they invent her a new world with oil skies and aquarelle rivers

is it weird that i get the blogging itch bad enough to scratch at one year intervals? maybe. it would be better if i planned a yearly post instead. anyway, things look different around here. i feel like a stranger in some place that i was once a regular. 

which fits my current mood. 

i'm reading the midnight library and i was struck pretty early in the book with the realization that nora's depression feels so familiar but so distant. i'm reading the words and i keep thinking "i was there, i was right there. and i'm not there anymore. and i don't really know when that happened?" i was sitting in that room, not in her chair maybe but it was in the same room, and i know it so intimately that part of me hadn't even realized i had left the room. but i did.

i started this blog over a decade ago - eventually i will need to sift through these posts because i know there are many that should be taken down - and some days i can barely remember the girl i was then, the anxiety and depression, the pressures and expectations that weighed so heavily on me. there was light, too, and friends and laughter. but always with the knowledge that i was three steps away from too late. that girl is still inside me somewhere, and on nights like tonight i'm kind of happy that this roadmap exists to lead me back to her. just in case i ever need/want it. 

this book is making me feel things. this year is making me feel things. and nostalgia will always be the place i feel most at home. but there are times, a surprisingly lot of them recently, when i feel like i could get pretty comfortable in the here and now. 

after i had my second son, i had bad post partum anxiety and depression. i had gotten a glimpse of it with my first, but that second kid... ouch. after weeks of thinking about it and talking it through with people (some of which were the wrong people, and even though i know they didn't do anything maliciously, i don't think i can ever truly forgive them), i remember sobbing on my bedroom floor after coming to the realization that i was the worst thing that could have happened to my children. i begged my husband to take the kids and leave. to move to the other side of the world and raise the kids alone, or with his parents. i'd go to library story time with friends and mommy and me classes and playdates and then come home and just cry and cry and cry. and yell. so much yelling. and stare blankly at the wall as my kids cried or watched tv or destroyed the house. and i'd go to bed drowning in guilt. and in the midst of all of that, i stopped writing. 

i didn't notice it at first, because i have had my share of writing dry spells. but one day it hit me that it had been well over a year since i had written a single word that wasn't messages on my birth board and social media posts. and this was a different kind of not writing. this was not that i wasn't putting the words down, it was that the words didn't exist at all. november 2019 i decided to try nanowrimo again. i had written like a thousand words in 2017 and didn't even bother trying in 2018, but in 2019 i decided to try. and that first day of writing was like filling my lungs with air when i hadn't even realized i had been holding my breath. i remember telling friends (because along with an awesome kid and a decidedly not awesome time, i came out of that pregnancy with amazing friends and the best support group) that it felt like i had found myself again. i hadn't realized how lost i had been, but putting words to paper (or screen), no matter how bad they were, was like coming home.  

the midnight library goes beyond sylvia plath's fig tree that has haunted me for most of my life. you can look at your book of regrets and then choose a different life and live it and if you don't like it, you can come back to the library and choose something else. i'm the person whose anxiety spikes every time my kids watch the lion king and mufasa says "you are more than what you have become." (and they watch this movie a lot.) the idea of trying on different decisions is definitely my cup of tea. 

and yet, i also feel like i have reached the point where i've got my foundation down. after extensive talks with friends and countless hours of my typical introspection, i have come to the conclusion that entering your 30s is the best thing that could happen to a person. your 30s are where you find your why, your how, your no. you learn your who and figure out where to distribute your fucks. that's not to say anything gets less confusing or easier or anything, but, well, maybe it does. maybe you just get better at being confused. there's altogether too much pressure put on your 20s. 

but back to my point. 

a recurring thought in the book (so far) is that the only way to learn is to live. hardly groundbreaking, but still. the only way to learn is to live. 

maybe there's no real midnight library, but the girl that started this blog feels like she belongs in a different book than the one writing this post today. maybe there are lots of books within me, that start and end with my decisions. sometimes i go back and have to relearn a lesson again and again before it sticks, changing small things before i can really understand what i'm meant to. how many books within me have the same title, the same plot, but a cast that's just that side of different? 

i feel like i've learned enough to know that the versions of myself that feel the most comfortable are the ones where words are prioritized. my goal this year was to focus on writing. and i have written/worked on my writing every single day since january 2nd. for the first time in years and years, i wrote a novel. from start to finish. i didn't give up halfway through because november was done or my idea fizzled out. i wrote almost 100k words, and most of them are crap, but i know what needs to be fixed. even if i might not always know how to fix it. i've read 41 books so far this year. and yes, a lot of them are trash, but you know what? i like trash. i like silly romances and dramatic teenagers and hidden worlds. and with every word i read and write, i feel like i'm finding more of myself. i'm piecing myself back together like a puzzle. and maybe by the end of it i'll find myself in the book that i want to stay in, and the midnight library may lose, if not its appeal, at least my desperation coloring that appeal. (no, i never did learn not to mix metaphors.) 

and maybe that's why i keep coming back to this blog every time i know i'm done blogging. maybe i need some way to catalog these books, so that when i find myself in the right one, i don't forget every book that was written to get me there.

*Far, Far - Yael Naim

you know what i really want to do? i want to take some time, a year at least, and just really focus on my writing. writing has always been what i want to do with my life, and i feel like i owe it to it and myself to actually try it for real. i want to get a babysitter for a few hours a day and force myself to write and edit and just do this thing already. i want to turn writing into a career. 

and i know that there are so many authors that balance their writing with their day job, but i find it really hard when i don't have a real "day job." all of my roles overlap too much. my day has no real structure. i do the whole stay at home mom thing with the keeping a kid alive and doing cleaning and laundry and stuff (which, if i'm being honest, is the bane of my existence. the domestic chores, not the kid. the kid is the light of my life.) and throughout my day i throw in all of my TAing stuff (answering emails, grading papers, having appointments, etc), and - while admittedly less than i should be - do my dissertation research stuff, and do everything everything that goes hand in hand with being a professional people pleaser. 

part of me has always sort of wanted to be one of those people that moves to saudi arabia for one reason or another and then complains about there being nothing to do and feeling trapped in the house. i always secretly harbored the thought that, if i was stuck at home all day, i would get so much writing done. i convinced myself that that was exactly what i needed. 

in reality, though, that's not what i need at all. i am the queen of doing nothing all day. stick me in a house with internet and i will waste my life on tumblr and netflix. take away the internet and i'll lose myself in books. i'll stare at a wall. i'll eat my weight in junk food. what i won't do, though, is what i "should" be doing. 

what i really need is structure. 

i have actually added a little bit of structure to my day, and it's amazing. after breakfast every morning, i let the rabbit out to play with the baby and i wash dishes slash clean the kitchen. it's small, and to a normal person laughable, but i haven't had a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink in a while, and it feels great. so what i think i need to do is start structuring in writing. i'll structure in TAing and studenting and people pleasing. i will no longer have loose, flowy, do whatever days, because obviously i am not responsible enough for that.

i'm down in the living room, just me and darcy. the baby is in his bed, asleep. the husband is in his bed, asleep. a silence hangs over the house, and i feel like i'm in a million different times at once, like every small timeline of my life intersects here. i am a high school senior sitting on my bed. the glow of the tv bright in the darkness. i am a college student on the same bed, in the same dark, with a different glowing screen, six msn messenger conversations open. i am sitting in a small apartment. the ring on my finger is new, but the silence and the darkness are old, familiar. i am a mother, and though the darkness is wearing a cloak of recess lighting, the silence is still here, welcoming. 

my life often seems like a series of endless loops, some bigger than others. there are the small loops: build a tower, clap as baby knocks it down. build a tower, clap as baby knocks it down. build a tower. there are the bigger loops, like the one that finds me hiding under my blankets with a tear-streaked face again and again and again. and there are these, the loops that you wouldn't recognize as loops unless you look at the whole picture, see the whole timeline stretched out before you. and as loops go, if i am to constantly find myself with only the darkness and silence of night as my companions, well, it's not a bad loop to be stuck in. 

i have not blogged in nearly two months. most days it seems like there is nothing to write that is worth the time i could be doing something else. most days i am not sitting in my living room alone at night. most days the older versions of myself are not at the surface, not flowing through my veins, not breathing through my lungs. 

i used to think that, to come back to this blog, even sure that no one still read it, i needed something big. i should only come back if i have something worth saying. tonight, i should blog because i never stopped blogging. tonight, i should read harry potter fanfiction. tonight, i should talk to friends. tonight, i should fall in love or make someone fall in love with me. tonight, i should watch reruns of 90s television. tonight, i should wash bottles. tonight, i should do the same thing i did last night and the same thing that i'll do tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. 

there's so much you have to know

my life pre-cricket involved a lot of time sitting in front of a computer screen and wandering the internet. office hours, "study" hours, and those random in-between times when it's too early to leave the house yet but too late to do anything productive were all spent at a laptop. and because of that, i was pretty on top of everything that was going on from international big news stories to the latest tabloid news, from personal stories about friends i had never actually met in real life to stories about the fictional people that i felt i had known forever.

my life post-cricket, at least so far, has involved a significantly less amount of computer time. while there have still been hours staring at a screen, the screen usually has netflix on it. (anything that needs my hands to type or scroll just was not feasible at the time.) the times that i do have access to my hands, i am usually found googling baby-related stuff or playing candy crush. most of the time, though (and i cannot for the life of me figure out how to end this sentence. the past six weeks are just a hazy blur of feeding and rocking and changing clothes and diapers and sheets interspersed with interrupted sleep and i have no idea what i have been doing "most of the time," but i feel like i have been wildly productive and one hundred percent unproductive at the same time. on the one hand, hello, keeping a baby alive here, but on the other hand, what have i been doing with the past six weeks?)

this is all to say that, as i've been coming out of my first-six-weeks-of-motherhood daze (which is totally a thing), i find myself saying over and over and over again, "wait, what?! when did that happen?" things like zayn malik leaving one direction and that plastic surgeon that was parodied in the unbreakable kimmy schmidt committing suicide were thrown casually into conversations like of course everyone knows about this, what rock have you been living under? i didn't know about the bombings in yemen until a few days into them. and for the first year in as long as i can remember, i missed every single website's april fool's day prank.

i'm not sure i have ever been so uninformed about everything. starting from today, and until i feel like i have caught up as much as i can, i will start every conversation i have with people with "so what was your favorite piece of news/information from march/april?" feel free to catch me up in the comments.

*Father and Son - Cat Stevens

it's haunting me

does everyone remember the twits by roald dahl? i actually don't remember the plot very much at all, but wasn't there a part where someone glued all of the furniture to the ceiling so they thought they were upside down? hardly an unheard of prank these days, but to young elementary school me, it was the the funniest and smartest idea in the world. aside from the furniture on the ceiling part, which i'm not actually sure was from that particular book in all honesty, there was one point that got lodged in my brain and never really left it.

there's a part in the book that says that if you have ugly thoughts then they show on your face and you get uglier and uglier until people can barely stand to look at you, and if you have nice thoughts then you get prettier and prettier because they shine out of your face. that idea used to haunt me.

now, i had an amazing childhood, but i was a slightly weird little kid with a fondness for melancholy. i remember being in fourth grade and laying on my bed with my windows open, there was a cool breeze blowing in just a few degrees too warm to make it chilly and birds were chirping just outside. my sisters were somewhere in the house or yard playing, and i just stayed in my room listening to music that made me sad. because apparently i was always like that. and to this day, whenever there are clear blue skies and a breeze and chirping birds and solitude, i am transported to my nine year old body laying on my bed, staring up at the canopy, and enjoying that particular satisfaction of digging yourself into a hole of sadness.

anyway.

when i was still really young (think first or second grade) and first read that line, i one hundred percent believed it. if a single thought that was anything less than pleasant crossed my mind, i was terrified that everyone around me would see me getting uglier and just know. i eventually grew out of that, but the echoes of the fear still lingered in my mind, and once i hit fifth/sixth grade, it kind of came up again. i knew that whatever thoughts i had were not changing my physical appearance, but i also knew that there was nothing hiding in the dark to kill me and that didn't stop me from turning on every single light on my way upstairs and flying into bed when i turned the light off in my room at night. (it also didn't exactly help that i was entering that lovely awkward stage lol.)

that went away, too, after a while, but the excerpt still sticks with me. and at random times i'll suddenly remember the twits and how they got uglier because of their thoughts. usually it's just a passing thought or a one-liner in response to something someone said/did, but today it stirred up the other memories. there are so many bits and pieces from books that i can barely even remember anymore that have stuck with me my entire life. a lot of them seem pretty pointless, like a scene of picking up baggage at an airport or gluing a napkin into a scrapbook, and i start to wonder why. why my brain decided to store that little snippet but lose the rest of the plot. what was the point?

and those are the deep introspective thoughts that have kept me from working on my dissertation. i should've chosen a topic related to children's literature. maybe then i could have at least pretended i was doing work.

*Everytime - Britney Spears

people keep talking about this whole new year thing, and so i figure that it's important enough to warrant a blog post, but really, i have very little to say about it. most years on this blog enter and leave with pretty much zero fanfare or even recognition, and i was perfectly content to let this year come in the same way. i mean, birthdays were always the "new year" to me filled with resolutions and reflections. january first was just, well, january first.

i'm not sure when my complete lack of interest in new years started, but i am going to attribute it to the first year that we were old enough to stay up to watch the ball drop, and it was the most anticlimactic experience of my life. i felt cheated and lied to and was filled with regret that we hadn't spent those precious four hours when were should have been asleep watching cartoons. plus, my family was just never big on it. so these days i just let it pass by and basically ignore it and everyone's attempts to make it into a thing.

but then i went on goodreads and saw that i had failed my book challenge for the year (i think. they don't count rereads and that's pretty much all i did this year. i'll have to recheck.) and i remembered that last year i did a book post and was shocked to realize that an entire year has passed since then. and then i came on here to write a book post and saw that "write one million words" tracker and thought, great, another failed challenge.

i will update the tracker and compile my list of read books this week and then put twenty-fourteen firmly behind me as one of the weirdest years of my life. i failed almost every goal i set for myself at the beginning of the year, but i also checked off some big milestones in that checklist of life thing, so... success?

fifteen is my favorite number, so maybe i will get superstitious all of a sudden and believe that that means there are good things in store for me. it will (hopefully. if everything goes right) be one of those defining years that will separate my life into before-kids and after-kids which is weird to think about. time is flying.

there's something about sitting in front of a computer screen in the early AMs when the rest of the household is asleep that is both lonely and that comfortable kind of solitary at the same time. it is familiar, but familiar in the way that every person you used to be is.

it makes me miss friends and MSN messenger and trying to stay quiet so my parents won't know i'm still awake.

it is a quiet, tired feeling and a time of blooming possibilities.

everything is different at times like this. the internet is different, the shadows on the wall, the howling of the wind, all of it. but at the same time, everything is exactly the same.

i feel like the sad character in a book or movie who goes back at the end of the story to the bar or the house or the school or wherever and sits alone with the memories of times when those places were not so empty, nowhere near as lonesome.

i feel like i should be having a written conversation about tv shows, or harry potter fanfiction, or life and hopes and dreams. i should be expressing myself in navy comic sans, size ten, bold. (that was my MSN messenger font. always.)

it just takes some time, little girl, you're in the middle of the ride, everything (everything) will be just fine, everything (everything) will be alrightl

if you remember, twenty-six was going to be the year of deep breaths for me. and it has been. but apparently, for me to take a deep breath, i need to have some sort of breakdown first. i think it increases my lung capacity. or something. i let myself fall just long enough into the fear-panic-self-loathing spiral that i really believe i have done it this time, gone too far down once again. just when the idea that it will no doubt take years to crawl back out of this starts to turn into truth, i inhale real deep, fill my lungs like balloons, and float slowly back up to solid ground. well, as solid as the ground ever is. it may not be the funnest cycle, or the most productive, but it's apparently what i do. should you want to try it yourself, here's how to go about it:

monday: after letting the pot of stress you have become slowly come to a boil for weeks, finally allow yourself to believe that it will boil over. that you will explode. that it is all too much and you cannot handle it. try and do something simple (like write a blog post) repeatedly. fail every time. write a stress-fueled mental breakdown of a post instead. cry. eat lots of junk food.

tuesday: wake up before the sun and resign yourself to the fact that that dull headache is there to stay. go out to breakfast with your dad. go to a pottery class with your mom. snarkily resent all the new students in the class and bemoan the loss of your old pottery family. grade papers for school. watch game shows on tv. pretend nothing is wrong. take phone calls and don't believe your lies about nothing being wrong. have a stressful breakdown to your parents at their dining room table. cry some more. eat lots of junk food.

wednesday: throw a bag full of clothes into the back seat of your car, pick your dad up, and run away to connecticut. stay there through the weekend. spend your time attending a conference and watching cold case and law and order. let your grandma go on and on about how awesomely amazing and smart and pretty and perfect you are. don't argue with her. don't answer your phone. don't check your email. allow yourself to take a deep breath and watch as things settle down around you.

sunday: come home. stumble a bit when you hit the solid ground. start to feel the panic rise again.

monday: take another deep breath, and start getting stuff done.

and here we are. monday again. so the apartment may be a mess, there may be a pile of unfolded clothes sitting in the hallway, the banks may be ignoring my emails, i may not be prepared for future assignments in two out of the three classes i TA for, we may have yet to buy a new house, and i was supposed to shower this morning. BUT we can easily afford two out of the four houses we're debating between without talking to the bank, one without having to ask them for a bigger loan but rather just putting down a little more to start with, and i mean three out of four is not bad. so we don't get the dream house? there's plenty of time for dreams and going after them later. settling for "would have been perfect if i hadn't seen the other one" isn't really settling at all. my husband will be on vacation in a couple of weeks and the apartment will be sparkling by the end of it, i am one hundred percent caught up on grading assignments and ready for the next couple of batches coming in this week. i live in a place where there is clean, hot water to shower with 24/7.

deep breath. start getting stuff done.

*The Middle - Jimmy Eat World

okay so this is probably just going to be a long-winded, unorganized ramble that may or may not make sense at the end, but i feel like i need to get out my thoughts on this. if you have any thoughts, i'd love to hear them.

see, i've been thinking a lot about abusive artists slash celebrities and people's reactions to them. i'm talking about award-winning singers and actors down to youtube stars and rapist pedophiles down to manipulative jerks. to keep my examples somewhat cohesive, i'll use the youtube sex scandal that happened a few months ago as my scenario just because youtubers fall somewhere between celebrities and "regular people" and i find that sorta fascinating, but really, there are tons of stories about abusive and manipulative celebrities that you can choose from. we all know the scenario: celebrity gets accused of rape/abuse/general scummy behavior, tabloids and gossip rings talk of nothing else for a week or two, furious fans and non-fans vow to boycott the celebrity and ask for his/her head on a stake, "loyal" fans scream just as loudly that said celebrity is innocent or made a mistake and is deserving of forgiveness, celebrity either makes a public apology or denies the accusations or ignores the whole thing completely, story blows over.

okay, so i have several different views on this whole thing, and they may sound and/or be a bit contradictory, but here goes. on the one hand, i'm not sure if i agree with boycotting an artist's work because s/he turns out to be an asshole. not to say i don't agree with it, just that i'm unsure. i always think of my dentist or eye doctor or tax filer guy or waiter in this situation. if i really liked my dentist or had a really great waiter, would i stop going to him because i found out that he manipulated people into having sex with him? or would i separate his work from the rest of him? i can say i'd go one way or the other, but it's hard to know because i will most likely never be in that situation. either i would never learn of his less than honorable behavior or he would be arrested/punished/whatever and the choice would be made for me. i have always had an issue with the way that people feel entitled to celebrities' lives. i mean, i totally get wanting a glimpse into that lifestyle, but at the end of the day, a celebrity doesn't owe me anything. i never understood why they were made out to be role models for the world. it is not a celebrity's job to raise our children or set a good example for them. it's just not. and the way that people feel "betrayed" when a celebrity is involved in a scandal... i just don't get it. aside from the new wave of celebrities that are famous because they are famous, in general, the celebrities give us art, whether that is a movie, song, book, or painting, and that's all you should be expecting from them. going back to the dentist, most people could not care any less if their dentist ate organically or smoked pot or didn't recycle. as long as they clean teeth and fill cavities and don't mess all that stuff up, well, then, it's not our job to worry about what s/he does after hours.

and yet, this is not the case with celebrities. one of the "famous" youtubers that was outed for manipulative behavior was alex day. because he cheated on girlfriends and did not entirely understand the concept of no meaning no, all of his products that were sold on dftba.com - which included shirts, CDs, etc - were taken down, he lost a substantial number of youtube subscribers, he hasn't made a video since, and he lost a book deal which i think was from a publisher separate from youtube and its community completely. i'm not saying that he should go unpunished, i'm just not sure that this is the right punishment.

i think that's one of the main issues i have with all of this. because we view these celebrities as "other," we hold them to different standards. (although, to be completely fair, rape goes unpunished most of the time, celebrity or not. did you hear about the lady with HIV that was raped and everyone was so horrified that she didn't warn her rapist? the guy ended up getting AIDS and people wanted to start a campaign forcing women with HIV to wear some sort of identity badge so it wouldn't happen again. because that was obviously what we should walk away from that story with, not "don't effing rape people.") if a dentist commits a crime, he is arrested and tried and convicted and punished accordingly. he may have some difficulty getting jobs as a convicted felon, sure, but it's not really the same. in the case of the dentist, we feel we own his job. in the case of the celebrity, we feel we own the person.

however, celebrities *cough* charlie sheen *cough* who not only get off without proper punishment but then go on to use their crappy behavior and subsequent punishment to get more famous and go on tour and start a new tv show, well those people are the scum of the earth and deserve to be boycotted and shunned and whatever else. but for the others? i don't know.

what do you think? does knowing how a creator of content is as a person affect the way that you enjoy their created content? do you think that boycotting said content is a justifiable punishment for being a shitty person? do you think that if celebrities didn't tend to be let off with lighter punishments, people would still boycott their work? i'm honestly curious, so let me know. 

building and fixing till it's good as new

i started this blog post three different times, and i dunno if it's the fasting or what, but it kept coming out just incredibly sappy. and saccharine. and just... overkill times ten. so. suffice it to say that today was one of those days where you think, being me is actually pretty awesome. those days when you're really appreciative of the little weird things that make you you. and that is all i will say on that. moving on.

my in-laws have this house that they're renting out and i have so many ugly emotions tied up in it that i've started to hate it. (when i was in the midst of whatever i was in around my birthday, i would spend most of days doing small jobs around that house to fix it up between renters, things like caulking bathrooms and painting pantries and scrubbing floors. the feeling of completing a task successfully, no matter how small, was something i needed. it was partly therapeutic and partly toxic and i can still taste the desperation in the air when i'm in it.) anyway, the appliances all kind of decided to die and while i needed to call a repair guy for the washer and fridge, i was going to fix the garbage disposal myself. well, the original plan was for my dad to fix it, but then there was a couple of really intense, stress-filled weeks and then he left the country with the rest of my family. so it was left to me. and let me tell you, it did not look good. i went back to that house three days in a row (mainly because i kept forgetting things that i needed and would try to fix it for ten minutes before telling myself that if i only remembered the needle-nose pliers i would be able to do it and i'll just come back tomorrow) and it got to the point where people were telling me to just leave it to my husband or a repair guy and no that did not mean that i was weak and worthless it just meant that there were some things i could not do. 

but see, i refused to believe that. especially in that house. i had pushed all the stress and failure and negative feelings out of my mind into those rooms for months, and they were all just waiting for a chance to move back in. i could not fail. and so i didn't. and it felt awesome. (i was on the phone with my dad wen i fixed it and i'm pretty sure he thinks i'm crazy because of how excited i got.) and while fixing a garbage disposal is really not that big of a deal, shut up. it was symbolic. with maybe just a bit of some unhealthy obsession. 

and then i became incredibly arrogant because apparently my ego will swell at the slightest hint of an accomplishment and called my husband and said, "you're so lucky you married me. not only am i smart and pretty and creative, but i can also fix stuff. you hit the freaking jackpot." yeaaah, i'm obnoxious. 

and then i tried to play candy crush and failed again at that same level that i have been stuck on forever and my ego was returned to its natural size. i really need to pass this level, you guys. my self-worth has somehow become tied up in it. it's bad. i will be eighty-seven years old and still trying to beat it, refusing to give up. 

*Bob the Builder Theme Song

remember when i used to come on here and wax poetic about the lies that we were told growing up?  like how we could be anything we wanted to be, etc? (i'm pretty sure i wrote more than one post about this kind of stuff, but got sidetracked into reading my old posts for too long and now have no more time to look for them.) yeah, well my recent complaint against what we are telling our children is "practice makes perfect." because it does not. practice makes better most of the time, sure, but sometimes, it doesn't. sometimes you can practice and practice and practice and still completely suck. and you know, being told that you still suck because you just haven't been practicing enough when you know that there is really no possible way that you could have practiced anymore without devoting your entire life to practice - stopping any and every other thing in your life, including eating and sleeping - sucks. gah.

end rant. 

at first, when i see you cry, yeah it makes me smile

a few weeks ago i watched the fault in our stars with a friend. it was... an experience. it was the first time i had ever been in a situation with so many teen fangirls in one place without being a teen fangirl myself. (because, yes, we went to a ya book's movie adaptation on the saturday night of its opening weekend and were then surprised that we were outsiders in the theater.) i can only assume that it was the feeling you would have gotten going to a harry potter midnight book release if you liked the books, sure, but were the type of fan that did not have every character and their house and patronus memorized. the type of fan that didn't own nor particularly care to own any potter-world merchandise outside of the books. it was awful because at the point where the plot turns sad and the tears started building up, the entire theater burst into sobs, and my friend and i completely lost it. it was hilarious. and also completely distracting. the girl sitting in front of us had a little bun on the top of her head that bobbed up and down as she sniffled non-stop through half of the movie. the girls to the left had a frantic passing out of tissues moment when the lights went down. a girl behind us got up, said "i can't stay here," and ran out of the theater crying. one of the boys in her group, after asking the rest of the group if she was okay, went out to bring her back in and she spent the last ten minutes or so of the movie just sobbing. loudly. heart-wrenching-i-just-saw-my-entire-family-murdered-in-front-of-me sobs. it was completely over the top. (oh, and they clapped after every. single. scene.) i was biting my lip so hard to keep from laughing out loud that i'm surprised i didn't go right through it. my friend and i were shaking with silent laughter, because obviously we couldn't risk being killed by a theater full of over-emotional fangirls for having the wrong emotions. it was bad. 

but we made it through, and after leaving the theater and laughing for fifteen minutes straight, we started to discuss the movie. my friend, who hadn't read the book, thought the plot was pretty predictable. if you haven't read/watched it, you may want to just skip down to the next paragraph. you know it's a sad movie so you're expecting something bad to happen. the movie starts with hazel "dying" and then things just continue to get worse for her so you kind of assume that she's going to make it out okay, because there's no way it could be that obvious. gus, on the other hand, seems to have everything going for him, so you figure that he's screwed. it's just the way of books and movies and whatever. so when he dies, it's really sad, but it was also a bit expected.

anyway, i told her that it was less obvious in the book. but something i just read online made me realize that i was wrong. it wasn't just about reading the book vs watching the movie, it was more about when you read the book. i read the book before it exploded into something popular enough to warrant a movie. and i think that made all the difference in the world. because now, everyone knows that the book, and by extension the movie, is Sad with a capital s. you're in that mindset from the beginning, subconsciously preparing yourself for grief from the minute you start it. and when i read it, i had no idea that it was a Sad book. i knew it was about cancer kids, so i kind of thought that it would have a sad ending, but it was touted so much as Not a Cancer Book that i wasn't entirely sure. there was still that little thought that, "this might actually turn out good. there may be a happy ending after all of this." when you know that a book is Sad, there is no hope of a happy ending which makes it less sad then when that hope is crushed and spit on and then run over by a car. twice. 

and that's why i like to read books before the hype. that's what gets me. it's not about that weird hipster-real-fan mentality that is running rampant around the internet. (if i hear one more person tell me that they're a real fan of whatever book because they liked it before the movie, i will scream.) it's about the expecting. and i'm not talking about expectations not being met because it was overhyped or whatever, i'm talking about going into it with a particular mindset. i'd rather someone tell me that something was good/bad than sad/scary/happy. when you go in with a clean slate, everything is sharper. i like to have my feelings crushed and spit on and then run over by a car. twice. i like the feeling of realizing something is laugh out loud funny when i had no idea it would be. it's always funnier than when you expect it to be funny. i like that feeling when you have to pause reading to take a deep breath because this is totally not what you expected. i think that's why i'm having so much trouble getting myself to read any of the books that are becoming movies soon, despite actually wanting to read them. (well, that and the fact that i am in a serious reading slump still and oh my gosh i can't read anything these days.) 

*Smile - Lily Allen

don't matter if it's sooner or later, i know that it's gonna be alright

sometimes i think about when i am rich and famous and a published novelist and what people will think when they read my blog: the early years (of which this year will definitely be part of) and see just how whiny and lazy i really am. or, was at this point in my life. and how i would go days and weeks without writing anything despite claiming that i want to write forever. i have these grand ideas that i'll have grown out of this all by then and i will have amazing work ethic and will never procrastinate and will write for at least two hours every day and not just in november. and i will balance school and writing and family and friends just as easily as i know they can be balanced. and future readers will say to themselves, "wow, if she can do it then i definitely can," and i will become an inspiration for people everywhere.

other times i think that i may be too old to still be dreaming the same dream i have dreamed since i can remember dreaming, but then i remind myself that there are people waiting for me to become an inspiration and really, i owe it to them to become rich and famous one day. and a published novelist. also, i dunno if it's the reading or what, but despite not being a generally optimistic person, i am stupidly idealistic about certain things. one of them is me becoming a published author. it will happen. i can feel it. i just need to sit down and write until my dream comes true. and when i'm not writing, i assure myself that it's okay because one day i will start again and maybe that will be the time that i don't stop.

until then, though, i will continue to do whatever it is i am doing now. a lot of little things that sometimes feel like they're adding up to something big and sometimes feel like they're cancelling each other out to make nothing. sometimes i feel like i am in a lifelong existential crisis. sometimes i think that's just what life is. 

oh, and i think i may have to pause the already paused crafty posts because taking pictures is just way too much work. and it's summer. 

on another note, there is a little over half a month left until camp nanowrimo starts and i don't know whether to sign up or not. i didn't sign up in april so that i would feel more obligated to do it in july. i had hopes to dissertation write a few thousand words and possibly novel write a few thousand, too. but now it's extremely likely that my july will include travel and the idea of signing up and failing is unacceptable to me. (which is probably why i should just register already. jump-start this stupid research.) regardless, you should all sign up and write. i mean, it's summer. what else do you have to do?

*Days of Summer - AVPS

but all the possibilities, no limits just epiphanies

do you know that i cannot remember the last time that i stayed in my pajamas all day? i'm not even sure how that happened, but there it is. i haven't just had a spend-all-day-lounging-around-the-house without guilt or shame in so long. but today will change that. i am staying in my pajama pants forever (that happen to be way too big on me and also have hogwarts written down my left thigh) and only leaving the living room to go as far as the kitchen (and okay maybe down to the basement to grab a diet rootbeer), and no one can stop me.

there is something extremely freeing about being stranded at your parents' house. my husband's car is currently being nursed back to health by some mechanics so he took reggie (my car, in case you're new) to work. my parents drove my grandmother up to CT in their minivan, and my sister took their other car to work this morning. which all leaves me: carless. and let me tell you, it is wonderful. it's been over a year since i could use the excuse, "oh sorry i can't. i don't have a car." and i have missed it. it's also great that i'm stranded at my parents' house instead of my apartment because not only is there more space, there is also no sense of responsibility telling me that since i'm at home all day anyway i should clean and cook and get rid of all the clothes that i haven't worn in years. and with the semester being over, i can tell myself that i should get at least two weeks of summer vacation before sitting down to do the work i should have already done. it's perfect.

anyway, i hope that your day is wonderful. i am off to do whatever i feel like.

i can suddenly really relate to lemonhope. and just in case you are not an adventure time watcher, here is what i mean:

*Best Day Of My Life - American Authors

get this weight off my shoulders, i've carried it well

sometimes i will have procrastinated too many things for too long, taken on one too many responsibilities, bitten off just a bit more than i can chew, and at first it's perfectly fine. see, i am very good at balancing. i was an excellent block tower builder. i know how to stack everything just so. sure, it may wobble a bit, but then, what doesn't? as long as it doesn't go crashing down, everything is just fine. do you know what block towers go crashing down? those built with jenga blocks. and do you know why they fall? because you mess with them. you start pulling pieces out from here and then putting them back over there and sooner or later you've tried to move the wrong piece or you've moved the right piece too many times and then you find yourself with a pile of fallen blocks. i used to play jenga a lot.

maybe that's why i find myself completely paralyzed at the moment. i am incapable of doing anything. really, anything. from research to grading papers to watching the newest episode of new girl or replying to that birthday facebook message. i can't do any of it. because there is just too much for me to do. if i try to take one thing out from the tower of duties, it will all come crashing down.

but that's not the worst of it. i mean, if this tower was just sitting on the table then that would be fine. i could turn my back on it and let everything just sit there indefinitely. but it's not. it's sitting in the palm of my hand. which of course makes the whole wobbliness factor greater, but it also does something else. have you ever heard of that talk-giving lady who asked the audience how much a cup of water weighed and then went on to explain that the weight was relative: the longer she held it up, the heavier it got. she was talking about stress and stress-causing things in life, but the analogy can be applied here as well. (mainly because i am also talking about stress-causing things in life.) the longer i hold onto this tower, the heavier it gets. if i try to take off a few blocks, it will fall. if i don't take off any blocks, it will eventually fall anyway. i am stuck.

a normal person probably wouldn't have spent so long stacking the blocks. they might have dealt with a couple as they came along instead of just focusing on how best to add them to the tower. they may have stopped accepting more blocks when they realized that they had reached their limit. they might even now deal with the blocks instead of spending their time and energy making block tower analogies. they might ask for help or let it crash and then deal with the pieces or take the least amount of risk and pull out all of the center blocks first so as not to damage the foundation. me, though? i just keep adding to my tower and trying to keep my hand steady.

*Sweet Talk - The Killers

deadlines and commitments every morning and in the evening, they can suck you in

i've been reading a little bit of harry potter fanfiction recently. a really little bit. they're more snippets and glimpses of the marauders than actual stories, but they have me so nostalgic. along with other things. i've been doing some serious life-changing thinking these days and that has nostalgia splattered all over it. (actually nights, because i've been making up my mind while i sleep because when i am awake i can remember that i am deathly afraid of any change, but especially life-changing changes, and my best tactic is to continue along the same path i am on while doing my best to ignore the fact that anything except what i want to do in this very minute (usually nothing) exists at all. and if you know anything about me, it should be that when i try my best at something i usually succeed. the problem is that i tend to not try my best at the things that i should probably be trying my best at.)

i feel like i maybe need to take a break from my life. sign myself up for a year long retreat or something. nothing but sandy beaches and not watching what i eat or feeling like i should exercise. reading books and binge-watching tv shows and not having to think about school at all because it will not exist. (so basically continue doing what i am already doing (or want to be doing) but without all of the guilt and self-shame that accompanies it at the moment.)

since the likelihood of that happening is pretty slim (and by that i obviously mean it's never going to happen), let me instead talk about the weirdness of saved urls. the other day i started to type in a url to get myself a belated birthday present (i usually wait until i have all my gifts before i buy myself something. it's a moot point this year because the money i was going to use for it went to something else yesterday and i am trying to be very budget-conscious and save my way into a house. oh well.) and a url popped up that i could not even remember visiting. huh, i though, i wonder what other weird urls i have stored on here. and so i went through the alphabet and saw the top saved url for each letter. of course i will share my findings with you.

a: amazon.com
b: blogger.com
c: courses.gmu.edu
d: delicatepoetry.tumblr.com
e: ebay.com
f: facebook.com/home.php
g: google.com
h: hotmail.com
i: imdb.com
j: jeromeasf.spreadshirt.com
k: kickstarter.com
l: lukeconard.tumblr.com
m: mtb.com
n: nanowrimo.org
o: olyusha.tumblr.com
p: padfootdidit.tumblr.com
q: N/A
r: retailmenot.com
s: shouldbestudyingman.blogspot.com
t: tumblr.com
u: ughsocialjustice.tumblr.com
v: N/A
w: www.tumblr.com/tagged/the+lizzie+bennet+diaries
x: xcytech.com
y: youtube.com
z: zanzlanz.spreadshirt.com

at the end of this experiment, i found that most of my visited sites are only weird in how absolutely normal they are. (although i am a little surprised that google beat out goodreads as number one g.) too many are tumblrs. there are a few that i went to literally once but i guess i don't use that letter ever and so it stuck. there are also a few that i never went to at all but my brother did, and either i don't use that letter or he's on his sites more than i'm on mine. this was thrilling, i know.

also, this post is longer than i thought it would be and i think the title only fits if you're in my head.

*Deadlines and Commitments - The Killers

and for a second there we'd won

but only for a second because life sucks and being "a child full of promise" weighs you down with an unending amount of pressure and an incapability to handle the crushing weight of failure and you can't even appreciate the good things and the deep breaths when your incompetence is screaming at the top of its lungs and never seems to need a breath of its own and i am so ready to just be ten years younger already and my constant whining may very well be driving me insane and run-on sentences make me angry but really what doesn't these days. ugh.

*Miss Atomic Bomb - The Killers

with one deep breath, and one big step, i move a little bit closer

as you may or may not know, today is (was?) my birthday. i mean, technically there are still a couple of hours left in the eighteenth, but it's not really the day anymore and i'll probably be heading to bed in an hour so i guess the day is over. or something. anyway. last year i turned twenty-five and that felt like a big birthday. i mean, a quarter of a century. that's big. this year i turned twenty-six (obviously) and despite the fact that the only noteworthy thing about this birthday is that it marks the start of a year-long countdown until the day i am an odd numbered age again, it's been hard. i think it might be the first really hard birthday i've had. like, ever.

i've had moments of "oh my god i am (insert age here) shouldn't i have accomplished (insert appropriate milestone or life goal here) by now?" but i have never felt such soul-crushing failure at the approach of a birthday as i did with this one. i was not ready to be twenty-six. because i am essentially stuck in the same place that i was on my birthday last year. only last year it felt like a step up. this feels a little more like having the rest of the ground rise up and leaving the one square i'm standing on right where it is. (i am not going to dwell on this fact any more than that. also, i started writing more than one piece dealing with this, and every image and metaphor i started sounded tired and hackneyed. the whole experience was kind of a metaphor of my life at the moment and that was just meta enough to piss me off.)

anyway. i always write a birthday post. always. whether it is a huge (or brief) recap of the past year or just a little note saying, "i was born on this day and here is what i did," something is written. but i was really thinking of not posting anything today. (fun fact: one of the main reasons there was a post a couple of days ago was so that i could post on my birthday without feeling like it had to be something big and worthwhile after a dry spell. i didn't want to give myself that excuse to not post. i still didn't want to post anything today.) this morning, feeling like i had to write something, i had a post that consisted entirely of one word: ugh. i later added, "let's just not this year." i didn't post it, though. acknowledging the fact that an entire year had passed without me even noticing felt like giving up. maybe if i didn't blog about it, i wouldn't be a year older.

i mentioned in one of my other birthday posts, though, that my birthday always reminds me of the wonderful people i have in my life. my family. my friends. my people that i sometimes forget exist but then come out of the woodwork offering me a smile. and this year was no different. i really am blessed with some amazing people. and by doing nothing but being themselves (and that includes throwing a bratty tantrum when i didn't play minecraft like i said i would) they have given me the (insert appropriate word here because i am tired and can't think of it) i needed to take a breath. to pause and look around. while i still have the taste of failure sitting strong and bitter at the back of my throat, and i still have the vague sense of panic churning in the pit of my stomach, there is also a small ray of hope. or faith. or something. all i know is that i will take a moment really soon and think through everything i have been shoving onto the proverbial back burner all year, and maybe that will help. maybe the thinking will be enough. maybe it will kickstart me into some forward movement. maybe. and at the moment, maybe feels like heaven.

twenty-six will be the year of deep breaths. i am ready.

*For Reasons Unknown - The Killers

i had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor

i have been feeling not the best lately. hence the break from blogging. (although there are some hastily jotted down thoughts in drafts, like "why are audiobooks so freaking expensive?" and something about books to movie adaptations this year. it's a good year for those, if you like that sort of thing. also, a rant about the phrase "the only thing to fear is fear itself" which you can now read in all its unedited glory:

you know what i never understood? the phrase "the only thing to fear is fear itself." and how that supposedly makes you some super awesome above everyone else human being. but... and maybe i'm understanding this wrong, but wouldn't that really just make you really, really weak? like, if you are afraid of being afraid then doesn't that make you afraid of everything? "people are afraid of spiders. hmm i wonder if i'm afraid of spiders. ahhh me being afraid. i must never see a spider because then i may be afraid of it." and like, you are only brave when you do things in the face of your fears. if you are not afraid of dragons then petting one does not make you brave, it makes you a good pet owner. if you are afraid of fear, how are you even supposed to overcome that? do you get scared? because doesn't that defeat your whole endeavor?)

and the fact that this post has taken me literally over half an hour to write so far (and the majority of it was copy-pasted from a draft) makes me want to take an even longer break.

anyway, the point of this post is to have a post. and also to record for the future that i was alive. that my parents were in CT with my grandma for a while, and that now they're back. that they took a break from CT to spend ten days here with my grandma before going back up. that they brought back boxes of family history that i've been going through, looking at old pictures and marriage certificates and diplomas and phone messages and notes on napkins and craving the stories that go along with them. that's the problem with being a voracious reader who blurs the line between books and reality just a bit too often. you start to need the stories. all of them. i want to be the omniscient narrator that sees everything, from every time, and knows what everyone is thinking, always. i  see a picture of friends on a beach with "junior prom picnic" scribbled on the back and i want to read an entire book about it. i want to know what they were talking about, who took the picture, what day of the week it was. i want to know what they ate, who went to the prom with whom, and what the decorations were like. i want to watch a movie of their lives. i want the stories.

i'm one of those people that could look at old pictures for days without getting bored and listen to my grandmother tell stories for years without getting sick of them, so i'm kind of in my element right now.

if nostalgia was a drug, i'd probably overdose on it.

and really, though, why are audiobooks so expensive? (please don't comment with something about how the voice actors need to be paid now too instead of just the writers and publishers and whoever else which obviously means the price needs to be jacked up because i know that.)

*Photograph - Nickelback 

sometimes i look back through my blog and am amazed by how i can know exactly how i was feeling or what i was doing on a specific day because it is all here. recorded. forever. well, forever-ish. forever enough. my sister will ask about a vague comment one of us wrote on the other's facebook wall and i'll just come here and be like, "oh yeah. we were talking about this." that really isn't the case anymore. i blogged on the first day of this month and now here were are, smack dab in the middle of it. everything in between? in three years it may as well not even have happened. and when i do blog, what do i even talk about anymore? not about what i'm doing. not about what i'm thinking. there are no more posts on current events. absolutely nothing tech-y. and maybe it's just my mood at the moment, but that makes me ridiculously sad.

(looking through my blog just generally makes me sad most of the time. the way my voice changes. like, i went from hopeful to angry to resigned. not about anything in particular. just about life in general, i guess. and i suppose that that's what growing up is, but... i dunno. i mean, i still have yet to fully grow up and doubt i ever will completely come out of my cocoon of childness and find myself transformed into a new adult, but the evolution is still there. documented on here for anyone to see.)

as usual, though, where there are no updates to my blog there are drafts lurking behind the scenes. i have been starting a lot of lists lately. and posts about things that i just cannot figure out how i feel about. and so. much. about. school. ugh. and books. but starting things are not doing things and i don't think i ever really learned how to do the latter.

i want to give this blog a complete redesign. part of me just wants to get rid of my sidebars, get rid of my clouds at the top, get rid of all the colors... i want a blank white background and grey sans-serif words and nothing else. i will probably not do this. mainly because i am lazy and useless.

just in case future me decides to read through this post, though, here's what's going on with me at the moment: my parents were in ct, my grandmother is now in va, my parents and my grandmother will be back in ct by the end of the week for a bit. my grandma is moving. school is going nowhere. i've been following the youtube community sexual abuse thing. i no longer write. i rarely read. and any moments of quiet-aloneness end with me being in a mood that is a mix of blah, disenchantment, and nostalgia for a time and place i never knew.

(earlier today i couldn't decide whether to write a happy/excited post or a ranty/happy post and twelve hours later i end up with this. i will be back tomorrow with one of the posts that had a slash happy. i mean, maybe. i have every intention to.)