A lot of my phone calls are punctuated by awkward silences, usually initiated by me. This causes whoever I’m talking to to think that I’m doing something else and not paying attention, but most of the time, I’m actually just sitting there, staring into space. I listen. I just don’t talk. It’s rather pathetic, if I do say so myself, but it seems I’ll always be that way.

Still, I feel kind of bad for being such a terrible phone conversationalist. I hardly ever call anyone “to chat,” so whenever I’m on the phone, it’s usually because someone called me. And I’m pretty sure no one wants to call someone just to spend every other minute in silence. :(

So… for all of you phone addicts, what exactly keeps you on the phone for so long?

Anyway, Halloween was actually major suckage this year, but I’m pretending it was all good because it’s depressing if Halloween isn’t fun. But seriously, a test? A test? Mr. Economics Teacher, I really don’t think you understand the concept of Halloween. Believe it or not, most of your students are just kids in high-schoolers’ bodies. We want candy, not tests.

Also, R.I.P. all the fun in the first week of November, due to a Calculus test, a Spanish project, and a Lit project.

I’m really upset about this. I don’t believe in gay marriage, but I also don’t believe in walking around with a sign that says “Yes on Prop 8″ in the middle of a park. True, it’s not as bad as waving around a sign that reads “God hates gays” (which isn’t true), but I can’t find a way to participate in this march while showing God’s love at the same time.

I guess the reason my mom didn’t ask for permission to sign me up was because I have participated in a march before — about four years ago. The difference between now and then is this: four years ago, I went because I was twelve years old and my parents told me to. Now, I am almost seventeen, and even though my parents are telling me to, I don’t want to go.

The thing is, I want to honor my parents. Part of my mind is reminding me of how many sacrifices they’ve made for me, asking me why I can’t just make this one little sacrifice for them. And I want to believe that voice. But I can’t. Because this kind of march is not for me.

Apparently, I’ve been deluded.

There was one shot where he didn’t want me to smile at all. So I tried to set my mouth into a straight line, but he didn’t seem to like it very much and asked for a “soft smile,” whatever that means. So I tried that, and he immediately went, “No, no, that’s a smirk.” :D

This year, I’ve decided to look at school with a new mindset. In the past few years, I’ve mostly been content with just “getting by” (with the exception of a few classes… like Geometry), but this year I really want to put my all into every class — to excel, instead of just drifting along and picking up a few things here and there.

A lot of this is due to the fact that I’m currently taking AP Literature, the one class I wanted to take in high school ever since I learned of its existence. I took a great English class last year, but I grew lazy during the second semester and, as a result, didn’t learn as much as I could’ve. I don’t want that to happen this year.

I can’t say I’ll keep this resolution throughout the whole year. In fact, I’ve already kind of failed because I scribbled some random junk on an Economics worksheet because (1) I didn’t feel like doing it, and (2) the teacher wasn’t collecting it. It’s a bad habit of mine that I really have to kick.

Also, the Olympics closing ceremony was amazing. Not quite as jaw-dropping as the opening ceremony, but awesome nonetheless. Plus there were people dressed up as the official mascots; the panda is incredibly adorable. *__*

Sadly, I didn’t get to watch as much of the Olympics as I wanted to because I was trying to cram in the rest of my summer homework. :P I especially wanted to watch the discus throwing, but apparently the “field” element of “track and field” doesn’t get that much screen time, so I pretty much missed all of it — except for this commercial for General Electric.

On a random note, Coca-Cola had the best commercial ever, although I only saw it in its entirety once.

She was a lot shorter than I remembered, which makes sense because I’m guessing I last saw her when I was five or six. And I’ve definitely grown several feet since then. She smiled a lot more, too, but that’s because she used to be the “mean teacher.” It was nice to see that even though she didn’t baby us while we were kids, she still cared about us. I wouldn’t have understood that when I was little.

Looking back, it’s easy to see why I started in sixth grade. Sixth grade was the year I entered middle school and started to doubt everything about myself.

Prior to sixth grade, I’d never cared about self-image. I didn’t have to — because I was smart. And in elementary school, just being smart can give you a dangerous edge. If you have brains, you have respect.

When I started sixth grade, however, I discovered that I couldn’t depend only on my brains because — surprise! — there were other smart people in the world. In fact, some of them were even smarter than I was. And for the first time in my life, I began to notice the stuff on the outside: they were prettier than I was, they were skinnier than I was, etc.

I was neither hideous nor overweight, but I was also neither beautiful nor thin. I was just kind of normal. But, ironically, by being normal, I was being different.

I don’t think anyone ever explicitly said anything to me about being different. I just felt different. I felt like I didn’t belong, and I hated that feeling. So I learned to suppress those emotions whenever they arose. It was easier to lie to myself and say everything was okay than to feel sad because I felt left out.

I didn’t expect it to work. It did. It worked so well that I soon turned Project Apathy into a full-scale project. Anywhere and everywhere I felt left out, I would manipulate my emotions so they would all say the same thing: “I don’t care.”

This was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I traded away all of my emotions — even the good ones — for temporary security. While I could argue that this was beneficial because it kept me from blowing up over little things, I see now that I didn’t stop my anger. I just bottled it up until I couldn’t take it anymore and blew up, usually over something ridiculously petty.

It’s taken me four or five years to finally admit that I’ve been participating in and supporting a project that’s really not good for me. Project Apathy may have made me feel safe, but at a deadly cost. And looking at the person I am now, I see that it all wasn’t worth it.

I want my happiness back.

These three started breaking yesterday. Ironically, yesterday was the day I finished Catch-22 (the first of two books on my summer reading list), decided to start Frankenstein, and gave up out of boredom after the first page. Yesterday was also the first day all summer that I woke up after 12 noon. Obviously, when I’m unproductive, the appliances in my house decide to follow suit.

In other news, I discovered that I had a Katbot at Petshopgirls Reviews. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with it, but it is cute, so I’m sticking it in this entry. :)