1st of November (at least, it is in Australia)!

Note:  If you want to read about my personal challenge for this month, read on.  If you want to skip to the proper blog post, skip about 5 paragraphs.

Today I begin my challenge.  It’s entirely self-inflicted.  No one’s making me, I just wanted to make life a little bit harder for myself.  Today, the first of November, is the start of NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing month.  I know it’s not a novel, it’s a blog.  I don’t care.  Anyway, my goal is to write 2000 words a day, every day for the month of November.  The proper goal is to reach 50,000 words, but breaking it up into a smaller goal helps. Really, I could do 1700 words, and still reach the goal, but I’d have to stick to it religiously.  Aiming for 2000 words a day means I can take some days off, not that I’m going to plan for that.

 Before I get too serious about all these promise I’m making, I think I need to set a few things straight.  2000 words a day doesn’t mean that its 2000 words that you want to read.  I have like 3 people who read this blog, so its not like I’m letting them down much.  Just saying, it might be the most boring shit ever. But as long as it hits the word limit, it’s all cool with me.

It probably won’t be 1 massive blog a day.  Or it might be, who knows.  Depends on how I feel, what I’m doing etc.  It also depends on how well the topics flow together.  Ususally there is no flow whatsoever, so I do a numbered list of what I want to talk about.

Anyway.  As much as I’d like to finish this, and do 50,000 words on here, I don’t know if I’ll stick it out.  I hope so though.

I found a list of blog topics to talk about.  While they are not from a list that I wrote personally, they do have some good topics.  I won’t divulge the entire list, otherwise you’ll know what to expect.  Some of them, though, I’ve wanted to blog about anyway, I just haven’t gotten around to doing it. 

My topic for today: Things that scare the shit out of me.

I never really thought about my fears until somewhat recently.  I didn’t really have any.  Lots of people are deathly afraid of spiders, snakes, homosexuals, etc.  I never had a problem with that sort of stuff.  I’ve seen plenty of my friends scream and run around like idiots because of tiny little bugs.  In situations like that, I’m pretty cool, calm and collected, but it scares me when everyone else starts screaming and looking at me, because I apparently have a bug near me.  Why do you scream if it’s not on you?  Its on me, and I’m not screaming, so why are you?  It makes the whole situation seem a lot more terrifying than it is.  It’s like when I come around a corner, and nearly walk into the Cleaning Nazi (my mother).  She screams (  OH MY GOD WHAT IS MY CHILD DOING IN THIS HOUSE THAT WE SHARE!?) and I end up more startled than anyone else, because there’s people screaming at me.  I don’t even understand how people scream when they’re scared.  When I’m startled, the first thought in my head is to emit a piercing shriek.  I have to work hard at that, so why would I do it every time I’m surprised?  How do people do it so quickly? 

Anyway, I was never really afraid of anything.  I’m still not scared of anything, in the sense that I would scream as soon as I saw something I was afraid of.  Probably because the one thing I’m kind of scared of is massive.  Like, covering 70% of the planet kind of massive.  I’m scared of the ocean.

Now, I used to be a decent swimmer, but after a few years of not swimming, I can pretty much say I can’t swim.  I nearly drowned in the ocean once, on a school camp type thing, but it was before I was afraid of the ocean.  If it was after I developed my fear, I would have drowned, no doubt about it.  We went out on a boat to some shitty little island to go snorkelling or some crap.  We got there, and the “island” was a bunch of crushed up coral that you couldn’t walk on without shoes.  We got into the water, and it was the full on cut-up-your-limbs coral that gives people infections and attracts sharks.  Not the best place to dump a bunch of 16 year olds.

 They kind of pushed us in the water to swim, even though it was freezing and not safe to swim in.  We all went in anyway, and the current was too strong.  So there’s like 30 kids drowning simultaneously.  Not because we were bad swimmers, but because the water was too cold, fast moving, and if we touched the ground we’d lose a leg or two.  Someone had to get into a canoe and rescue everyone.  I was hit over the head with the canoe, and pushed under the water by it before they realised I was there, and then they rescued me.  It wasn’t pleasant.  They people who didn’t go in were worse off somehow, all crowded around one guy who got a massive chunk of coral inside his big toe.  He had to peel back a layer of skin and rip it out.  Poor guy. 

My other important experience of the ocean was also before I was afraid of it.  I went on a cruise ship around Vanuatu and New Caledonia.  It was a good experience, but I’m never going back to those places, I’ve seen it once, don’t need to do it again.  But yeah, stuck on a massive boat for 10 days.  I got a bit freaked out when I stood at the front of the boat (as far to the front as passengers could get) and saw that I was completely surrounded by ocean, nothing else on the horizon, with civilisation days away in any direction.  But that didn’t cause my fear of the ocean.

It was a picture.  Not even like a photo.  A sort of cartoonish representation of how deep the ocean is, in comparison to other things.  The deepest part of the ocean (that we know about so far) us called the Mariana Trench.  I googled it to find out more info just before, and the wikipedia page is scaring me.  Mostly because it has a map of where it is, and it’s WAY TOO CLOSE to Australia for my liking.  It’s closer to Japan/China etc. but still.  Too close for me.  (Knowing its location, I now understand why Asia cops all the sea monsters in movies)

Anyway, this picture is scary.  It starts off showing the ocean, with a single pixel to represent a 6ft tall man.  It shows the size of a whale, and says that it can dive to 350ft maximum, on this picture, that’s nothing at all.  It shows where the Empire State Building would go up to if it were completely submerged. Now, I’ve never seen the Empire State Building, but I know it’s fucking huge.  BUT we’re still only at the very top of the picture, at 1250ft deep.

At 3280, light can no longer penetrate the ocean at this depth.

Skip down to 13,120ft.  The beginning of the Abyssal Zone.  Apparently, this is where the freaky shit lives.  Like an idiot, I continue to scroll down.

20,000ft.  It’s called the Hadal Zone, where pressure is 1100x more than on the surface.  My brain can’t handle imagining numbers this big, especially in distances and pressures.  Apparently, there is STILL life at this depth.

31.000ft.  The height of a commercial aircraft. Except underwater.  In complete blackness.  With stuff living down there.  Oh Jesus.

36,000ft.  The Challenger Deep.  Lowest known point in the ocean so far.  Only 10% of the ocean floor has been mapped though.  Kill me now.

Let’s give you an idea of what sorts of things are down there at the bottom of the ocean.  Remember the anglerfish from Finding Nemo?  The scary looking thing with the light on its head?  Stuff worse than that.

 Like the Viper Fish.

 The Fang Tooth.

  

 The Dragon Fish. 

 The Gulper Eel (you need to see a picture of this before you realise how messed up it is).

 The Giant Isopod (it looks like a Pokemon, but scary)

 The Vampire Squid.

 The Coffinfish 

 The Yeti Crab (Ok, it’s not scary.  More funny than anything else, but it’s still a scary thought that animals like these are only being discovered now)

Did you notice that these names weren’t particularly flattering?  They aren’t called the Cuddly Snuggle Monster, or the Honey Bunny Squishy Pie.  They’re likened to fucking vampires, vipers, dragons and coffins!  While they have cool names, you get the picture that you don’t wanna fuck with these things.

And THAT is why I am afraid of the ocean.

I’m also scared of ET.  The wrinkly little  alien thing with a massive phone bill.  I’m not sure why I find it so creepy, but I just do.  One of my earliest memories was hiding behind the couch at Granny’s place because the movie was on tv.  Even now I can’t watch it.  I try and laugh it off, and just say its boring and make a joke about how I used to be scared of it.  Really, I don’t watch it because I sit up for hours that night, thinking about it.  I have an unhealthy interest in aliens/space/that sort of stuff.  But, I’m afraid of it.  Not nearly as bad as my fear of the ocean though.

 Put it this way.  If I was given the opportunity to go into space, land on an alien planet with the expectation of making contact, I would do it in a heart beat.  I’d be afraid of running into aliens, but I wouldn’t let it stop me.  On the other hand, if I was asked to go to the bottom of the ocean and see what sort of life was there, no fucking way.  Even if I know that logically, nothing larger than bacteria can survive at the very bottom, I’d still never do it.  Ever.  Just because you could get to the bottom, look around a bit, and realise that the ground you’re standing on is fucking Cthulhu’s face?

I did a word count, and I’m not quite at 2000 words yet.  Currently at 1750 or so.  Really, I’ve done my necessary amount of writing for today, but I’ll keep going to 2000, because I know I won’t be able to keep this up for an entire month, so every word I write now will help me later.  After finishing all that, I went to the NaNoWriMo forums, just to see how other people  are handling their 1^st of November.  Its strange how much effort people put into this sort of stuff.  I used to be like them, with all these story ideas that needed to get out of my head and on to paper.  I’ve run out of the time and patience needed to write fiction anymore.  I kind of miss it, but I know I really don’t have the time to do it.  I’ll get around to it eventually, probably later in life when I take long service leave, or I’m pregnant or something.  It sucks to put off something like this to an indefinite date, but I just don’t have time anymore.

  Now that I’m at uni, I find myself counting.  Counting the dollars in my bank account. Counting the number of hours and minutes left in my work shift.  Counting the number of days until my assignment is due.  Counting the days that I’ve stayed home and relaxed.  Its ridiculous.  Not long now though.  I only have to wait until November 13^th, when uni is finished for the year (for me, anyway).  Then I’ll be on holidays, and back to the way I was living after high school.  Working whenever I was bored, shopping just about every day.  Not worrying about hangovers.  Spending guilt-free time with the boyfriend. I know on the holidays that I’m going to miss being at uni, and having something to pass the time, but at the moment, I can’t wait to get out.  Good news, everybody, I’m over 2000 words now. I’ll finish this on exactly 2100 words. Done.