I hope my words don't bore you.

currently listening to: Let Your Love Grow Tall-Passion Pit





Alright, confession. I've been putting off starting this thing for a couple days now. It's not because I haven't had time, or that I've been tired. It's because... I have a fear of technology, to an extent. When it comes to writing. Allow me to elaborate.

I'm a pencil and paper kind of girl. As soon as I sit in front of a blank screen, with the cursor blinking at me, I feel like I lose all creativity. There's some kind of connection I feel when I'm physically writing, a connection that I don't get when my fingers hit keys. I don't get inspired by a blank word processor document, but give me an old ratty notebook and we're golden.

However, a recent realization made me give into technology and give blogging a try. It's not a huge risk or anything... but it is breaking a personal convention of mine. Among this lost semester of soul searching, I've discovered that the career I have prepared myself for throughout my entire time in high school is not exactly what I want to do anymore. I've realized that if I'm going to go to college at all, I might as well be pursuing what I've always loved and had a passion for, not just settle for something I know I'll make a living with. Something safe. Who wants to be safe? How boring.

My passion is the written word. Writing, literature, language.... all of it. And most people who get anywhere in this field don't really sit down and hand-write all of their drafts anymore. They're all computer savvy. So, I suppose this is my feeble attempt at getting myself comfortable with technology; I need to learn to trust it, and not let it intimidate me or kill my creative flow (which is not as constant as I'd like anyways).

Here goes nothing.


Among the previously mentioned realization, (the one about everything I planned on for 4 years suddenly not feeling right anymore? Yeah, that's the one), I have made another. This one was a product of a period of hopelessness, loneliness, and hormones. I sat down one night, and all I could think of was this single line. It repeated over and over in my head, and I still haven't really dissected it enough to fully understand it's meaning yet. But I wrote it down.

Writing is going to save my life.

And that was it. I stayed up for hours that night, writing about that single line. I made a schedule of all the writing I wanted to do; what time of day I wanted to do it, what projects would coincide well with that point in my day, etc. I made lists, I sat and stared at the wall, chewed on my pencil, but I felt good. Like a million dollars, actually. Because for the first time in my life, I felt my purpose. It wasn't just something I was searching for, or trying to create.


It's been right in front of me for years!

Jeez.


People can be good at things. I'm sure I would make an adequate garbage woman, or restaurant manager, or TEACHER. But after that late night, I realized I don't want to just be good at something. I want to excel at something, and I want to feel it. I want my heart to be connected to it, and I want it to change my life. I want to live my life with passion, not practicality. For fulfillment, and not a paycheck. I can live off Top Ramen for months, and it's SO cheap. And Starbucks gives out free water, so I'm set. Who needs to eat when you're in love with what you do. I don't want to be in love with anything, or anyone for that matter, except writing. I'm marrying myself to it from this moment on.


Here's the part where I integrate something I hand-wrote last night/this morning. Because I'm old fashioned like that. Along the same lines as the subject ^above^. Just expanding upon this very LOUD idea in my head.
Forgive me if it becomes rant-like. But I think it will be the perfect closing.


"I'm writing this to save my life. If I put down my pencil, I will die. If the lead does so much as make contact with the wood of this table on which I write upon, my heart would stop the second the two materials meet. My lungs would stop expanding and contracting, my blood would run cold. My eyes would stop seeing, my nose would stop smelling, my ears would stop hearing. I will die.

Or at least that's what if feels like.
And I don't want to take that chance, so... I'm going to keep scribbling.

I suppose I've always been good at crafting a story out of nothing. I can finish a PB & J sandwich, throw down the crusts, and stare at them for awhile... sooner or later I could probably come up with some kind of meaning or symbol to go along with the sandwich's remains. Abandoned ideas? A symbol of the people we leave behind as we travel our life's course? Usually complete bullshit, but sometimes I get lucky and it sounds good.

That's kind of what writing is to me, creating significance to coincide with normal events. Events that may not have any meaning at all, but making them extraordinary. Like they've never happened to anyone else before, when usually people experience these kinds of things every day. I guess that's what I try to do on a daily basis. I take my thoughts and I run with them--see where they take me. Sometimes that leap of faith will turn into pages and pages of pride, word-vomit that I want to share with everyone...

"Look what I did! Do you want a copy for your fridge?...No? Ahh... come on."

More often than not, it leads me to a brick wall, a dead end. It will leave me sitting at my table with a boring, half-baked idea and crumpled masses all around me. Defeat.

But that's what writing is. Or life, huh? It's even comparable to sex. Most of the time, you leave unsatisfied. But then there's that one time, where everything is just right, the universe is in line and the stars are arranged perfectly, and your brain explodes with impatient lines bouncing off the walls of your mind, begging, screaming to be recorded.

"Okay, okay! Shut the fuck up. Let me get a pen."

And when it's all written, your mind finally calm again, your soul is at peace with what is down on paper... You recline. Sigh, contentedly. Sometimes you even produce a euphoric half-smile.

"Daaaaaayum. I need a cigarette."

I could live as a celibate nun if all of my writing days were like that. If I was always bursting with things to say, always inspired. But the fact of the matter is, that majority of days are not those kind of days. The majority of days are the brick wall, blue-ball, dead-end days, where I usually say to myself: "Man. This sucks," and vow that I'm never going to write a single word down again.

My journal will sit, untouched, under my bed for a few days. A week, tops. And by the slow creeping end of that week, I come bursting through my bedroom door, tearing the sheets off my bed, throwing around my belongings and clothes and cat if he's in the way, until I finally remember where I hid that little black book in the first place. Panting, fiending like a meth addict, I flip open to the next blank page and let my brain spill out onto the paper. And then I'm better. Renewed, and at peace.
The little composition book piece of my heart has been reunited with the rest of my body, and now I can breathe right again. My vision is not blurred, my hearing is not muffled, my blood is warm and alive. My lungs take big, greedy gulps of air, and my heart, finally as a whole, beats deafening tribal rhythms in my chest."


And to think this was just going to be my hobby.