Starting Graduate School, struggling with routines, and other things.

[davetheanalyzer]

Near the end of the month and I still struggle with sleep and tiredness issues. Reading and writing can still get slowed down or stalled by the issue. For writing, it can become an endless “Yes or no” about editing choices and that caused such stress that I felt a pinching in my stomach and I decided to take the rest of a week off. That amount of stress is away for now but I still can’t get rid of the tiredness that comes when I read. My mom suggested staring at my laptop for much of the day might be the cause but I’m unsure. I’ve been staring at a screen for years and it hasn’t been effecting me like this before. Maybe it’s my new laptop? I’ve dimmed the screen a bit to test if that might help and the eye strain has gone away a bit. Last Thursday night/Friday morning, I couldn’t sleep, so I slept around the clock again. It didn’t help, as I read and wrote even more slowly, but I didn’t like the thought of sleeping even less to stay on schedule.

Starting school again might help in some way or complicate matters. I went to orientation to get some basic information straightened out and read through the syllabi, intimidated by the work ahead but reminding myself other syllabi have intimidated me before yet I was able to handle classes fine. I’ve begun both classes, Writing Portfolio and The Creative Process, on the 30^th and it was a rather anticlimactic setup. For one, Writing Portfolio was about posting introductions on a forum and I was only one of a few others who posted on Wednesday. Granted, the class only has nine people total including me but it was a sluggish day. I also got an email from the professor for The Creative Process and wrote to him to clarify how long daily writing journal entries should be. He graciously said they needn’t be long, and can just cover about one subject per day. I’ll make my first 500 word online journey entry summarizing what led me to become a writer first, since that’s due tomorrow. I don’t know an exact reason but from assigned reading, Stephen King’s “On Writing,” I don’t believe that’s the point. Just to describe your experiences on your way to writing.

Then I need to critique a sample of someone’s work for Writing Portfolio, an echo of writing workshops at Quinnipiac, but fortunately we’re only going through one a week, so the workload mightn’t be huge for that until I submit and then revise my six pages of prose. With the nonfiction and poetry that would be also on display, it’s hoped our critiques from different subject areas would bring unique and valued feedback. Reading the forum, a few of my fellow students are those who are older and/or have families, so that’ll be a interesting experience I might explore. I might respond to some of the forum introductions and comments out of courtesy and to get to know them.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t post chapters 4 and 5 of We Will Hold On Forever before August ends due to that tiredness and stress issue. I think I might post them at the end of this week. I’m powering through the second read through of my next set of chapters and despite my initial struggles, I’m finding not much issues. There are one or two things I’m questioning and I might go back and work on, but hopefully it won’t delay everything too much. I hope I can continue to post on semimonthly basis with the school load I’m about to get. With this, and my tiredness issue, I think I’m going to take another week off of my usual watching and reading patterns to see and adjust to the amount of schoolwork as well as see if going cold turkey there would help or not. I’ll still watch some weekly shows but maybe pause every four or five minutes or so to work with my fic and school writing. I’ll see if it works out. I hope it will.

I saw War for the Planet of the Apes earlier in the month. I watched the previous two movies when I heard they were good and they were. Unfortunately, it was awhile since I saw them and I couldn’t remember names beyond Caesar and Donkey and such. Fortunately, all of the apes had pretty distinctive appearances, so I could identify most of them by sight. It was a pretty political and heavy film, with analogies about prejudice that were a through line of the trilogy being brought to the forefront when almost everyone part of Caesar’s community gets captured and put into a hellish concentration camp.

Caesar’s arc seems to be about how his vengeance put everyone in that kind of danger and him having to take responsibility with the consequences for him and everyone else and boost morale. It was cool to see him having to deal with him having to resist not going down the same path as the bloodthirsty Koba and how he wrestles back his understandably flared enmity toward humanity with the mute girl Nova and a few others. It’s a pity his vengeance comes with having his wife and eldest son get fridged. One of the downsides of this trilogy is the small amount of female characters. Those present all have the potential to be interesting, but they aren’t as explored as much or have as prominent of roles.

The muting disease that’s shown with Nova and is a through line in the movie. Big Bad McCullough seems to believe that it mentally degenerates humans who catch it and those who have it must be put down, even his own son. Not only is that pretty ableist, but it’s ambiguous if those who are mute have their intelligence robbed. Nova’s display of intelligence seems no different from a girl her age and is beginning to communicate with sing language. The northern army, who don’t talk, are able to coordinate their attacks pretty well. Even with this, I’m sure humanity might’ve been able to live alongside the apes with an equal society if McCullough hadn’t ruined all the things.

Even after all he went through, in the climax Caesar can understandably still not let go of his hatred of McCullough, after his conversations with him and all the pain he caused his group. But when he finds McCullough has the muting disease, he has a cliché but well done silent scene where he doesn’t kill him and pities him, before McCullough kills himself. The fight scenes were horrible but well crafted. I did like the human character who appeared he might defect didn’t, as there are people who sense the system’s wrong but don’t have the nerve or thinking to rebel. Donkey or Red, on the other hand, whose so brutal as one of Koba’s now McCullough aligned followers, ends up saving Caesar after fellow apes start getting slaughtered while McCullough’s group should be fighting the northern army. It’s a testament to how you sometimes don’t know who will change for the better and it’s Caesar going back for vengeance that gives him the opportunity to die honorably.

But if Caesar hadn’t went back fir vengeance, he mightn’t have sustained the mortal injuries that claim him. I could understand why he only told Maurice so as to not disturb the others celebrating about coming to their new, pristine home, but he should have at least allowed his remaining son and a few others to say goodbye for him before he dies. They will be upset either way but they might be especially so if what they want to say or finish up is left unsaid. I did enjoy several other characters, with Maurice being a friend to kids. Bad Ape was an elderly dorky delight and, Nova was precious. I hope she lives happily with the apes. I did like it when Rocket, I think, used the classic “primate throwing poo” to get a guard’s attention and taunt him before he was captured and used for the escape plan. Despite my complaints, I did enjoy the movie and I’m curious to see where, if the box office is kind, they’d take the franchise from here.

That’s all for now. I’m typing after ten, having went out earlier in the day to participate in a study where I sat in a MRI. I might talk more about this next month. Until then, see you!