellent, just everything was beautiful. It was so good that Ben legitimately wept during the curtain call. His manliness just leaked out of his eyes, nbd. 
• A group of us brainstormed for what we could do for a student directed show next year. Basically, we came up with "(any controversial/offensive subject): The Panto."  

Sunday:

• Realized just how seriously some hipsters take themselves when it came to my attention that there are little kids with the names Meadow (girl), Oasis (boy) and Cedar (girl) at the Vineyard. I feel like I need to do stand-up in the future just so I can make jokes about those names.  It shouldn't be funny, considering these kids need to live the rest of their lives with these names, but I can't help how hilarious this is, because everyone else manages to take it seriously. Maybe I'm just a bad person.  
• Playing air hockey during the break at church. 
• My mom said she liked my outfit. I also liked my outfit, so that's the first time we've both liked the same outfit for a while. #smallvictories #thriftstoresFTW
• More annotated bibliography, aka, cramming literary criticism into my head about Pride and Prejudice for several hours and making progress at a painfully slow rate until I get to the point where I just don't care anymore and finish with half-assed crap that makes my mark skyrocket down.  
• Driving a standard for the first time in three months, thankfully without much suffering. My goal is to get my license before the end of May. I've been slacking.
• This link made me laugh like an idiot for a long time and, since somebody posted it on my facebook, my grandmother is probably horrified as she facebook creeps. (PS It's not actually what the name of the website suggests. Just an ironic overload of pretension for the sake of hilarity.)
• Trolling my classmates on facebook who are just starting their annotated bibliography now, even though I have one entry left to do. #IBkidsFTW

Coming up this week:

• Three day week! 
• Co-op interview (Co-op is a course option in 12th grade where you can take the morning or afternoon of one semester to be placed in a workplace that interests you.) With any hope, I'll be accepted and next year I'll end up in a placement that has to do with film or journalism. 
• Music festival with choir. I have confidence that we'll be good. 

Love,
-J-

Burnt out buildings and young nostalgia.

 I watched a burnt out building get knocked down by a backhoe yesterday.

It used to be a theater, abandoned except for the bottom floor, resigned to a slightly sketchy convenience store. As I watched from the small crowd gathered behind the tape, I felt a sort of melancholy. Not because I personally felt attached to the building, but out of sympathy for those who are. The walls crumbled and the bricks fell on to the street, the walls a brittle shell of something that had once been great. Every brick was put in place carefully but were taken apart by the rather impersonal prod of a backhoe. The memories torn apart in blackened, broken pieces, piled to be put in a dump and disregarded. Reminded me a bit of "Ozymandias."

But the one thing that really struck me was the size of the crowd gathered to watch and take pictures of the theater's demolition. Just think, the destruction of a place that was once a center of art and culture becomes fascinating because of the primitive human interest in destruction.

I'm unsure of what this tells me about humanity.
Love,
-J-

Resigning to a life of painful mediocrity or Narnia.

I am so overwhelmed right now.

I have so much to do that I can't even function.

I know there are people with real problems, but in my selfish world, having several major things to do while my marks are all slipping is limiting my mental capacity to function or see good in anything.

I got a 13/20 on an English presentation today. I read the teacher's notes and don't entirely see what I did so wrong to barely scrape a pass. Every single English presentation I've done this year gets marked significantly lower than the previous one and I can't tell whether it's because I get worse or the teacher gets harsher. In my mind, if I fail at English, I fail myself in general. It's the one thing I can't handle going downhill.

I think that after a long time of being told I'm above average I might resign to a life of being intellectually mediocre. Perhaps a little bit of added bitterness and many cats.

I just need someone to look me in the eyes, tell me that things will be alright, that I am capable of everything I need to do and that life will not always be this overbearing. That someday I will actually stop stressing and have time to enjoy simple things, like reading books for leisure and taking pictures for fun. Or maybe somebody could hand me a portal to Narnia so I can frolic with fawns and unicorns and emerge years later when actually ten minutes has passed. Either is cool, bros.

At least one doesn't need absolutely stellar marks to get into Canadian universities. Especially to get into arts programs. That's one thing I don't have to fret about too much.

If the past has taught me anything, I need to get a big assignment out of the way, sleep the exhaustion off, and continue with everything else. Then things will be good for a while. Maybe I won't become a irredeemable burnout before the end of high school before I head out to get loads of debt before I inevitably drop out of university a pursue an incredibly mentally numbing career in retail or something equally lacking in mental stimulation. If you have that portal, Narnia would be a much more pleasant fate than the latter.

Disclaimer: This message has been brought to you by cracking, pessimistic Julianne who will grow up to love no one but her numerous cats. Optimistic Julianne has temporarily left the building, taking her sanity with her.
Love,
-J-

Surealism/Boston recap.

The last few days have been sort of surreal for some reason I can't quite pinpoint.

Maybe it's because of the five day adventure to Boston where I ignored all the work which usually haunts me, was surrounded by (nonetheless awesome) people who were sleep deprived, sometimes mentally, physically and even emotionally exhausted, sang spontaneously in public with fifty other people, went into Forever 21 at 10pm in formal choir attire, made friends with rather eccentric people, wandered into incredible random shops (*1), ate deep fried bananas by accident (*2), visited Harvard and sat outside the library looking introspective (*3), was egged in an open sided tour bus (*4), saw some of the work of the brilliant minds at MIT (*5) and just in general experienced an entirely new city.

All this, only to get home, go to bed, and wake up to go back to a familiar routine with responsibilities and a boatload of schoolwork to get through.

Today I show up at school and have to go to a bilingual magic show for French class. THERE WERE LEGIT BUNNIES AND DOVES. That didn't help the whole surreal thing I've fallen into.

I think I'll blame seeing The Blue Man Group on Saturday for the kicking off the whole surreal aspect of this weird mind frame. I was able to comprehend life until they came and confused the heck out of me.

*1: Firstly, this hat shop was made of happiness:

 *2: The deep fried bananas were really disgusting. I accidentally picked them up at a place where you shovel a variety hot food into a box and pay by the pound, a strangely effective way of buying lunch. Two other people tried the bananas and didn't like them, either.

*3: I didn't get any pictures of the Harvard campus except the columns of the library, because I was disappointed that we couldn't get into the library containing like 10 floors of pure knowledge (see the heartbreaking sign below). We were kind of nerding out about it. Also, the trees because they were pretty and the petals were majestically floating to the ground. Especially after we gave the tree trunks a good shake.

 *4: Yeah, the bus got egged but even with the open sides, only one person got hit. The driver was pissed, said "That's the forth time this week!" and proceeded to bound a block after the kids who did it. He was unsuccessful in catching them. In the picture, I'm the one in the purple second seat from the back.

*5: The MIT museum seemed to have this thing for partnering gears with miniature chairs. The yellow one walked in a circle and the red one at the bottom jumped over the cat.

 Love,
-J-

Things that were discussed on the bus ride home:

• Pancake supremacy/ pancake rights/ pancake marriage
• World War Waffle (a completely separate occasion)
• Social conventions
• Defining unconditional love
• The sheer awfulness of the movie "Stuck On You"
• How I slept through the conjoined twin kung-fu sequence in the above movie
• Sherlock
• Ridiculous shipping practices of Tumblr
• The fact that our incredibly masculine, former drill-sergeant tour guide did not cry when we left, but manliness simply overflowed from his eyeballs.
• Convincing people of the goodness of Community
• Favorite moments of Arrested Development
• The Reeves Awards, which shall be for his favorite indie albums of the year of different categories: they shall come in the shapes of beards
• Michael Cera
• Undying hatred of Nickelback
• Obscure bands named after Shakespeare plays
• The scaring experience of a monkey peeing on a windshield in the Toronto Zoo

Love,
-J-
Unrelated link of the day: When I look in the mirror . . .

So. Much. Exhaustion.

 I just had/am having the weirdest night ever.

It began on a dinner cruise with another group of kids from a high school in Delaware. That in itself wasn't too strange, but comforting Brittney in the bathroom for a long time threw me off a little. She was just having a terrible day of life and apparently I seem to be the person who offers the least judgement. A random guy from the other group saw she was upset and walked up to her wearing mustache glasses, introduced himself, and stated that she is a very attractive female, which made her night. I also listened to girls vent about the terrible guys formerly in their life, went swimming at the pool, played the game where you move the Oreo down your face, and sat on the floor of a room talking to Reeves, Ben, Jessica and a few others about random stuff in life. After a few days with increasingly high strung people, the chillness of that room was refreshing. Everybody was so emotionally stable and relaxed. These trips get pretty mentally taxing after a few days.

Also, inspired by Reeves, I will from now on carry a small notebook around with me to capture random notes throughout my life.
Love,
-J-

"This is the definition of a choir meltdown."

Insert my roommates and four other people jumping and dancing on beds to Disney music and ABBA. We all cracked at the same time I guess.

I got some really cool pictures today at the MIT museum. 
Love,
-J-

First day Boston musings

We made it to Boston after a 8 hour drive; it's not actually that bad. When, you know, you have people to debate with over fictional characters, sing songs with, mooch food from, etc. Boston has really awesome architecture, I can give it that (even the church of Scientology has a really fantastic cathedral thing.) It's like, supersized, classy uptown of my city.

In the evening, for supper we went to The Cheesecake Factory, which had the strangest decor I have ever seen. It looked like ancient Egypt and Easter's love child displayed on ridiculous pillars. We got to go shopping for a while afterwards, which was fairly uneventful, until I saw a bunch of choir people on the lawn. They were playing Kung-fu with random people they met at the mall from a choir from New Jersey. On the lawn of a shopping mall. I am pleased to say that I won the entire, twenty person game of Kung-fu and made Canada proud.

After we went to an improv show. The venue was sketchy but they were controlling the lighting from an imac, so artistic sketchy, not dirty sketchy. We took up about two thirds of the venue. Some the improv show was better than other parts, but it was totally worth going to.


When we got back to the hotel, there was a small episode where several of us decided to run outside at like 10:30pm and one kid left his shoes (Kaelan, your boyfriend forgot his shoes while running across Boston . . . )

The reason I'm currently awake because Tatyana set an alarm on her ipod and forgot about the time change.
Love,
-J-

Instagram.

Guys, I can officially be artistic now; there's instagram for android.

I'll try to use it in Boston: my username is Juli7anne. The seven is silent, if you were wondering.

Now commence overusing the heck out of this app, all in the name of irony. Like how the music kids at my school ironically overuse YOLO because the gym kids started saying it.

I probably won't post until I get back. *waves bye for five days*
Love,
-J-

Le maison de café sans un accordéon.

I went to the coffee house yesterday. It was pretty average and most of the people playing were improvising, but the music kids at my school often improvise in four part harmony. There were several real songs and a few others such as "Hey Guys Come On," an adaptation of "Bui Doi" from the musical. By 'adaptation' I mean they repeated the phrase "Hey Guys Come On" instead of using the lyrics from "Bui Doi," and keeping the intense harmonies. Another notable moment was the spontaneous, eight person rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," during which we died of laughter when Adam got carried away with the strange noises/screams in the background. Adam also recited a poem about David, my school's self-professed most eligible bachelor, while David sat in a chair beside him. Their composure was a thoroughly impressive feat.

Sadly, no accordions or bassoons were present this coffee house. 

That said, I love my school. 
Love,
-J-

Days until choir trip to Boston: 1

The art of goofing off in libraries

I've spent the last two English classes in the public library, which I love, but in groups, my classmates have goofing off in libraries down to an art. I can get no work whatsoever done with them around, which probably isn't the best thing for my academic career.

I've been working on my annotated bibliography, five one-page summaries from five sources about books about books. It will probably cause me a lot of grief. My summarizing skills are rather rusty, practically non-existent, after the past year and a half of stretching out tiny bits of information to get to word counts. I've also had trouble using information only found in the source because I have the occasional urge to throw in a well worded snippet of complete BS. #woesofanIBkid

I chose the topic of Pride and Prejudice, simply because it is the one novel that no one else picked, there is plenty of information about it, and I'm not sick of it anymore because I read it over a year ago. I forgot how my mind doesn't fully comprehend Austen's writing style sometimes (ie: using a gazillion negatives in a sentence half the length of a page), but I eased into it again.

I was reading a chapter I was going to summarize and buried in the author's no nonsense approach to Pride and Prejudice was the line "In the early part of the story, Elizabeth would consider Darcy about as eligible as Varney the Vampire as a prospective marriage partner." Well, if Elizabeth married this Varney character, the book might have been less painful to read in 10th grade. 
Love,
-J-

Days until Boston: 2

Boston trip

 Six days until the choir trip. And I'm really pumped for two reasons: (1) I love choir people and (2) I love trips and the combination hopefully results in five days of ridiculously awesome times. The only other school trip I've been on was the Montreal trip in 8th grade and I had the grand total of one friend who hung out with me. So there's a lot of room for improvement.

Some of the lovely things planned include attending an improv show, the Blue Man Group, touring Harvard and seeing if it's all it's cracked up to be, a formal performance with some other choirs, several choir workshops with hardcore people, attending Shear Maddness and a diner cruise the last night. That, along with a bit of time to shop and explore, is going to make for a busy few days. We'll probably have time to kill in the evenings in the hotel, and considering the alleged anti-sleeping nature of my fellow choir people, I will limit myself to staying up until 12. The musical high has yet to fade and has developed into a pre-Boston high.

Also, I have a lovely group of people to hang around with, a good portion of the people I hung out with during musical.

Anybody ever been to Boston before? Random thoughts on Boston?
Love,
-J-

Days until Boston choir trip: 4
Unrelated link of the day: My country makes legit dinosaur coins . . . that glow in the dark

Let's get down to business. . .

To watch Mulan, followed by The #1 Ladies Detective Agency.

I'll just leave this here to make my Saturday nights feel more epic than they actually are.

Also, Lea Solonga, Mulan's singing voice, makes me drool. The music in the entire thing is just so good and for the most part, overlooked. 

Mushu and the grandmother are my spirit animals.
Love,
-J-

Things I like:

The scent of a candle when walking into a room, the sound of an old slide projector, library books, drinking coffee with chocolate cake, falling asleep reading, good hair days, crisp morning air, paperback books, dancing like no one is watching, curling up on a couch, winning coffee in roll-up-the-rim, pretty doors on old houses, flower bouquets, colourful dresses, Coldplay, the freshness of spring, the anticipation before going on a trip, nailing a choir song, thrifting.

Love,
-J-

Just having some fun with updated Picasso. Have a lovely day, all of you.
Love,
-J-

The Great Perhaps and the associated annoyances.

Some days, it feels like I have my future together, and other days it doesn't. Today is one of the days that it doesn't.

I even went through a bunch of university brochures I picked up earlier this year. I realized several things:

1. I don't know which universities I will apply to. 
2. I don't know which programs I will apply to.
3. The time is running out for me to make decisions. 

 Also, I'm getting ridiculously sentimental about the prospect of leaving here. Well, not so much of leaving here as leaving my friends and everything I see as familiar, to go to a yet undecided destination to study a yet undecided thing.

And just to throw things off even more, lately I've began seriously considering going into film, which has many more options, decisions and pros and cons.

My artsy friends are telling me to pursue it. This morning, Hannah asked me what I wanted to go for school for, I replied,"I have no idea," and Moriah looked me in the eyes and said,"You know what you should do." The skeptical side of my brain sees a flash forward to several of us morphing into the cast of Rent and slowly starving to death. But then another skeptical part of my brain jumps to me sitting in an office, working a 9-5 job and hating my life.

I've hit a point where I don't necessarily want money and success, I want to do something with my life that makes me happy. However, I'm still incredibly indecisive about what exactly that is.

Also, a slight diversion from the original topic, I hate how Rent, a musical about staving artists inspires me to starve in the future. I am the child of an engineer and a nurse: they don't do the whole risk-taking-with-the-possibly-of-starving thing with their careers. (Actually, they were briefly missionaries, so I guess that's where I get the small urge leave my well-being up to chance.)

The next year, hopefully, will determine what path I should take. Hopefully I get accepted into Co-op for next year and do something that helps me figure out my future career. Don't panic, dammit Julianne. Also, a pros and cons list could possibly bring me a considerable amount of ease. I think I have this more figured out than I feel I do.

So, to conclude: the future is doing that thing again where it terrifies me.
Love,
-J-  

Days until Boston choir trip: 11
Irrelevant link of the day: Pictures of various animals eating strawberries

Long weekend! *happy dance*

• Now that musical is over, all I want to do is read all the books because I have time to. 
• I have an essay to pass in 4th period and I'm not done yet. When I am, I will finally be done with the terrible book of Great Expectations, which has been haunting me since October.
• I like listening to CBC radio 2 morning because I appreciate their indie music and no ads.
• Watched "Courageous" last night at youth group. It wasn't too bad, but (1) it was really cliched, (2) it had fairly bad acting in places, (3) the music was extremely over the top intense, (3) it had so many racial stereotypes, (4) the characters were painfully one sided, (5) in one part they implied that using cigarettes and alcohol makes one a terrible person and (6) RVA is probably loving it and overplaying it so much. As far as Christian movies are concerned, it's pretty decent.

Love,
-J-

Sometimes, I just have to put things out there.

Today Jeremy, Elissa's brother, went in for plastic surgery to get bits of glass removed from his face, from the car accident in November 2010. He's had so many surgeries since then, with his face, his leg, re-breaking his leg and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.

I can only imagine how much that car accident has screwed up their lives. When all four of your children get in an accident, one of them doesn't survive, one is severely injured, one has traumatic memories of it and one has to deal with the guilt of driving the car. When a year and a half after an accident in which you lose your teenage daughter, your youngest son is still having surgeries for his injuries.

Why does life deal shit cards to some people and not others?

I'll try to be less depressing soon, but this on top of rereading Looking For Alaska and the generally sad atmosphere at my school might result in me not being so full of sunshine and rainbows for a while. Such is life.
Love,
-J-

A dreary situation.

When somebody dies, everybody suddenly claims them to be their best friend. I never knew this guy at my school existed until it was announced that he died today. I think the best friend thing is a sort of sentimental reaction to death.

I'm in this place where I want to care, but it's difficult because (1) I didn't know him and (2) I don't even recognize his picture. Apparently a lot of my friends know him, whether through actuality or the best friend syndrome I don't know, and I really don't want come off as insensitive. I'll keep his family and friends in mind, but I still haven't reached a point of feeling sad and I probably won't.

However, I find myself with a sort of selfish jealousy that when I went through things like this, I did it alone, with no one there who felt the same things I did. 

I just have some unresolved issues.
Love,
-J-

Stress Coping Methods 101: Don't Panic.

"In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."  -The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

IB French interview tomorrow. It will be over before lunch, YES.
Love,
-J-

"Sons of Rohan!": why musical is awesome.

 It's a helicopter, guys. And the precarious rolling scaffolding.

Closing night was fantastic. I got many pictures of people beforehand and hilarity ensued, as it was an ideal situation for photobombing. Also, my 70's Ellen DeGeneres/tourist in Bangkok costume:

Kaelen says the vest "is made of the purest rainbow-unicorn tears."

Tatyana was also snapping pictures afterwards and she captured this beauty:

Can I #congratulationsonyourface myself? Mind you, it was around 11:30pm at this point, so I had passed into crazy mode. I also appreciate how everybody looks happy except for me and Aidan, who is evilly eating one of the twelve pieces of pizza he consumed last night.

Also, one must appreciate when the entire cast of a musical is eating pizza in the cafeteria around midnight after closing night and someone jumps on a table and recites this speech. It just makes it even better that he was holding a legit sword (that we had used as a prop). My evening was made.

I stayed at the cast party at Victor's until about 2:30am where about thirty people were dancing in the basement until we collapsed, then Reeves played his indie music and Ben and Victor sang a duet from Les Mis.

The terrible thing about musical is that as soon as you're at the best part, it's over. Musical people make my life so happy, then melancholy because I don't see them enough, or they graduate.

I shall now leave my sanity here for safe keeping until this weekend, where it looks like I have no major assignments to work on for the first time since January. But until then... BAH.
Love,
-J-