A Stupid Little Update, Plus A Challenge

I feel like I'm making a high school MySpace blog post with this one, but I'm seriously in the mood for writing about what I've been into lately. As you might know, school started up for me this week, and this is how I've been surviving it.

Music I'm Listening To
End Measured Mile by Make Do and Mend
Grey Britain by Gallows
Death is Birth by Gallows
Let's Talk About Feelings (re-issue) by Lagwagon

Books I'm Reading
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I used some of my Christmas money to finally get some new music, which I'm glad I did. Now that classes at MAC have started up for me, I have a lot of time to listen to that music while driving to and from school. Gallows really satisfies my craving for some quality hardcore, and since Grey Britain is such a good album, I'll probably come back to it over and over again when I feel like listening to something on the heavier side of punk. Death is Birth is good, too, despite featuring an entirely new singer. Even for EP standards it's pretty short (four songs totaling 7-and-a-half minutes, one of them literally under 40 seconds), but it demonstrates how well the band is adapting to losing their previous front man Frank Carter (who carried a lot of weight in the band's songwriting) and welcoming their new one (who used to sing for Alexisonfire). Death is Birth has an uncharacteristically berserk feel for the band, but what that tells me is that the band isn't going to chase Frank Carter's shadow--rather, they're accepting the loss and taking on a new direction.

But for now, I'm done boring you with my tedious opinions about music, haha. Instead, I want to bore with something that came up while I was reading Tuesdays with Morrie (which I'm really liking, a bit to my surprise). While the main focus of the book is about Mitch Albom revisiting his old college professor Morrie Schwartz on his death bed, there are occasional flash backs to Mitch's college courses with Morrie. In one such flashback, Morrie convinces Mitch to write an honors thesis. Despite Mitch's initial hesitation, he eventually writes a 112-page thesis on how football has become ritualistic in American society.

Hold the phone, I thought. One hundred and twelve pages? I've never written anything even close to that length. Even my semester-long research paper for Comp 2 was little more than eight pages when I finished it, and that was the biggest writing assignment I've ever had. To me right now, it seems insane to write anything beyond 15 pages. It scares me to even think of it. I'm too accustomed to 3-5 page essays, a usual requirement for my college courses. But I realize if I want to be a better writer, I'm gonna have to write more than simple essays someday. Suppose I decide to write a novel? Can't very well fit one of those into 3-5 pages of intro-body-conclusion, can I? And what if I want to write short stories? Some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best are well over 20 pages (at least in the compilation I've been reading).

So that's how I came up with this challenge. This year, I'm going to write something longer than anything I've ever written. In this case, it means I have to write something longer than 8 pages, so for now I'm shooting for 10. And after that, I'm going to write something longer yet. And I'll keep going until 112 pages doesn't seem like such a horrifying task.

As long as I've dragged out this blog post, I'm probably not off to a bad start, haha. One more thing before I wrap it up, though: I do want to say that I'm getting more out of Tuesdays with Morrie than dwelling over one detail completely inconsequential to the story's plot. I admire Morrie's outlook on life through the lens of death, and I wish more people would examine their lives as though they were dying. I know death is normally a morbid topic, but I think bearing your death in mind brings you closer to actually living. I think that's what Morrie is trying to teach Mitch, but I still have half the book to read.