Starting over again... again

Tonight I started some preliminary college searching. Yes, it's a bit early, but I don't want to get caught like I did last year, missing deadlines and everything (not that I'm not enjoying my time in England. I'm just trying to implement better time management). Right now I have a list of 17 universities in 3 different states. Limiting my search to certain states has helped a lot, and I'm sure once I spend some time really examining the schools I'll be able to shorten the list a lot. It's a little overwhelming, still. I feel a lot better about the process than I did before. I don't know if it's the extra time, the decreased amount of stress, or the fact that I'm starting to figure out some of the things that caused me a couple of dilemmas the last time. I just hope that it's not the result of apathy or disinterest. I have a history of starting things off in a blaze of passion and then letting it all die off. But I don't think I've suffered a decrease in passion; I think I've realized where my passions really lie. I don't think it's the same place I thought it was six months ago.

I'm hacking out a screenplay. It's complete dribble, and it reminds me of NaNoWriMo because I'm tuning my internal editor out. I just want it to be done by the end of the summer. First draft is fine - that's assuming that I'm at draft zero, because I've only focused on dialogue and story at this point, no format or real direction or anything. But it's all in fun, really. I'm not as disciplined in it as I should be, but I write ever single night practically, either emails or journal entries or on the screenplay, which is a vast improvement from the place I was at this past semester. And even though this story is incredibly awful, I've actually thought about it and worked out some plot points to make it more complicated and planned some of the future events so that it's not just surface level complication that I make up as I go along. I still have some issues that I need to work out with my writing, like the way I feel a dark sense of dread when I think about sitting down for more than 20 minutes and putting words down or the way I feel my head twisted in a vise at the thought of coming up with an original and interesting and passionate idea. I've always just assumed that writing was in my future. Maybe I'm just romanticized with the idea of being a writer.

Needless to say, I have lots of things to work out in my life. This really is a great place to do it, though. I have time to think, time to be away, time to let things work themselves out, time to make some somewhat sensible and logical decisions... well, I don't know if there'll ever be time enough for that. I'm not that kind of person. I think that's why I'm attracted to logical guys. Huh.

I was listening to my iTunes "Top 25 Most Played" songs the other day, and can you believe that after several Coldplay songs, the next most listened to song is Beyonce's Crazy in Love?