Posted 8:00 PM by Anonymous

Say Hi to (the lyrical) Rasee!

This is my first post for Tiger Cafe after a couple of disastrous attempts to join. I don't think Blogger likes me very much. Maybe computers in general don't like me very much. They can smell my apprehension and my fear of blowing anything up. How a person that has written online since 1997 can still have such a trying relationship with computers is beyond me. But I digress. As I was saying, this is my first post here and I believe the occasion warrants a quick introduction. I'm Rasee, a twenty-one-year-old stubborn and overly emotional Capricorn from Bangkok, Thailand. I graduated recently with a degree in English and am currently teaching English and writing for a magazine here in the city.

At the moment I'm working as hard as I can--which is probably not hard enough--to put together writing samples that are apparently the most important aspect of my application to graduate school. I think I was doing okay until a few weeks ago when I realized that my chances of getting into a good school and achieving the degree I want depends solely on thirty pages of my writing. Thirty pages. My writing. Am I insane? What makes me think Brown is going to pick me as one of the twelve students they accept each year from 700 applicants? Is my writing really that good? Having kept an online journal for so many years and having received an array of responses from my readers, have I let myself believe that I have the potential to be a good fiction writer when all I do really well is express my emotions eloquently? There's a difference between writing about yourself and creating an entire fictitious world that people want to be part of, and there is much insecurity going through me right now.

Sometimes I think being a writer at heart, whether or not you write professionally, can be emotionally and mentally exhausting. Writers tend to put everything they experience into words. They may see a plane fly across the sky or have their hearts broken, and automatically they search for the words to describe what happened and how they feel. It becomes frustrating when there is so much emotion inside that the words don't come together, and without those words, there is no way for writers to understand and accept what has happened. When words are how you make sense out of things, what happens when you can't find those words is that you can't quite find a way to deal with what has transpired. There's always that need to write, to express, to connect. When words fail you--when the one thing you have always been certain of is not there for you to reach for--you get very lost. And very confused.

Or maybe that's just me.