"Dear dad"

I get moments where flashes of inspiration come to me, and I spend the next few minutes-hours-days trying to get all my ideas out of my head. I've always said that my muse was my family, but I think now that my muse is pain.

Over the weekend, I realized that I want to draw and write part of a graphic novel for my Contemporary American Life Writing's final project, and I wanted to write it about my father. I thought that jotting some ideas down before going to bed would be a good way to relax. I was wrong. I spent most of the night trying to breathe and slow down my heart as memories flooded my brain. I should have gotten up and tried to organize everything, but I kept hoping I would fall asleep because I had plans to get up early the next morning and do homework. I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up about fifteen minutes before my alarm went off with my heart in the same state of duress.

Equal to my father's failures loomed memories of my own. I had my methods of dealing with how screwed up my family was, which included locking everyone out, including my littlest siblings, who needed me. And I realize what looms over that is God's grace, which for some reason remains a constant in my life.

If I can pull off this small section of a graphic novel, then my theme is: "Dear dad: I am different despite you, not because of you."

Living a Jane Austen novel

UPDATE: I have added why I started writing my life as an Austen novel. In case you so wanted to know. And I know you did.

Literature of the 19th century is one of my classes this semester, and while the novels are fun to read, the ideas my professor relates to us can get rather tedious. Last week, during one of his soliloquies, I was suddenly intrigued by the idea of what my life might look like if I were in one of Austen's novels. I've had to adjust some details for it. My family is just too modern for Austen.

But some pieces:

One of their mother’s beaus was a foppish, silly sort of man named Matthew Mark. He had never previously been married, yet Mrs. Pith’s eight children and widowed status did not frighten him. When he wooed Mrs. Pith, he was just developing a trading company. Soon after his rejected proposal, the company flourished and, unable to accept her refusal, he constantly offered Mrs. Pith and her children presents. It showed the family’s lack of propriety when they accepted the gifts, and it revealed their prudence when they carefully hid the source of the offerings. In fact, the children believed that it couldn’t be helped. The family was in need and he was offering assistance. The mother only learned the extent of the gifts the children graciously received on her behalf when she saw them flouncing around wearing the latest bonnets from Paris.

__________

One of the Pith boys had nearly enlisted in the military, but he did not have the money to pay a debt he owed. The second Pith boy, having found a sponsor, was headed to University; and the third, still too young for such decisions, simply did what young boys did best, and teased his sisters.