I can't explain it but being a Will Byers fan is kinda like being Sisyphus.

hi kat! im trying to start reading like i did when i was younger and i was wondering if you had any book recommendations?? i stopped reading once i got past the age of ya so im exploring genres right now!

ahhhh my current reads (my use of 'current' is very loose because i havent read a book in almost months) are a lot of ya wkdnsndnd not sure what i can rec. gonna put some stuff under the cut!!

ummm some that aren't ya...

ocean vuong - on earth we're briefly gprgeoud // UHHH idk hoe to describe it but it really. like its one of thode ones that kinda makes u put the book down and tske deep breaths bc the writing is phenomenal??

bonus: ocean vuong's poetry books! night sky with exit wounds ; time is a mother // havent read/finished reading these but if ur after some beautiful metaphors,,,, his works >

ursula k le guin - the left hand of darkness // ngl i read this in school for lit class HAHA but i really want to reread it !! its sci-fi fantasy (fantasy?? i think) and theres a lot of worldbuuilding to get ur head around but its a very interesting read

albert camus - the myth of sisyphus // ngl i still havent finished thid bc uni anf reading slumps lol BUT i had a pdf version of it on yr8 and now im 20 and finally found and ourchased a hard copy of it so if that doesnt .. reflect how much i wanna read it.. it's an essay about ... uh... absurdism? philosophy kinda stuff. i was introduced to it through another book i read in lit (camus' the stranger/the outsider) and idk what to really say about this but it explores the point/lack of point of life, as well as death/sui etc but yeah its quite interesting, the whole thing ! i deifnotely want to finish it

sally rooney - beautiful world, where are you // havent actually read it yet but its on my shelf and im excited to read it!

in ya, i do rec... (because yknow, it never hurts to still read ya as an adult! unless u meant the ya genre doesnt interest you anymore..?)

c. s. pacat - dark rise // fantasy! UMMM idk how to explain it but i did very much enjoy it and the .. there was a heavier sense of burden and loss on the characters than in some other ya books? the dynamics between the characters is also really interesting imo (esp between the main character and .. one of the antagonists who im not sure if theyre an antag or not bc of hoe the book ended but for the most part they were an antag) and theres gonna be another book!

cassandra clare - the infernal devices (i love all the shadowhunter books (although some less than others) but the TID trilogy is just <3 so good.

UMM idk if this helped at all. i've been really disconnected from reading these days and so i dont have any solid recs, unfortunately :(

Academic writing theory revisions

I tend to get wordy, and it really shows in my academic writing theory. I really wanted to drive home the taste for nostalgia, but I think I got carried away. So, my goal with my final paragraph was to cut it down and tie it together better with the tangent on Camus.

Original text:

     So, I write to cope. I write like I paint. I read so that I can write better, and also to relate. Not only can I expand moments and capture them indefinitely, I can also find new ways to relate to others and have others relate to me. I read Plath, Murakami, Camus, etc. and they all make me feel things that, in some distant past life, I have felt before. They teleport me to a space both nostalgic and new, and that’s what I aspire to as well. I would not have known how to properly use these skills had I not read all the books I have; you can’t learn these skills in a class. You can’t learn poetry or feeling in a class. These things must come from experience. Camus was a philosopher writing academic essays, but that never took away his propensity for emotion and passion. Camus said to “imagine Sisyphus happy,” and he begins this thought with “there is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” To connect such a serious tone with a mythical being in an absurd state, “cursed” to roll the rock back up the hill and back down again for all time, to elicit such an existentially terrifying concept and then turn it into something deeply profound, is poetry. “Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” This is academic poetry; he is constructing existential philosophy, and ontological reasoning for life itself, a concept by itself that sounds so dry and boring. But, somehow, he makes it beautiful.  In all writing spaces, these aspects can exist, and I aspire to take those feelings to their limits in all of the art forms I participate in, and writing is no different. To envelope oneself in an imaginary moment, to escape linear reality and to be wiser because of it, simply put, is how and why I write. 

Edited text (bold is what I cut out, underlined is what I added):

     So, I write to cope. I write like I paint. I read so that I can write better, and also to relate. Not only can I expand moments and capture them indefinitely, I can also find new ways to relate to others and have others relate to me. I read Plath, Murakami, Camus, etc. and they all make me feel things that, in some distant past life, I have felt before. They teleport me to a space both nostalgic and new, and that’s what I aspire to as well. I would not have known how to properly use these skills had I not read all the books I have; you can’t learn these skills in a class. You can’t learn poetry or feeling in a class. These things must come from experience; Never have I learned in any English course what I’ve learned from authors like Camus. Camus was a philosopher writing academic essays, but that never took away his propensity for emotion and passion. Camus said to “imagine Sisyphus happy,” and he begins this thought with “there is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” To connect such a serious tone with a mythical being in an absurd state, “cursed” to roll the rock back up the hill and back down again for all time, to elicit such an existentially terrifying concept and then turn it into something deeply profound, is poetry. “Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” This is academic poetry; he is constructing existential philosophy, and ontological reasoning for life itself, a concept by itself that sounds so dry and boring. But, somehow, he makes it beautiful.  In all writing spaces, these aspects can exist, and I aspire to take those feelings to their limits in all of the art forms I participate in, and writing is no different. To envelope oneself in an imaginary moment, to escape linear reality and to be wiser because of it, simply put, is how and why I write.

In my second paragraph (and most of my essay) I rely heavily on forms of escapism in art, and I wanted to expand on why. The whole paper is about symptoms of my proclivity toward escapism, but never the thing itself. So, I decided to talk about it, even though it’s more personal and raw than I’d want to be in a public paper. I suppose writing should be personal and raw though.

Original paragraph:

     I could not stand the thought of time being linear, that I didn’t have control, and some days it’s still hard to recognize that. So, in the best ways that I could, I coped by writing, by painting, and taking pictures of how I felt. This art of encapsulated milenia got me by. I can sift through my phone and find the poem I wrote about sunbathing in a ray of light, somehow the sun’s pressure caused my window to crack open like my house was at the bottom of the sea. I laid there for 10 minutes, sanguine and heady like a cat, but I could make it feel like 10 years. I could stare at the self-portrait I painted, homage to being young and naked and not worrying about who saw. I want to be young and naked forever. I want my cats back, I want to unbreak my own heart and break it again, I want a summer so humid that I can’t hear anything but cicadas. These pocket worlds I created for myself, where time looped and folded in on itself like a Mobius Strip, were my safe places. You could argue that I’m not present, and I would argue I don’t care to be. You could also argue I use art and writing to escape, but who doesn’t? Why else would we have these things?

Revised paragraph (italicized are additions):

     I could not stand the thought of time being linear, that I didn’t have control, and some days it’s still hard to recognize that. So, in the best ways that I could, I coped by writing, by painting, and taking pictures of how I felt. This art of encapsulated milenia got me by. I can sift through my phone and find the poem I wrote about sunbathing in a ray of light, somehow the sun’s pressure caused my window to crack open like my house was at the bottom of the sea. I laid there for 10 minutes, sanguine and heady like a cat, but I could make it feel like 10 years. I could stare at the self-portrait I painted, homage to being young and naked and not worrying about who saw. I want to be young and naked forever. I want my cats back, I want to unbreak my own heart and break it again, I want a summer so humid that I can’t hear anything but cicadas. These pocket worlds I created for myself, where time looped and folded in on itself like a Mobius Strip, were my safe places. You could argue that I’m not present, and I would argue I don’t care to be. You could also argue I use art and writing to escape, but who doesn’t? Why else would we have these things? 

     The way I convey these forms of art are symptoms of a larger narrative; I have a massive problem with escapism. I’ve listed all the positive effects it’s had on my art, but I have abused drugs and drink, avoided responsibilities to the point that it’s cost me thousands in failed classes, lost countless friends, lost opportunities to succeed in my various extracurricular activities, and the list goes on. I have royally disappointed myself time and time again. I romanticize my childhood because I was too young to know I was being abused. Growing up is re-parenting yourself to funnel those negative aspects of your personality, mental illness, or life itself into the creative fields. I’ve been recently diagnosed with CPTSD, and part of the process of healing your trauma is learning new ways to think about yourself and the world around you. So, all of these self-sabotaging things I’ve done to myself can be channeled into something better, something healing, and something healthy.

ACET Essay

Good news! I passed! BFA Creative Writing.

Here’s my sample essay.

Camus came at the right place and time. He had greeted me during the 7:45 am class lecture whose sole purpose was for us eleventh graders to understand culture, society, politics, and a tad bit of existential philosophy. My teacher stood behind the podium, writing down the words “Symbolic Interactionism” on the board. The French man with his cigarette had been lurking around the room for quite a while. I did not acknowledge him at first. In fact, I had been too busy wandering back to the deepest memory of where all my passions and troubles began: 

The only reality that exists when you dream is that you are asleep. I would not have thought of this proposition if ever I, once again, became the same girl asleep that one warm summer night before freshman year of high school. This reality was manifested as soon as I caught my mind dreaming of myself in very different scenarios twenty years from that day. These images were mere evidence of my unconscious self floating on a pool of anxiety and indecisiveness.

There was one dream where I shook hands with the President of America as two star-spangled flags stood proudly behind us — except one of these had a sun. The other one was where I sat up straight inside the grand palace, holding a microphone in one hand and a voice recorder in the other as I listened to a person in formal attire and on a wooden platform reading their SONA. The last was where I was walking towards a colossal stage with a big smile on my face as I was about to receive a 13.5-inch gold statue of a man whose color was gleaming golden as I was. Around me were screens containing the words “Best Adapted Screenplay”.

Then I thought no. That was a pipe dream. I discarded it, thinking: how in the world could I ever win the “Best Adapted Screenplay” category if I couldn’t even write?

I’ve set this belief on stone that night: I don’t know how to write.

I lifted my right arm to check my watch. 8:15. Fifteen minutes later, it will be Recess. After which will be another subject and then lunch. Following lunch will be two other subjects, departure, and then rehearsal. It was the same rehearsal I couldn’t go to; the same rehearsal where either my absence will cost me departing from the organization or my presence will unleash my mother’s nagging; the same rehearsal I wanted to attend ever since that conversation, thinking I could do something, but due to household issues, I could not.

The sun beamed from its highest point above — the climax of the day. Even though I had slept during the breaks in between classes, the energy I had summed up in my system was still equivalent to less than 1%. A while ago, when the morning sun arrived and grass had shed what was dew, I had left a brown envelope, inside of which was a screenplay, in my teacher’s cubbyhole. Each person in the class was required to write a script as part of our grade in the subject Filipino. In contrast to my brilliantly imaginative classmates, I had conceived this paper from caffeinated drinks, snappy Broadway tunes, and a broken heart. My eyes still drooped very much unlike a graceful pixie leaping from lily to lily. While we were lining up outside, the teacher whom I submitted the work to urged me to approach her in the classroom.

“Annette,” she asks with a voice like a tranquil river, “What inspired you to write this play?”

What inspired me to write this play? Was it the strong punch of the barako that had beat me up so hard, keeping me awake the whole night — each strike pumping adrenaline through my veins? Was it the harmony of the songs I listened to the night before, coercing me to stand because should I fall, a string of melody will puppet me upright and moving? Was it the feeling and the sound of shattering, triggering all my senses, and ultimately reminding me I have no other choice — that I can never change my fate?

“I’ve always wanted to write stories like these — stories that would inspire people to say they can.” I answered, “But I didn’t think I could.”

“Well, you can.”

And for three years, I had felt the same teenager’s heart fluttering whenever I was tasked to write.

My proctor’s voice jolted me awake. “What is the essence of being human?”

That same question was proof that one can silence a class with just seven words.

“Albert Camus, in his essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’, addressed this question. The last line in the text goes: ‘The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’.”

At that moment, I came to understand the definition of being a person — of being my own person. It is to question what the purpose is and answer it only for it to be questioned all over again; to embrace your destiny but still doing your best to defy it; to struggle — in your very own sincere way.

Camus came at the right place and time. Because the vision of myself that I had three years ago felt like a stuck roll of film, leaving me hopeless that it will ever continue. The passage, however, acted like magic words that enabled the video to continue playing.  

I realized that I can still achieve this image of me doing all these things. It does not, however, guarantee that I will never encounter setbacks, failures, and objection from my peers. I always will. But I know that if I roll up the boulder, these problems will feel like a passing fancy for me. It does not get better, but I know it gets easier. And I have just found out the secret to make it be so: I have to roll up my boulder every day. And I’ve decided to do just that ever since that experience and, what I also consider, accomplishment.

And even now, I could still remember the philosopher’s face as he put the tobacco away from his mouth and vanish just as the bell rang for recess.

My College Education The first class I went to in college was philosophy, and it changed my life forever. Our first assignment was to write a short response paper to the Albert Camus essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” I was extremely nervous about the assignment as well as college. However, through all the confusion in philosophy class, many of my questions about life were answered. I entered college intending to earn a degree in engineering. I always liked the way mathematics had right and wrong answers. I understood the logic and was very good at it. So when I received my first philosophy assignment that asked me to write my interpretation of the Camus essay, I was instantly confused. What is the right way to do this assignment, I wondered? I was nervous about writing an incorrect interpretation and did not want to get my first assignment wrong. Even more troubling was that the professor refused to give us any guidelines on what he was looking for; he gave us total freedom. He simply said, “I want to see what you come up with.” Full of anxiety, I first set out to read Camus’s essay several times to make sure I really knew what was it was about. I did my best to take careful notes. Yet even after I took all these notes and knew the essay inside and out, I still did not know the right answer. What was my interpretation? I could think of a million different ways to interpret the essay, but which one was my professor looking for? In math class, I was used to examples and explanations of solutions. This assignment gave me nothing; I was completely on my own to come up with my individual interpretation. Next, when I sat down to write, the words just did not come to me. My notes and ideas were all present, but the words were lost. I decided to try every prewriting strategy I could find. I brainstormed, made idea maps, and even wrote an outline. Eventually, after a lot of stress, my ideas became more organized and the words fell on the page. I had my interpretation of “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and I had my main reasons for interpreting the essay. I remember being unsure of myself, wondering if what I was saying made sense, or if I was even on the right track. Through all the uncertainty, I continued writing the best I could. I finished the conclusion paragraph, had my spouse proofread it for errors, and turned it in the next day simply hoping for the best. Then, a week or two later, came judgment day. The professor gave our papers back to us with grades and comments. I remember feeling simultaneously afraid and eager to get the paper back in my hands. It turned out, however, that I had nothing to worry about. The professor gave me an A on the paper, and his notes suggested that I wrote an effective essay overall. He wrote that my reading of the essay was very original and that my thoughts were well organized. My relief and newfound confidence upon reading his comments could not be overstated. What I learned through this process extended well beyond how to write a college paper. I learned to be open to new challenges. I never expected to enjoy a philosophy class and always expected to be a math and science person. This class and assignment, however, gave me the self-confidence, critical-thinking skills, and courage to try a new career path. I left engineering and went on to study law and eventually became a lawyer. More important, that class and paper helped me understand education differently. Instead of seeing college as a direct stepping stone to a career, I learned to see college as a place to first learn and then seek a career or enhance an existing career. By giving me the space to express my own interpretation and to argue for my own values, my philosophy class taught me the importance of education for education’s sake. That realization continues to pay dividends every day.

http://open.lib.umn.edu/writingforsuccess/chapter/15-2-narrative-essay/

Now we can easely recognize what is narrative essay and what is academic essay

Why Life is Like One Giant Boulder

Sisyphus was a king in Greek mythology who was punished by the gods for his deceitfulness. Condemned to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down and hit him for eternity, his existence was endless arduous work.

Sounds a little bit like life, right? Not necessarily the boulder part, but the sense of repetition that comes with it. Every morning we wake up and go through the motions, following the demands of outside influences. We are creatures of habit. We wake up, eat breakfast, go to class, go home, work (give or take a few things). Extend the time scale to years, and our existence starts to sound quite Sisyphean. We roll our own boulders and when we reach the summit, the cycle restarts and we’re back at it again. It feels like we’re perpetually on a hamster wheel of effort and fragile leisure, better known as the work week, the school year, and the all-too-short summer.

Faced with this idea, it seems inevitable that people ask themselves, “what’s the meaning of all this?” This is the question existential philosopher Albert Camus grappled with, and he eventually concluded that there isn’t one (objectively, at least). He called the paradoxical relationship with our desire to find an inherent purpose and the inability to come up with a sufficient answer the absurd (Shobeiri et al. 4). Camus rejects any scientific or human created ends or explanations, and instead asserts that nothing that exists has any inherent meaning.

Although we try to find answers to the meaning of existence, even our best explanations are inadequate. Following this, Camus questions that if we accept the absurd, meaningless, nature of our existence, then why should we continue to live? This was the fundamental question of philosophy. To quote:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. (The Myth 11)”

Camus suggests that there are three answers to the absurd: suicide, hope, and acceptance (Thorson 287). He rejects suicide because he believes that it isn’t an answer to the absurd, only an escape. For a person who commits suicide, Camus believes that they actually allow both life and death to have control over them (Shobeiri et al.). Hope is described as an alleged solution to the absurd that lies beyond knowing, such as God, history, or reason (Thorson 287). Much like suicide, he rejects this because it also isn’t a true answer to the absurd. It only invalidates the absurd by creating arguments for which there is insufficient evidence (Thorson 287). This leaves us with acceptance, which Camus validates.

Camus turns to the plight of Sisyphus to explain his reasoning. The whole of his existence and efforts go towards accomplishing nothing. However, Camus doesn’t see Sisyphus’ absurd existence as tragic, he sees it as a triumph. To quote Camus, when Sisyphus walks down the hill after the boulder it “is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock” (The Myth 121).

Like Sisyphus, we all have our own individual rocks. Although we might now be rolling actual boulders, we can still use Sisyphus’ plight to achieve a better attitude regarding our responsibilities, no matter how difficult they are. All we have to do is change our mindsets and look at things from a different angle. Yeah, maybe this job/place/show sucks, but I won’t let it. In Camus’ eyes, this idea is fundamental when thinking about existence.

It is in this way that the diminishing nature of the absurd is turned on it’s head. According to existentialism, there is fundamentally no way to find an inherent meaning to life. The absurd is the logical consequence of this. However, this absurdism is upended through its acceptance and simultaneous “rejection”. Paradoxically, according to Camus, the meaning of life is to accept that life has no inherent meaning and thriving despite it.  

Sisyphus is successful because he is aware of the pointless nature of his existence. He faces and accepts his condition, yet he defies his plight by not letting it affect him. To quote Camus again, “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (The Myth 121)” This is Camus answer to existentialism. We can choose to be dragged down by the absurd nature of our existence, or defy it by living well regardless. Once we accept the absurd, we are free to choose our own subjective meaning to life.

Works Cited

Camus, Albert, and Justin O'Brien. The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays: Translated from the French by Justin O'Brien. AA Knopf, 1969.

Shobeiri, Ashkan, Wan Roselezam Wan Yahya, and Arbaayah Ali Termizi. "Making Sense Of The Absurdity Of Life In Camus’S The Myth Of Sisyphus". The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review 4 (2017): 1-14. Web. 25 Apr. 2017

Thorson, Thomas Landon. “Albert Camus and the Rights of Man.” Ethics, vol. 74, no. 4, 1964, pp. 281–291., www.jstor.org/stable/2379452.

Suggested Readings

"Albert Camus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. N. p., 2017. Web. 24 Apr. 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/

Crowell, Steven. "Existentialism". Plato.stanford.edu. N. p., 2004. Web. 24 Apr. 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/

Further Questions

How do other existential philosophers approach the concept of the absurd?

How does the popular sci-fi television show Rick and Morty approach existentialism and the absurd?