spinning spinning spinning spinning spinning spinning spinning
dizzy dizzy dizzy dizzy dizzy dizzy dizzy dizzy
churn. churn. churn.





something isn't sitting right with me.

I haven't been so good about writing either on here or in my journal. When I don't write, I don't feel human. All my inside stuff gets all backed up and yucky. And then I get here, to this place of stuckness. It's really quite frustrating. I know the only good way to become a writer is to write. And not just write sometimes, or when you feel like it, or when you're mad, or when you're happy about something. You're supposed to write through all of that bullshit and just get straight to writing. And yet I have a hard time doing it.

I want to write, and I want to be published. I was so excited about moving to New Orleans because I thought it would be a great place for me to be creative in. But I got way out of the habit of writing, and I quit doing it, and now here I am in this stuck place. It's not writer's block; it's writer's purgatory. I'm not even dead yet, and I'm in purgatory.

Is it juvenile to say that I don't know what to write about? I suppose it is. SOmetimes when I feel really ambitious, or even not so ambitious, but like I should be doing something, I try to push something out. It usually doesn't go so well and then I end up getting mad at myself for spiraling out control and landing straight into purgatory. Then I displace my anger by blaming it on the fact that I am no longer in college and don't have the dead lines or prompts that were required in creative writing. I miss those things, it's true. But I set deadlines for myself and gave myself prompts, and yet I failed to follow through. It seems the truest writing that I have is that that has come from self-deprecating my writing skills.

There are writing groups around. There are millions of publications: journals, e-zines, blogs, magazines, all kinds of things. I am too scared to try publish anything, too scared to show anything that I have worked on, and terrified about what that means about writing. I don't know what type of writing I want to do, or what the point of writing is. The fact that there is someone who is better than me out there kind of stops me from wanting to do it. And that doesn't just hold true for writing. It's why I hate sports, quit singing, and rarely cook. It isn't the fear of failure, although that is daunting, so much as playing second fiddle or being overlooked.

Maybe it is the youngest child coming out in me. I don't think that is it. I can feel myself holding back, but I can't stop myself from doing it. I feel like the only thing that could really liberate me is traveling. Leaving and being completely terrified until I have to earn that confidence back for survival. Logical? No. Increasingly appealing? Yes.

When I don't write, I am cranky. My life feels like it fills up with gunk. I was doing really good about it. Then I stopped picking up my room, stopped writing, and my life turned really blah. Or maybe that order is skewed. It's a theme I have noticed before. My bedroom reflects my general state of sanity - the more clothes on the floor, the more stressed out I am. They are in a giant pile right now. And have been that way for weeks. Weeks. The thing is, I don't have anything to really stress about, other than paying my bills and what I am going to do on the weekends. I just feel like something major is missing from my life, and I don't know what it is.

I can't sleep.
i.a.wide.awake.
I'm tired. I'm yawning, and I am tired. But I can't sleep, even though I have been trying for the past two hours.

In one hour, I will be going to go watch a meteor shower. I have never seen a meteor shower in my life. And I was pretty excited about it. Until I couldn't fall asleep to take a nap before hand.

Now I am nervous because I know I have to work tomorrow, and I will be up way later than I usually am. Which, whatever, I can deal with that. I have stayed up til 5 before, packed, and been up to catch a 7:00 train, carried a backpack and walked all day, taken a two hour nap, and then gone back out again. It's do-able.

It's not the sleep that concerns me. It's the waking up in time. If I go back to my bed right now, I will most likely make it OUT of my bed for the meteor shower because I will either a.) shut off my alarm clock, or b.) be too cozy to get up, thus continuing my streak of never seeing a meteor shower. The alternative is to risk oversleeping tomorrow, for which there aren't any too major consequences. Still.

There is something to be said about the past days of getting up and running to the train station at 7 in the morning. I had short hair back then, and it could go days without washing. That is not necessarily the case now. I also lived two blocks from the train and could dodge traffic early in the morning because there really wasn't any. But most importantly, I had responsible Cheri to call me and make sure that I was awake. Or more importantly, to call me 15 minutes before the train left to tell me that if I didn't hurry, I would miss the train to Rome would owe her money for the train, for the hostel, and the breakfast that she had waiting for me. That adrenaline is missing from my life.

I like waking up, excited about the day.

Age Ain't Nothin' but a Number

prime age: (noun) the age that matches someone's personality and behavior

Trina and Britani told me once that my prime age was that of a spastic 23 year old. Right now, I am a spastic 23 year old. Once, I thought that being 23 would be the best age to be. It wasn't too old where people start expecting you to get your life together and maybe settle down, or at least hve a good reason for why you aren't settling down. And I told that to a friend who was 23 at the time. She got the funniest, almost bewildered look on her face when she told me I was wrong.

I guess, maybe I was hoping that I woud be a little more put together at 23. I didn't know myself very well back then. I was scared and excited about the future. I thought that because I loved someone and he loved me back, I thought that we'd still be in love and maybe we'd end up married after a few years.

Now I am 23. I'm still spastic, but I don't think that is ever going to go away. But I'm a little bit more familiar with myself now than I was back then. I knew back then that things don't always go the way you want them to, but now there's a touch more realism in my life. I wish that wasn't the case. Once at a church retreat in high school, the speaker was talking about how we had to put our trust in God and not in men. I don't remember what his illustration was exactly, something about a paper cup, poking it with a pencil, and then trying to fill it with water. But I will never forget this part: "People let you down 100% of the time," he said. I have no idea what he said about God, but I do remember that he told me that people are always going to disappoint me.

For a while in college, I was in this safe little bubble. Everything was going really well. It wasn't perfect. I found things to be unhappy with. I wasn't sure what I wanted, or what things I really wanted. I guess I hadn't really thought about all of this being let down stuff. Looking for the good in people isn't a bad thing. But you just can't always count on it. If they don't know who they are, or what they want, then I guess that is when you can expect to be let down.

This is all rambling thinking about how maybe I've let myself down or people have let me down. It isn't even about a prime age any more. I think that I would be okay hanging on to being a spastic 23 year old for a while. I guess I realize that there is good in people and bad in people, that sometimes there are just things that are nobody's fault, and that maybe you know what you want , but you don't know how to get it. Sometimes we let everybody down, and sometimes nobody knows but us.

That's just kind of what I've been thinking. I don't know if it makes sense, but I'm a spastic 23 year old. I still don't know what to think all the time.