so apparently it's new year's eve. my exciting plans for the evening include trying to sleep and comforting a teething nine month old. i'm sure you're very jealous. i'm going to come back next week and do some sort of yearly round-up just because this was a big year, and i'm too tired to write anything right now, but i felt like i should post something tonight.

so.

a few days ago i watched the new star wars movie. now, i had somehow managed to not watch any star wars movies before then, and i don't know if any of you are familiar with those youtube videos where they ask someone who hasn't watched a movie to describe the plot of the movie, but i was pretty much one of those people. i knew very little, and what i did know was very mixed up. (i found out after the movie that anakin skywalker turned into darth vader, and i think i should have known that? maybe i did know that and forgot? anyway.) SPOILER and i dunno, but at the end of the movie, when a character died, i felt really jipped (gypped) because i just got to know you how dare you die already? and now i feel like i need to watch all the other star wars and i'm kind of annoyed by that because i don't have time for that.

anyway, hope you all have a great start to the new year. 

all of our plans have fallen through

i used to sit in the same spot in my apartment for days, barely moving, staring at a screen of some sort nonstop, and if a bird flew by my window i would think, "wow! a bird! just flew past my window! this must be magic! something has happened! i should blog about it! amazing!" now that is obviously an exaggeration, but at the same time, it really isn't. how many blog posts have i written that ramble on about nothing? dropped contact lenses and boring grad school lectures and lunch dates were all things that, at one point, deserved to be preserved in writing. and now... nothing. things happen and all i do is get through them and never look back. i don't like it.

one of the points that i seem to whine about repeatedly is how much i don't like the hype about new year's. i just... don't like it. it's always my birthday that feels like the fresh start for me. that deserves resolutions and looking back and a clean slate. new year's has always just been the sign that the vacation is nearly over, that projects need to be completed and work needs to be done and oh my god how did i let myself procrastinate this much? 

but maybe i need a stupid day that has been given a false sense of importance right now. maybe i need a january first to get myself back into writing.

(but, really, i may have a lot of posts about new year's and even more posts about nothing, but those are nothing compared to the number of posts i have where i declare that i am going to do something and then never do it. a lot of those declarations have to do with writing. and who am i kidding? what makes this any different? although, i would like to say here officially that despite the fact that my word count tracker didn't appear on my blog this year and i didn't blog about nano, i did write consistently every day for the month of november (better than any other year) and ended the month with over fifty thousand new words of fiction to my name, but that's neither here nor there.)

i feel like i am overusing the word "but." 

in the spirit of writing about what happens in my life, even if that "what" is nothing, my siblings minus the one living with her family halfway across the world all came to stay over at my house for christmas break (basically wednesday through this morning). we had a bunch of plans for the weekend. we were going to have fun. and then two out of three of my siblings were hit by a stomach bug (i'm guessing the same one that cricket and then my dad suffered from in the past couple of weeks) and suddenly the weekend turned into delivering gatorade and chicken noodle soup and doing laundry. the best laid plans and all of that... 

*The Way It Was - The Killers

let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

i do believe in fairies. i do. i do.

the words used to mean something to me. they did. they did. now they are as empty as everything else. they have run over my tongue too many times, dropping bits of magic until they were out. leaving behind hope and meaning piece by piece until they become no more than a jumble of letters my brain can no longer make sense of.

i did believe in fairies. i did. i did. 

a need to create is burning just behind my eyes. my fingers are itching to write, but the words that used to be my best friends have abandoned me. i used to hold them closer than the breath that i pull absently from the air. the words are gone, but their echos are left ricocheting in my body, bouncing off my stomach and zigzagging down my trachea like a long forgotten call to what used to be.

a lump forms in my aching throat and my eyes prickle, but i am not sad. am i? my stomach is fluttering like the wings of seven hundred trapped butterflies, but i do not think that i am nervous. at least, there is nothing to be nervous about. my skin burns hot with a flash of what could have been anger but instead was nothing. it is always nothing now. i can't breathe and my trembling fingers are beginning to go numb, but my mind is empty. nothing. nothing. nothing.

maybe if i found my words, it could be something.

i will believe in fairies. i will. i will. 

i used to live with my feet planted firmly in the past and my head floating in the future, but somehow i found myself in the present, and i think i may be stuck here where reality glares down at me from directly above. there are no lurking shadows or dark corners for surprises to hide in. there is only this. there is only now. and i need to find a way out.

they tell you to grow up and live in the moment and i always swore that i wouldn't. but then i did. they tell you that it's the thought that counts, but they're wrong. because i didn't mean to do this, but i am stuck here anyway. i used to think that if you cut me open, ink would leak from my veins and flowery words would bubble from my lips. my lungs would be filled with fairydust and every single one of bones would be a pen. if you cut me open now all you'd see is a mess of sliced bones and severed arteries and warm blood that doesn't know where to go anymore. i used to think that i was my words, but now i'm thinking that i am my blood. moving through the paths set out for me without thought. doing the same thing over and over and over again until i can't do anything else.

but if i could change once, i could do it again.

i will look for my words and i will find the magic again. i will. i will.

*******

the thing about writing is that you can find your groove where everything you write is right, and then you can stop writing for far too long, and you don't think that you can forget how to do it, but you can. you believe the words and ideas and images will be there waiting for you whenever you decide to come back, but they're not. and it's scary to know how quickly the thing you are good at can become the thing that you used to be good at. it's so scary that sometimes you have to just pretend that nothing is wrong and lose yourself in other people's words instead of your own. but eventually you have to sit down and write pages and pages of bad stuff and pick pieces out of them that maybe could be okay and put them together into a makeshift poem that is not in your groove and will never be completely right but will get you back on the horse. that's the secret to life, you know. you need to find that one horse that's meant for you and just ride it. you can hop on and off, but be careful, because if you're off for too long, you'll get trampled by the stampede.

i'm setting a goal for this year to write one million words. anything i write that uses my voice and is not correspondence will count towards this goal (meaning blog posts and poems and short stories and novels and some school work and journal entries and, well, you get the idea) starting with this post. i'll track my words over on the sidebar where my nano word count sits every november so you can guilt me into not slacking. here's to writing.

*Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield

i'll admit that i was glad it was over

today is the last day of this year, and i was originally thinking of putting together one of those big compilation posts of all the big moments of twenty-twelve, but i just really don't have the time or motivation for that anymore. and anyway, this year kind of sucked. i mean, yes, there were a bunch of really great things that happened, but yesterday just reminded me of all the ways that this was perhaps one of the worst years so far, and you know what? i'm glad it's over. i'm not one to celebrate new year's, as i've mentioned on this blog a few times before, and though i don't really think that every new year gives you a fresh start and a clean slate, i kind of wish it did. i think we could all use a do-over.

but next year is going to be awesome i've decided. for me, at least. (that sounds a lot more selfish than i intend it to.) the first day of this year i said i was going to do something productive or get into the phd program. obviously i went down the second route. and though thoughts of dropping out have, at least for the moment, been shelved, i will still do something productive this year. phd or no phd. i have finally gotten sick of my aimless existence, and though my idea of doing something with my life may be completely different from the average idea, i will still do it. whatever it turns out to be. 

i've always felt new year resolutions to be kind of stupid, so i'm not going to post a bunch on here, but i have ideas of things to do with the year, and if i get a couple of them done, i will be a very happy camper. if resolutions are your thing, good luck with them. if you like to stay up and welcome in the new year with confetti and balloons, then have fun with that. as for me, i'll probably be asleep, but i will be just as happy for the clock to strike midnight and end this year as the rest of you. 

*Somebody that I Used to Know -Gotye

and the games you play, you would always win

i have been trying to write something all morning, but it is just not working out. i'm too annoyed by mason's apparent love for recorded messages to try and write anything coherent. i do have a bunch of notes written in several drafts that (hopefully) will make for interesting posts someday, but i just don't think today is the day.

instead, here is a piece that i wrote a few years ago and recently came across again. it's obviously from a time before i got stuck in the images and themes you find in everything i write today. kudos to you if you can recognize the eleven games referenced in it.

Simon says stop.

Simon says love me.

Simon says stay.

Break my heart.

I wish you were better at this game.

I'm going to jail without passing go, and you're climbing up chutes and not paying the five thousand for 

spinning a ten. You're not waiting for a one to start and peeking into envelopes marked confidential. I 

go fish until I'm drowning in cards, and you're declaring eights aren't special and every card can be 

crazy. You call 'uno' but your hands are full and go to Queen Frostine without an invitation.

I'm trying to play your games, but you're breaking all the rules, and I can't keep up when I don't know 

where up is. You're building castles out of the chaos you create and proclaiming yourself the winner.

You toss me to the side without a second thought, because whoever is stuck with the old maid at the 

end loses, and it figures that would be the one rule you follow.

also, here is a list of new year's resolutions for 20 somethings that i meant to post earlier, but never did.

*Set Fire to the Rain - Adele

it goes unnoticed

because vacations always throw my inner schedule off way more than what is traditionally acceptable, i realized pretty late yesterday that we were starting a new year. oh well. needless to say, i started twenty-twelve without much sparkly excitement and wishes for happiness. in fact, new year's eve saw me asleep at ten or eleven after watching the santa clause on tv and driving for a gazillion hours across the country, and new year's day found me stuck on the couch all day trapped in a marathon of the lying game, recuperating from all the business of the past week. (what is it about a marathon that makes it so hard to turn off? this must be scientifically studied.)

had i known it was new year's i probably wouldn't have done anything different, though. for one, this year is double even numbers which is like a slap in the face to me because i like odd. also, i don't know how your family vacations are, but after one of mine you need a day of nothing before you are back to normal. third, i was never one of the big new year celebrators anyway. i remember the first year i was allowed to stay up and watch the ball drop. i was so excited i couldn't speak, and it was the most anticlimactic moment of my life. i think i lost the new year's spirit then. and finally, i'm not a big hoper of a whole year of happiness. why should the whole year have to be happy? i find comfort in sadness, productivity in anger, and creativity in hopelessness. happiness is great for photo shoots and barbecues, but a year of happiness would be a total waste of time for me. and this year, i hope to do something worthwhile. (unless i get accepted to the phd program. then i'll just waste another year "educating" myself.)

the point is, this year started off slowly. today was supposed to be my productive day. there are bags and stuff just lying around from the florida trip that need to be unpacked and organized. there are dishes that need to be washed and clothes that need to be laundered. i have pictures i need to upload and songs i need to download.  but i can't stop yawning, and every second i wait the chores seem to multiply and i just don't feel like doing any of that today.

*Again I Go Unnoticed - Dashboard Confessional

happy new year, happy new year

did you know that it was 2010 already??

i mean, i knew yesterday was new year's eve. i knew because i was complaining to my family about how i think it's pretty stupid to celebrate it. today is just like yesterday and just like tomorrow... just with a different year tacked on at the end. i also think new year's resolutions are some of the stupidest things ever. why do you have to make such a big deal about resolving to do the same things every year that you know you most likely not end up doing? and i really dont see why the mail can't be delivered today. what are you going to be doing on new year's day? (according to my sister, recovering from hangovers.) my mom was also saying how stupid it is to wish someone a happy new year. you're really wishing someone happiness for a whole year?? that's a tall wish. wish them a good day, okay, but a year? don't we just sound like a delightfully cheery family?

so i knew it last night, but this morning, when i saw mention of 2010 everywhere i was shocked. 2010 was going to be a big year for me... kinda like 2006. 2010 was when i was going to graduate, which i guess is technically still true even though i finished school in 2009. 2010 was when the real world was going to start, though i pushed that back a couple of years for grad school. 2010 was going to be when all the pieces magically fell into place and i would know what i wanted to do with the rest of my life. i'm still just as lost as ever, and today, i'm okay with that.

*Happy New Year - ABBA