My comfort

It’s so easy to get swept up in the daily rigor of work and responsibilities and socializing. When this happens, I stop writing for me. My career is in writing, so I certainly still write. I write about other people and I write about them for the public.

An unexpected desire to write for myself cropped up this week. So I opened a blank document and I started writing the story I’ve always needed to document. It’s one I couldn’t summon for a very long time. One that was sort of hidden away for compartmentalization purposes at first, and then tucked away in a corner while I enjoyed life.

For the 23 years I’ve lived and the 19 or so I have any recollection of, I can only describe myself as a deeply confused person about life and people and humankind and the things we do and the things we think. I will never unravel these things, but the act of writing things down in my own voice is something I will always find comfort in. Would I be lost if I wasn’t a writer?

I won’t ever finish the story. But I think I’ll keep writing it.

A question of limbo

I strive to understand why people repeat the same blunders and personal failings that often lead to painful, heart-wrenching outcomes. As a member of a society obsessed with self improvement, I am definitely no different. I want to be better than my emotionally confused teenage self. I want relationships with friends and those I love to be full of vitality and fun and, I suppose most importantly, trust.

I want to trust without a doubt my importance in someone’s life. I want to know where I stand and as soon as that changes I want to know so I don’t continue down a road that only offers more emotional entanglements and heartbreak. I don’t want to second guess. I don’t enjoy the uncertainty of limbo.

I like the certain. And when all you’re offered is the uncertain and the limbo and all you hope for is something concrete to hang your hat on, or more aptly your hopes and heart on, the end of the road will likely lead to fresh hurt. But at least I feel something, be it reckless pain or happiness.

At least I feel. And for that I’m grateful.

Try to be alive

“The most solid advice . . . for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”  —William Saroyan

Some wonderful goals

One thing my generation loves to do is post trite, quasi-inspirational life quotes on their Facebook statuses and Tumblrs, etc. They used to annoy me, now I treat them as advertisements. I ignore them. But I came across this wonderful — I guess you would call it quasi-inspirational — passage, and I couldn’t help but smile. This is some advice I will gladly take.

I especially like “Remember you always have options.” It’s easy to feel like there is one set path we need to follow, and I think I initially went into college a nervous freshman who simply took everyone else’s advice. Only after much soul searching did I learn to follow my own gut. And remembering I have options gives me a certain peace of mind about the future.

If you had to choose just one of these to implement right now, which one would it be?

Passage via Tumblr.

The most intimate portrait

Jane Mount paints people’s ideal bookshelves: your favorite books, books that changed your life, books that made you who you are.

Here’s what she has to say about the project: “Picking your ideal books is not an easy task (try it!), and the results are always enlightening. I think of this project as an intimate form of portraiture; a way to illustrate who the subject is on the inside instead of out. I love that a book is something created very personally and then mass-produced in order to affect many other people very personally. I paint them to turn them back into something very personal and intimate. In the age of the Kindle, it’s very satisfying.”

I adore this concept. What would your ideal bookshelf look like?

I think I would include books from every year of my life that changed my world. A Wrinkle in Time, Where the Red Fern Grows (to this day, I’ve re-read this book the most), The Fountainhead, An Invisible Sign of My Own, Harry Potter (of course!), A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Great Expectations, Mrs. Dalloway….. ahhh, OK, there’s so many more I can’t even think of.

I remember reading The Hobbit in sixth grade and being absolutely convinced that a world like that existed. I remember reading The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and feeling as though I had dreamt that story already. I remember reading The Fountainhead in middle school and weeping afterward and having no idea why.

The ideal bookshelf is personal. I would love to request my own painting.

People people throw your love around

I worked on a story this week that involved speaking to many passionate people (my favorite kind, personally). If you go through life perpetually bored, perpetually cynical, or just plain miserable to those around you for no good reason at all, well, I really want nothing to do with you. I see people like this every day. And it used to be disappointing — going through your day with practically no friendly encounters, no “Good mornings!” or “Have a nice days”. Worse than that are people whose bottom line in everything they do is for their own hubris. Get a grip. For me, what makes the every day special is interacting with people who don’t just want to serve themselves. I’m not saying everyone needs to paste on a happy face just for the hell of it either. I don’t know. I just have come to be bored by how contagious negativity seems to be.

Anyhow, that said, check out some of the passionate people trying to keep the arts alive in Syracuse.

Until next time, stay bright, stay shiny, stay happy people.

xo†

Pour over me and wash my hands of it

“Cause I could spend my life just trying to sift through what I could’ve done better but what good do what ifs do?”

This album is all I’ve been listening to the last several weeks. I’ve been turning to it when I need to be alone, when I need to introspect, when I need everything going on around me to just stop and pause for a minute.

Is this for real? This is for real.

I’m on this new being-brutally-honest-with-myself kick. And anyone who I spend any time with lately might know that I’m trying to be a genuinely better, more positive person. It doesn’t always work, but the effort is there. I’m at a loss lately. What do you do when a friend brings you down? When they just become a toxic, negative part of your life? It makes me sad because I truly appreciate any and all of my friendships, and like any relationship, I know they take work to maintain. But, how long can one person go on constantly being the person whose only role in a friendship is to give advice, support, be a shoulder, uplift and work constantly at having to put the other in a better mood? As someone’s friend, I’m usually not wary of having to play this role. I will do it, and I will do it happily. I love being supportive, giving advice I think someone needs to hear and being uplifting if I can. But when it’s a one-way street, when the other person becomes so self-centered that they can’t even pull their mind out of their own thoughts for one second to genuinely give a shit about their friend, what do you do? What do you do? I refuse to be a doormat in relationships. I refuse to sit down and let someone treat me consistently bad. If I know a friend might be in a funk for a few days, I can put up with it. But if it’s all the relationship has come to be (for years now), what am I getting out of it? I’ve never thought someone needs to be concerned with what they get out of a friendship. But I’m not longer afraid to ask myself that. What am I getting out of it? I need to be selfish for once.

An idle mind makes for these drifting thoughts

I was thinking today about how it’s nice sometimes to be pleasant instead of automatically cynical. I was thinking that it’s freeing to smile rather than hold onto a scowl out of self-preservation. I was thinking today that it’s nice to just be, rather than worrying needlessly. I was thinking about the people and the things in my life that I truly appreciate. And I was thinking about the ones I have to work a little harder at appreciating, and how even though it may be difficult, it feels worth it to see someone’s good qualities over their bad. We all have our bad qualities, and they’re all subjective, really.

I was thinking today about how things are moving along nicely, and just because things are going to change doesn’t mean things have to change.

I was thinking today about some of the simple things that make me happy. I really love the smell of the fall at home. In the country, the leaves smell so crisp around Halloween and Thanksgiving. And the cold is biting in just the right way. And coats smell musty from being kept inside for so long. And the sound of dry leaves underfoot is like music to my ears. And cinnamon and pine candles seem to go just right with dim lighting and relaxed conversation. Cheesy holiday decorations surround us and it’s all so familiar and so comforting in some way. This time of year didn’t even seem to pass when we were younger. As we grow older, it feels fleeting. But there’s no reason it should. The days are shorter but it’s OK. It’s all OK. We have family and we have friends and we have the small, simple things to get us by.

In the midst of the crowd

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love this quote and have been thinking about its significance a lot lately. I don’t really like the male pronoun used to encompass both sexes, though. Nevertheless, I appreciate the sentiment.