First of all what your experiencing is not unique. We all get it. The first year of college was the worst part of my life so far, I've tried to figure out if it was any particular aspect of it that made it so horrible. It shouldn't have been, I just woke up one day and realised it was going to be terrible, in fact I probably should have seen it coming with all the extra stuff I was taking on, but failing to keep up with. But It did work out that I woke up and said to myself, that this was going to be bad. Maybe that's the problem with being a realist, instead of a pessimist. You never seem to see it coming.

And, yes I would be surprised if no one else in our amazing writing community has never experienced that phase where you start putting off a post with excuses, like exams. Not that they are excuses...maybe that was poor use of words, but trust in the fact that everyone feels so much better if you tell them in advance. Plus you don't feel like complete Do'Do head.

I guess what I'm saying is that it is good to have these bad times, because you get taken to your limit. It sets up boundaries in your life. So you know now that you never ever want to let it get to that point again. In fact I envy people who don't realise how bad their situations getting, coz the moment you realize it you will never feel more awful. Oh and it helps you appreciate the good times even more.

I had a very wonderful grandfather. In terms of how wonderful people are, he was a stellar 15 on the scale of 1 - 10. He did some things I didn't like, but then don't all humans? But for the most part he was perfect. I think, even though you don't know him Vanessa, its time to break out some of his advice and pass it along to you. It might help, and it might not help at all. But honestly, I remember this memory so clearly like it was just yesterday he gave it to me, and truthfully I think I was six or seven at the time. I used to collect rocks - huge agates, anything shiny, striped, spotted, and lovely. I still do, picking them up here and there, to remember this place or that place. I have chunks of geodes as door stops, and of course if you know my blogs from elsewhere, you know I have a slight fetish for precious gemstone skull carvings. But that's neither here nor there.

Here's what Ervin had to say to me once. I was talking to him when I was really little. We were sitting out on the back porch of his lovely house that was built on the side of a creek overlooking sheep filled pastures and one of the most beautiful flower gardens you've ever seen. I'd just brought in a batch of agates which I remember as being huge - almost fist sized. I doubt now that they were that big, but they seemed that big at the time. I was having problems at school... not with the studies, but with other children. I told him a little about my problems as I was showing him my rocks I'd just collected. He took one of them and ran his hands across it. I remember this memory so clearly because it matched something my grandmother once told me about faith. He smelled like spearmint skoal - a chewing tobacco, and wore a pair of jeans, a dark t-shirt, and a jean jacket that was lined with wool. His hair was peppered grey and silver, though I remember when it was coal black and I'd guessed it would be black forever.

He took that rock, ran his thumb all over it, and told me that people were like these rocks. They were different and changing each and every new angle you looked at them. He turned the rock over and over in his hands, pointing out that it was smooth in some places, jagged in others, and though it was a hunk of moss agate, you could only see the little plant-like formations in it at certain angles because it was really really rough. What he was trying to say... that maybe I didn't understand at the time but really stuck with me over the years... is that you have a whole lot of sides to you.

Every angle, every breath, every thought is from a slightly different view of that same rock we held in our hands that day. Each and every side of it needs attention and wants to play, sometimes all at the same time. It's really hard and confusing being a human. You can be both a sinner and a saint all in one breath. One doesn't diminish the other, but truthfully augments it. Reading a blog like this from you makes me smile in some ways. Not because your depressed - I don't think that at all about you. I think your a highly intelligent young woman that is far more than surface fluff, and that gets to her sometimes. I can tell you think about everything, probably overthink a lot of things too. You get frustrated at yourself because you want to finish one thing before you start another, and it doesn't always happen that way. Well, thats a lot like life. We have to be a whole bunch of people at once, and truthfully work on a whole lot of projects at the same time before we get even one done.

I just took three months to get an Akalak writeup done that I've been promising Coatl for months... when I wrote a Vantha writeup in three hours. Why? I think sometimes you have to wait until some invisible force - namely life - holds that rock that is our life in its hands and turns it to just the right angle where something is unleashed that can get something done. It's not your fault. It's just the way the world works. Some people (and I'm definitely not one of these) can manipulate things so they can get life to turn them to and fro to get things done. But by and large the rest of us have to wait for the 'mood to strike us'. I think thats why. And thats my grandfather Ervin's wisdom.

But please remember one thing. We here are all on your side. No one is judging you. No one is impatient. We are acutely... every one of us... aware that things happen in their own time and in their own way, and we're happy to wait for that time to come about.

You should be too.

Hello Malia. I just want to tell you I think you're a wonderful person. Please don't worry about us in Mura! I don't mind waiting, and if you ever need my assistance, I'll so willing to help you out.

Awww, I saved all your comments, because they really made me feel understood and supported. Thank you very much!

I guess I just have to turn my own stone around until I find the side that loves Mura and Mizahar and it's community. Then I'll be productive again. At least I did some other RPG posts at the weekend, so that's a beginning.

Plus, no one of us has really time to get depressed because of NaNoWriMo. <3

You got that damn right!