While this creates all kinds of fun for me (like teaching new writers about why they should learn AP style, why we use just a single space after periods, etc.), it also sets me up for some unplanned exposure to information that can really make a movie (or TV show) not as enjoyable as it should be when I finally make it to the theater. Sometimes it’s a writer’s first time crafting a review, and one of the most common traps that new writers fall into, especially those without much to actually say about the film, is to just write a synopsis of the plot, which is a real downer for the people reading it who want to be surprised by all the twists and turns.

So, it raises a bit of a conundrum, especially considering I’m Blast’s only copy editor. If I have to edit a piece that will unintentionally spoil a movie, TV show, book, etc., what recourse do I have, especially in the age of digital media and a news cycle that doesn’t sleep? Waiting until after I’ve seen it doesn’t always work, as I’m usually the last person to catch a film in theater before it goes into that waiting period to appear on DVD. Personally, I just bite the bullet, edit it, and try to teach the writer to be a little less revealing next time around — with an ever-changing staff, it doesn’t always last, but that’s just the nature of the job, I suppose.

So, what do you do when you have to copy edit spoiler-filled material? Do you grit your teeth and plow through? Do you make a colleague who doesn’t care, or who you don’t care for, edit it instead? Do you wait until you’ve seen it for yourself and let the glaring typos and grammatical errors sit there for all to see until you get around to it?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do once I finally graduate, and Ivona and I discussed it yesterday. We’re both feeling like this past winter, during which we got into such boring routines, is not how we envisioned these years of our lives and the first years of our marriage. Yes, we’re intensely happy together, but there’s more to life that we feel we’re missing out on.

So, with that in mind, I’m considering renewing my plans of spending a summer riding a bike around the country, camping out along the way. The plan is to go hashing as many places as we can along the way, and I can’t think of anything better to do to make me feel like I’m alive again. I think the last time I really felt that way was in France.

Anyway, whatever I decide to do next, I know it has to be a big change. Any suggestions?

Anyway, I was supposed to be graduating, and I sort of freaked about the fact that I didn’t have a job lined up, didn’t have any money, felt like I had no prospects, etc. Now that I feel like I have a little more time, I don’t feel the pressure quite as strong as I did before, but it’s still there and I can’t help but be stressed out about it, even if it’s a sort of subconscious, subtle stress. I don’t sit here freaking about it, but it’s always lingering in the back of my mind.

Currently, Ivona and I are searching for not one, but two apartments; one on the Vineyard for the summer so we can work down there, and one in Amherst for the fall; and we’re potentially buying a used car that we found a pretty good deal for. I’m looking forward to that change, of getting out of Amherst, of having some money again, and I feel like I’m sort of sitting here waiting for that to happen. I’m almost looking forward to the insane work schedule (probably going to average 14 hours a day, seven days a week), because I know I do best when I’m constantly moving and doing things. Part of what got me into this rut is sitting around so much and not doing anything. Vicious cycle. I’m in a rut because I’m not doing anything, and I’m not doing anything because I’m in a rut.

Alex and I had a brainstorming session a couple weeks ago to work on a screenplay. We’re developing a story I had very roughly sketched out, coupled with a general theme that has been bothering both of us lately and that Alex pretty neatly summed up with the term “quarter-life crisis.” We’ll see how it goes, if it does, but lately I’ve been more and more thinking that I want to write a version of the story on my own, maybe in book form. It has less to do with my feelings about how a screenplay written with my brother would turn out, because I think we could do some great work together, and more to do with the feeling that I really want to accomplish something on my own. I feel like not many things are turning out the way I want them to, and if I really want to be a writer, I need to take it seriously and do it.

I guess that’s the state of affairs right now in my world. If any of you have some great tip or secret to getting your life back on track, please share.

And so those days of subtle genius gone
Days spent fishing for leaves in the back yard
Full of hammocks and skinned knees, dew at dawn
And the dog has been missing since the sun went down

He bounds into view with the sun at noon
A strange creature with five legs instead of four
One dangles from his mouth, clearly not his own
And it will be used for walking no more

As blood stains the deck and drips from his mouth
It is a strangely beautiful nightmare
One that leaves a wanting for the waking
A curiosity for the mortal

Bent and broken at all the wrong angles
Flesh stripped away in no certain pattern
And no one will touch it save the dog and
Flies begin to materialize and feast

We three sit with our faces against glass
Groaning complaints of the sight and smell
And turning away is not an option

It stays for two days and quickly becomes
An average, common place sight
Like some everyday monstrosity

And when it leaves under cover of night
Reclaimed by some wandering creature
And no longer some scavenger’s bounty
We are forlorn and must look elsewhere for decay

And we are not disappointed, to say the least.

The theme of this semester seems to be centered on objectivity and subjectivity. These are ideas I’ve dealt with a lot as a journalist, but lately I’ve really been thinking about it a lot. As I wrote in one of my papers for Covering Race lately, as a journalism student I’ve been told that objectivity is the highest ideal. I’ve pursued it, trying to keep my personal beliefs and opinions out of the discussion. I always had the feeling that perfect objectivity was unnattainable, but lately I’m feeling like even imperfect objectivity doesn’t even exist.

It’s hard to deny that all actions and all speech and writing are political. For some of you Americans, you may need to broaden your perspective on what the word “political” means. What I mean is that just about everything anyone does has an agenda. I know this isn’t some crazy new idea, but my point is that as a journalist and writer, it’s something I need to reconcile on a philosophical level. If nothing else, I want to maintain my integrity and feel like what I do in the world has a purpose and goal. If I’m told throughout all these years that writing objectivity is how I do that most effectively, what does it say about my world view if I’ve suddenly decided it’s impossible to do so?

This is a much abbreviated version of the post I want to make about this, and I’ll expand on it more and more as I figure it out in my own head. But for now the conclusion I’ve come to, as to how I can rationalize calling myself a journalist while knowing that objectivity is impossible, is that I need to change my definition of goals. Instead of trying to be objective, honesty and integrity need to be the mainstays of my profession.

These days, mainstream media is a joke, and I don’t fancy the idea of being a cog in that machine. That’s part of why I wanted to start my own blog: freedom of choice and speech. Here I can really be honest and maintain my integrity to myself. True, I’m not going to make a living at it, and I haven’t really started writing journalistically here. But at least here I can say “this is what I stand for and believe in, and here’s how I see the world.”

I think subconsciously, when I realized objectivity was an illusion, which is a conclusion I came upon a few years ago, I was disillusioned by the profession in its entirety. My faith in it is coming back; driving a garbage truck all last winter and listening to NPR for several hours a day helped that. More than anything, though, I’m coming to terms with how to cope in a subjective world. If nothing else, I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not to sell my stories. Hell, I could give up my morals for plenty of other jobs and make better money if I wanted to.

Anyway, this is sort of a rough sketch of my ideas on objectivity and subjectivity. I may come back and edit this, or post a more polished version later on, or some of the papers I’m working on that expand on it. In the meantime, if you have thoughts about what objectivity and subjectivity mean to you, I’d be happy to hear them and maybe gain some insight.

I’d put this together a little more, but that mouth problem I mentioned earlier has gotten considerably worse. It’s infected now and the infection is spreading to the ear, and it’s pretty damn painful and getting worse. Oddly enough, it even hurts on the right side of my scalp, and I get shooting pains through my ear and up to the top of my head. Ugh. Depending on my state of affairs in the morning I’ll be going to the doctor to get some antibiotics and, hopefully, some painkillers that’ll knock me out for a couple of days. It couldn’t be shittier timing; I have two presentations and a paper due tomorrow, all of which I worked my ass off today to do a good job on, and oddly enough I was actually looking forward to giving them. Shocker, I know. When the hell did I become a good student again?

She broke up with me through email. Allison and I were 13 years old; we had made out consistently for a whole week, taking breaks for meals of course, and agreed to “try to make the distance work.” Two weeks after her summer vacation ended and she was back home, she said she couldn’t stand the distance, that maybe we should leave our options open, but she wanted to remain friends. And so, my first break-up came from my computer screen.

Now, ten years later, I read and re-read the email from the United States Center for Immigration Services, which announces that, after four months of waiting, my request for a visa for my fiancée, Ivona, has been approved.

I am definitely a product of the iGeneration; my cell phone is glued to one hand, my iPod to the other, and I was quite literally weened on a keyboard, according to my mother. I have had entire romantic relationships (with people I’ve known “in real life” beforehand) play out almost exclusively on AOL Instant Messenger. I think it’s fitting, therefore, that my first romantic trauma, as well as my greatest romantic triumph, have been revealed to me by the glow of a monitor, with the faint buzzing of processor fans to keep me company.

Iskra was the AIM girl. She and I had been in an English class together our freshman year, and I developed a crush pretty quickly. On the last day of class for the semester, I asked not for her phone number, but for her screen name.

We chatted briefly now and then and discovered we shared taste in music, and we both aspired to be writers. Nothing happened, as I lacked the courage to try to make fantasy into reality, and Iskra faded into the background, only to emerge now and then through chance sightings at the dining hall. I started dating someone else, and she transferred to a school closer to home in New York.

Iskra and I kept in touch, with a random instant message here and there. Once, between “on” sessions of my on-again-off-again with Elizabeth, I confessed I had had a crush on her, now that she was safely in another state and rejection would be a couple hundred miles away at least. It’s much easier to be brave when you can block the person if they say no.

To my surprise, she admitted the same, and over the course of sophomore winter break and many late-night IM conversations, a relationship started. We talked about everything, and occasionally actually called each other on the phone. The first time, I was taken aback and slightly embarrassed by the fact that I hadn’t heard her voice in a year and I had forgotten what it sounded like.

Still, we tried to make plans to meet. The lack of cars of our own, and money to travel with, made things difficult. I called her a minute before the ball dropped, and we lamented not being able to exchange a New Year’s kiss. Slowly, things slowed down and, quite frankly, I got bored with the iRelationship scene. We “broke up” when I finally realized that it didn’t feel like a real relationship. To this day, I haven’t seen Iskra since freshman year, despite efforts to make it happen for many months after it ended.

Every relationship I have been involved in has had a long-distance component to it. Part of that is from living on an island, and part of it is probably some latent naiveté; I always think it’s going to be easier than it turns out to be. Technology has been a necessary part of those relationships. I have had outrageous cell-phone bills as a result, I have browsed Facebook profiles and pictures for hours at a time, and Googled then-current and potential mates out of boredom, or curiosity, or in the hopes of discovering some interesting fact or embarrassing deal-breaker.

In our parents’ time, so I’m told, when the summer ended, so too did the summer relationship. Those who tried long-distance were subjected to, (gasp) writing actual letters and sending them from post offices (some of which are rumored to still exist, although for what purpose I am unsure).

The Facebook poke and MySpace comments have all but eliminated the need to have real-world flirting skills. Instead of buying your loved one a real gift, you need only spend a dollar or two on a picture that displays on their profile for all to see — limited edition gifts show you really care. People get married, and divorced, and have funerals in online video games, and eHarmony ads are all over television and the radio.

In today’s increasingly technological world, we’re falling in love with the illuminated pixels displaying Flickr photo pools and matchmaking websites, and with the sounds our email programs make when we have new mail. I, personally, check my cell phone obsessively in case I missed an important text message or voice mail.

The Internet has changed the way people meet and fall in love. The days of the shy guy getting up the nerve to approach the hopeful girl at the high school dance are long gone. Girls are just as likely to make a flirtatious Wall post as guys are to ask a girl out over instant messenger. And of course, before all this they can learn just about everything there is to know about the other person in their “About Me” section or through a Google search.

Whenever we need an update on our friends or lovers, we need only check their Facebook status or away message, and a relationship is only as real as Facebook says it is. Those who are unattached can be judged based on their “Interested in” and “Looking for” listings. Our friends are ranked by their placement in our Top 8, or Top 16, or whatever it is these days.

Currently, my fiancée is home in Bulgaria. We haven’t seen each other in person in four months, and it will be another three weeks or so before we meet again. When we first started dating, she insisted that I should call her, that it was the man’s job. Now, through voice-over-Internet programs, she calls my cell phone, for free, because it’s cheaper than me calling Sofia.

We have many aspects of a real relationship, despite the seven hour time difference. We play each other songs we like (or, rather, we send them to each other to play). We send each other pictures of family, of places we go. We email regularly, and we plan the wedding, debating over guest lists and catering prices, all with headsets on.

It’s not easy, although it’s easier for me than it is for her. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I’m able to ignore the bad parts and not get too hung up on the distance. It takes a certain degree of detachment to make a long-distance relationship work, unfortunately. This is not the first time we have been apart for months at a time, and it always takes a while to get back to the same level again. Having hundreds of pictures on my hard drive, of her, of vacations we’ve taken together, makes it better, but after I’ve pressed the power button on my PC, the bed is still conspicuously empty.

These days, with her gone, I can’t take her out to a restaurant or bar and be proud to be with the most beautiful girl in the room. Instead, I send friends whom I haven’t seen since I started dating her links to my photobucket account when they ask what she looks like. During an upcoming vacation she will take with her mother to Israel, we won’t talk, with actual voices, over the phone or Internet for 10 days. In a two year relationship, it will be the longest time we haven’t heard each others’ voices. With today’s technology, it makes perfect sense for her to be a quarter of the way around the world and for us to talk every day.

Technology has undoubtedly changed the landscape of love forever, at least in terms of how we find it and communicate it. What I have learned, though, is that it can’t be a replacement for love. Love today is still sought after ruthlessly, as evidenced by the fact that millions of people a year make profiles on social networking and dating sites. Entering “love” into Google brings up almost 2 billion results. There are how-to articles on every facet of it. Everyone can be an expert now.

That need for companionship is so human, so carnal, however, that machines can’t completely fill the role, in my opinion. But it can help find it.

Despite how we stumble upon it, I think the general idea has stayed the same. As society becomes more accepting of changing gender roles, as gay and lesbian rights are more widely championed and people are less persecuted for their personal relationships, I think love will become more “free,” in a liberated sense, than it ever has. And that change, in my mind, is a good one.

Soon, friends won’t say “you should meet my friend Jennifer, you’d really like her,” they’ll say “this creepy guy in my art history class poked me and I’m totally grossed out. I should Google him to see if he’s a sex offender or something.” And of course, they’ll say this to you in an instant message from thousands of miles away.

So, since lack of motivation has always been the barrier that keeps me from accomplishing what I should easily be able to, I’ve decided to force myself into it. From now on, if I haven’t made a post by 2 am following any given day, I’ll pay whoever emails me at drew@riverhed.com pointing that out five dollars. Granted, that’s not a lot right now, but it’s incentive to get more people to come here and more importantly more incentive for me to make sure I post.

I had actually told Ivona this yesterday, and insisted that yesterday was going to be the day I kick things off. Which means I owe her five dollars (and believe me, she didn’t waste any time sending off emails and text messages informing me of this).

As far as the specifics go, I did 2 am instead of midnight because sometimes I work late. And it’s for 24-hour period of time, not necessarily calendar day. So if I post at 10 pm on the 12th, and not again until 1 am on the 14th, it doesn’t count (since it resets at 2 am, so it’s still in the 13th’s timeframe). Just wanted to get that out of the way so people don’t try to fuck me over on this. Oh, and you need PayPal to receive the money.

Anyway, it’s late now or I’d post more about what’s going on around here lately. Check back tomorrow for news.

Ivona said tonight that she likes when I write blog entries because it’s like a window to my inner thoughts that I don’t normally vocalize or go out of my way to share. I realized that’s largely true, and not necessarily because I don’t want to share things with her, but when I don’t write it’s almost like I don’t even think about things too deeply, or analyze my own feelings. Writing is the only way I know how to figure things out, of being truly introspective. The only time I really felt like that without having to write to get at it was when I was living in France; being in a place where you don’t really speak the language at first forces you to be pretty introspective. Oddly enough, I did some of my best writing (the non-introspective kind) when I was there. It’s part of the reason I want to go back so badly.

This lack of passion and feeling of being unfulfilled and unsure of goals and direction impacts my writing pretty heavily. Instead of writing fun, interesting, humorous (I hope) things, it’s all introspective, personal junk. It’s great for me, because I feel like I’m getting at the things that are eating up my subconscious, but at the same time I still feel stagnated and like there’s a shroud over me, preventing me from thinking up any good material.

Who knows, maybe I’m just bored and I need more going on in my life to inspire me. I was looking forward to, and am enjoying aspects of, this break between semesters, but I’m realizing I need that stimulation every day to get the creative juices flowing (sorry if I get any on you, I’m pretty awful at controlling my juices). I can’t wait to have a busy schedule and challenging classes again, because now I’m just imagining all the things I want to do with my life instead of actually doing them. I want to finish this last semester and just leave. I’m not sure where yet. I want an adventure. Or a job. That’d be ok, too.

I’m a little uninspired right now, probably due to the fact that I’m between semesters at UMass and I’ve been sitting around doing absolutely nothing lately, except for looking at job listings for writers for a half hour at a time before becoming hopelessly depressed and writing death threats to the high school teacher who encouraged me to become a writer. At least the death threats will be well-written?

Anyway, I’m planning on forcing myself to write at least a little bit each day, preferably more than one post. One of the results of that plan will inevitably be that not all of the posts will be A+ material. I plan on writing about everything going on in my life and making this a sort of public journal, but I’m digging out some old notebooks with material I’ve put together over the years and I’m hoping to go back to some of my inspired notes and expanding on them and putting them up here. So there might be some short pieces of fiction, or vignettes, or little portraits of some random thought I had. A sentence I come across might send me off in a new direction or tangent, and I’m looking forward to tapping into my creative juices again. I always call myself a writer, but the reality is I just don’t write enough.

I’ll probably start tomorrow with a review of what’s been happening with Ivona and me lately to get any friends and family who are behind on the news caught up. Since I don’t expect this blog to be packed with people any time soon, welcome to those of you I’ve sent the link to to check it out. Thanks for stopping by.