So, here’s the situation:

Halloween, as you may or may not know, is next Tuesday. This coming Friday, the 27th, is Gutenberg’s Halloween party. Since I no longer Trick-or-Treat, Gutenberg’s Halloween party is pretty much the event for which I need a costume. Today, the school was a-buzz with students who have these fantastic ideas for their costumes.

I AM CURRENTLY COSTUME-LESS. Two days to go, and NO COSTUME.

Okay, that’s not strictly true… because I have lots of old-fashiony dresses and skirts, cool boots, a purple hooded cloak, several kinds of belts, several kinds of gloves, a few cool hats, some vests, a toy lightsaber, and various other accouterments that may or may not be awesome.

Those are my building blocks. I have the building blocks… I just don’t have an idea.

Other things to keep in mind: 1) My red hair. I would be willing to wear a wig (in fact it might be fun), but if you can think of a character who is a redhead, that would be fun too. 2) I have this perverse desire to wear fake eyelashes. I have never tried them, but every time I see them hanging on the Halloween aisle at work I just WANT TO TRY THEM. Silly, I know.

Any ideas? Throw ‘em at me! I need brainstorming help.

Just… please nobody suggest that I be Mara Jade. Been there, done that… every Halloween for the past ten years.

Okay, not quite. But ALMOST.

Last night was one of those nights… one of those “didn’t really sleep because I was up so obnoxiously late working on school” nights. (Quiet, you, I don’t want to hear about it. )

But one good thing did come of my all-nighter: I got to hear the paper delivered. Normally, this depresses me, because it reminds me of how late has become early and how I’m now closer to leaving for school than I am to the time when I should have gone to bed. But today, I didn’t mind at all! In fact, I stood there with my face pressed against the peephole on the front door, watching “paper delivery man with baseball cap” saunter up to our house and lay his precious cargo on the doorstep. I waited until his car headlights had faded out of view before I slipped out into the cold, grabbed the paper, and slipped back inside.

I did all this because today was the day—the day that my very first 20Below column was published in the newspaper:

(Yes, this is that column; the one that I almost killed myself to write.) Ironically, I wrote about blogging. Seems like I can’t get away from talking about that these days; but I felt that with the launch of the new 20Below blog the Register Guard could do with an infusion of goodwill towards blogging. So that’s what I tried to accomplish.

As a writer, I have mixed feelings about seeing my work in the paper. On the one hand, I am just pleased as punch—especially after so many years of wanting to be on 20Below! But on the other hand, this means that suddenly people are going to read it… all across Eugene, in fact, people are beginning to get up and look at the paper—somebody might be reading my article right this minute! That is a thrilling and terrifying idea.

(On a rather nitpicky side note, I was a little disappointed that the Register Guard did not show me any of the grammatical or content changes they were going to make to my column before they published it. Is that standard newspaper practice, or are they just giving us teenagers “special” treatment? :-/ I don’t know, but although they did a good job editing it, I have to admit I winced a little bit every time they took out a comma where I would not have or every time they called a website “Web site.” GAH. Oh well. )

Oh… there is one more thing. The most exciting and terrifying part of the whole article, I think, is the second line of the second paragraph. That is where that tiny, unassuming little phrase, “Lylium.org,” was slipped in between two commas and PUBLISHED IN THE NEWSPAPER. It is not emphasized, by any means. But it is there, for any curious souls who feel like bringing up their web browsers after reading my column.

I know this is a weird thing for a blogger who writes, ostensibly, to the entire world to say… but I feel exposed. Like suddenly this haven that is Lylium is exposed to all manner of people who may have HATED my column and feel like coming to give me a piece of their mind. But, what can I say? I asked for it. I totally and completely asked for it.

So, if you are here from the Register Guard, welcome! I really am glad you’ve stopped by. Please leave me a comment saying hello! I hope you like what you see, and that you’ll come again to read more stories and see more pictures.

(Update: My article is up now! check it out.)

The stairwell leading down to the basement at Gutenberg is one of the few (usually) truly quiet places to study at the school. Today, as I sat at the head of the stairs reading The Odyssey in preparation for this afternoon’s discussion, my friend Jackie passed by.

“I wish I could take a picture of you, Erin! The light and colors right here look so good right now.”

Sounded like a challenge to me. So, being the undying photography geek that I am, after I finished my reading I spent five or ten minutes figuring out how to prop up my camera at the bottom of the stairs so the shot would be framed JUST SO… then I hit the self timer and ran back up the stairs to pose before the shutter clicked.

I really like the peaceful feeling this photo ended up having. It seems to represent the way that I am slowly but surely settling into life at Gutenberg College.

Or, as Noah put it: “That picture is so emo.”

So anyway. I’ve had my burst of creative energy for the day; now it’s time to settle myself back into schoolwork.

The past week has been a greater test of my mental and physical endurance than I believe I have ever undergone. It was proof that I can almost always give just a little more (sleep a little less, drink a little more caffeine) than I think I can.

But it also almost killed me.

In my last post, I seemed pretty gung ho, didn’t I? Like I could pretty much take on the world, so those writing assignments had better watch out if they knew what was good for them, hadn’t they?

It was a lie.

That post was part of the delicate process of psyching myself up to face a seemingly insurmountable challenge. If I don’t let myself think about how bad it is, then I can just push through and do it, right? What I didn’t tell you in that post is that in the space of a few short days, in addition to my normal schoolwork, I had 1) my first Gutenberg paper, 2) the essay for national merit semifinalist stuff, and 3) my first 20Below column, all due.

Now, I like writing. You know I do. I mean, why else would I have applied to 20Below? Why else would I have started this blog? Why else would I still be writing in it? (Okay, I have to admit, you all are the main reason I’m still writing in it.) But as much as I love it, writing is also one of the most painful processes I ever put myself through.

As I’m sure any writer will tell you, arriving at the heart of what you really want to say is not an easy process. It takes time. It is not the sort of thing that you can cram into an hour or two, even if, say, for instance, you must write a paper which is due the next morning at class. Or an essay which is going to harm or help your chances at becoming a national merit scholar. Or a column which is going to be published IN THE NEWSPAPER.

This is the reason I found myself, over the course of five days last week, with a sum total of TEN hours of sleep.

No, not per night. Yeah, it was that bad.

The worst episode was Wednesday night/Thursday morning. That was the night I finished my 20Below column. Let’s just say you know you are in trouble when you make yourself a cup of caffeinated tea at 1:30 am to power your way through a column that is due in eight and a half hours.

There is no despair quite like slumping over your laptop at the kitchen table at 5:30 in the morning, listening to the Star Wars soundtrack on an infinite loop and staring through your increasingly blurry eyes at the words that just don’t seem to be coming together. That’s when you start considering the option of moving to Madagascar rather than facing the wrath of your editor when you tell him that you couldn’t turn your column in… because you fell asleep at 6:00 am.

I think it was about 5:30 Thursday morning that I realized something pretty monumental: I had been punishing my body for the last five days. I had been working myself to the ground, then pushing myself back up and working myself back down to the ground again. But despite all that, I felt better in a certain way than I had for a long time—like there was some kind of twisted rightness in pushing my way through to the end of these neverending projects, no matter what the cost to my physical or mental health.

Nevertheless, I hope never to repeat the experience.

I slept nine hours Thursday night, and felt like a human being for the first time in a week on Friday. Three days later, I’m beginning to regain full functionality (for whatever that’s worth). In fact, I should probably be going—it’s already eleven, which is waaaayy past my bedtime now.

Of course, we’ll see how long that lasts. (Probably until until the next round of writing assignments is due.)

Stylish ginormous (kind of) noise-cancelling headphones + iPod? Check.

Cup of life-giving caffeinated tea? Check.

Trusty Macbook Pro, back from therapy and ready to give life another try? Check. FINALLY.

More writing assignments for more different people than you can shake a stick at, ALL DUE TOMORROW? Check. Heck yes.

See you at the other end.

One part normal ponytail…

… One part cowlicky array of hedgehog spikes.

No wonder I was getting strange looks at work today.

Two days after school started I flippantly remarked to a friend of mine that Gutenberg would not get in the way of me posting here on my blog. “I mean,” I told her, “no matter how much schoolwork I have, I can always scrape a half-hour out of my day to blog, right?”

Right.

One of the things I have learned about Gutenberg since we started class two weeks ago is that it is a time-eating vortex. Every day, no matter how long it is, seems to have the unique property of being NOT LONG ENOUGH. Not long enough for classes, for homework, for socializing… certainly not long enough for the odds and ends of my life that I used to make time for. In fact, at times it feels that Gutenberg is systematically squeezing all possibility for free time out of my life. Perhaps this is a part of the curriculum they forgot to mention in orientation.

Suffice it to say, my time is packed tighter than I ever imagined possible. And yet, I somehow manage to continue living and breathing and showing up to class (relatively) on time. But it’s anyone’s guess how long that will last.

But, uh… there’s one other thing. Remember way back when I applied for 20Below, the teenage news team on our local newspaper? Of course you don’t. But I did, and about two and a half weeks ago I got a call from the features editor at The Register Guard asking me if I was still interested in being a part of the team.

And I said yes.

It’s ironic, really… with bated breath I ran out to the mailbox every afternoon all summer, waiting and trying not to wait for that letter that would tell me whether I had been accepted to the 20Below team. But by the time they actually got around to asking me, I had made such grand plans for this year that being part of the 20Below team no longer seemed like the most exciting thing that could happen to me.

That’s not to say I’m not excited that I was chosen; I am! I’m just worried that I won’t really be able to give the job as much time and care as it deserves. But I’ll do my best.

Here are the details: for those of you here in Eugene who get the Register Guard, look for the 20Below column in the new lifestyle section on Mondays. There are seven columnists, so I’ll have a column published every seven weeks. If all goes as planned, my first two columns will be on October 23rd and December 11th.

But! Fear not, oh people who do not live in Eugene or who do not get the Guard. For the first time ever, the folks at the paper have set up a blog for the 20Below staff members! So they will be posting our columns every week to the blog. I’ll provide a link to my columns when they are published.

There are actually some goodies up at the 20Below blog already; when we had our very first team meeting, they told us they were going to be creating photo slideshows of each of us for the website. So they stood us in front of this (really nice!) camera and gave us a remote and said “Have at it!”

Most of the kids, naturally, came up with really fun and interesting poses that made for fun and interesting slideshows. I, on the other hand, was having a case of the goose faces. But because I am willing to be THAT TRANSPARENT with you, internets, I will provide you a link to the bio and slideshow that the Guard put up about me. (P.S. I would love it if any of you wanted to comment on that post. It is so horribly empty! )

So… Gutenberg. 20Below. Blogging here and for 20Below. Coping with life.

Will it be hard? Yes.

Will I be exhausted? Yes.

But will I manage somehow? Of course.

Right?