as part of my writing every day, i think i'm going to try and blog again. at least semi-regularly. it's weird that so many years of my life went by without a written documentation. most of my life i either journalled, blogged, or both, but the past few years have been nothing. and yes, the brain fog from having 3 kids in 5ish years along with everything else that had been going on is nothing to sneeze at, but still.

i'd be lying, though, if i said i was writing this right now for any reason besides the fact that my phone is being screwy and my kindle app won't work and so i can't read. i feel like kicking myself for not reading earlier when i had the chance instead of scrolling facebook. yes, the book i'm reading is a reread from earlier this year, but i listened to the audiobook then and i wanted to read it read it, and now i can't and i'm annoyed. (side note: the audiobook of oona out of order is fantastic. the narrator was excellent. she's definitely one of my top audiobook narrators and that was the first book i heard from her.)

while i'm trying to focus my writing energy on novels (although the one i've first drafted is a beast i'm not sure i really want to tackle right now), i did decide that i would try some flash fiction/short short fiction competitions just to get some more rejections under my belt. i have this block when it comes to poetry or prose poetry and i'm honestly just avoiding it altogether right now.  

this is choppy and disjointed and i just want to go to bed to read but my book isn't working and people keep talking to me. so it is what it is. 

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.

now it's time for me to take control

my birthday snuck (i know the right word is sneaked. i still like snuck) up on me this year. it was one of those times when you are forced to realize that even when world-stopping things happen, time moves on. i had just caught my balance the other day. sure, i was still reeling a bit, but i was stable for the most part and ready for life to start up again. you can imagine my surprise when my husband asked, "so what do you want to do for your birthday?" and i was hit by the fact that life had never stopped just because i thought it should. it had continued on, ready or not. (don't you hate it when people allude to some big life-changing thing that happened and then never actually tell you what it is? yeah, me too.)

luckily for me, i'm pretty sure there is no one left here to be annoyed by my lack of telling. (i mean, an entire year of sporadic blogging. goodness. the thing is, in my head i had never "stopped blogging." like, i can't even really wrap my head around the idea that so much time has passed between posts. occasionally i come on here and write up a draft, so maybe that's why i feel like i never stopped? or it may be because time for me has lost all meaning so honestly, a year is the same as an hour is the same as a month. and by that logic, it really hasn't been so long.)

anyway, back to my birthday. despite my sporadic posting, there was no way that i couldn't come back here and write a birthday post. this morning i woke up in an ugh mood, but instead of letting outside forces dictate my mood and ruin my birthday, i decided to take action. so as soon as cricket woke up, i got him dressed and took him to ihop for a birthday breakfast of cupcake pancakes. it helped.

that simple action is going to play into the theme for the upcoming year, but i'll get to that in a minute.

i think that one of my most defining characteristics is that i am a people-pleaser. one hundred percent. i know every single way that this has been helpful and self-destructive in my life, and i cannot change it anymore that i can change my brown eyes or love for reading. it is embedded deep within what makes me me, for better or for worse.

due to my pleasing people all the time, i have pushed a lot of my own things to the back burner. when my ship starts to sink, the first things that i throw overboard are mine. this year, i'm pulling myself out of second place. this will be the year of me.

last year, when things got stressful with a new baby and family drama and just, life, i dropped reading and writing. and while i love reading, writing is part of who i am. it is how i work through everything. it is how i celebrate and how i mourn, and stopping writing felt like i had completely lost myself. i woke up one morning without my identity, and it was like i had woken up without the ability to breathe. i was floundering, but there was no time or space to flounder because there were things to do, and people to please. so i kept pushing it aside and pushing it aside, and having a series of mental breakdowns to my husband, and then one day i decided that enough was enough.

i have always dreamed of being published, and so after doing nanowrimo and writing through some depression crap (my story was literally about depression, but it was like a separate world type thing that at first seemed like magic? and then there was this giant-winged-cliche-shadow beast? and a girl got trapped? and there was a lot of self-isolation and very thin metaphors and it was just... i want to say really bad but i also kind of love it.) and writing a bunch of poems/scenes into my phone, i decided to come up with a defined goal.

my writing goal is to write a poetry chapbook and then send it out slash enter it into contests. i will complete this by the end of the year and i will feel like i have done something. something only for me.

and everyone else can kick rocks. i am done with them.

just kidding, i'll still be over here people pleasing, because that is what i do. and obviously the whole putting myself first thing will not be an always kind of thing, but will be an overarching part of everything this year. the thought that i have stuck to the door of the refrigerator in my mind. i have worn myself thin for others, and now it's time to collect myself and do it for me.

*On My Own - Whitney Houston

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. 

do their best to change you, they still can't erase you

this poem is not about you.

i am waiting, waiting,
waiting,
and you are gone.

but this poem is not about you.

you are falling asleep on the couch
again. the tangled blankets beside me
a shadowy body taking your place.

but this poem is not about you.

you are a cup with a hole
at the bottom. i am always trying
to fill you, and you are never full.

but this poem is not about you.

you are grasping hands
and reaching arms
and tongues just waiting to speak.

but this poem is not about you.

i am sending you messages
with capital letters and exclamation points,
and you are sending back silence.
and then more silence.

just remember, this poem was never about you.

****

tonight is a writing night. i guess. apparently.
this is not what i meant to write, but it is what i wrote.
maybe i will write another poem that is not about you.
i'm not sure when my thoughts started using line breaks.
i am not sure when i became so fragmented.
so sparse.

*Hand Me Down - Matchbox 20

i don't know

things i do not know

i don't know when shark week is, or
the best time to praise or fear
a shark, or what the point is
of shark week, really.

i don't know how to take a compliment
or say thank you or you're welcome
or tell someone that they are air.

i don't know why i am always living in the past.
perhaps i got lost there, and i am desperately
trying to find my way home
before the future catches up.

i don't know how to be steady.
my emotions are mountain ranges and canyons.
there is constantly a storm brewing out at sea.
i am up-ups and down-downs and never
anything in between.

i don't know where i end
and where you begin. or maybe
i don't know where you end and i begin.
i don't know if i am even here at all.

*When You Were Young - The Killers

sometimes a secret bubbles up inside of you, natural and beautiful, like a spring in the middle of a shaded wood, and it's so small and so clear and so perfect that you need to keep it. just for now. just to start with. it needs to be protected and there is no one else around to do it so you take up the task. and you hold that secret close like a heartbeat, like a butterfly, like the first ten cents that you ever got your hands on and you didn't quite know what it was or what it meant but you knew that it was somehow tied up with power and freedom and it was a little piece of the thing that everyone else in the world was chasing after. and maybe your legs were too short and your lungs were too small to join the race just yet, but you held your fist tight around the small piece of the future that you knew you'd go after one day and you felt connected to everyone else. and you're sitting in the forest with the small spring that grew into a creek that grew into a stream that grew into a river and it is still clear and it is still perfect but you're starting to worry that it doesn't need your protection anymore, and you start to think about other people wading through your river with their dirty feet and their grimy hands and you can't breathe because the weight of sharing this perfect place is sitting heavy on your chest and the thought of people ruining what you have protected for so long is crushing your lungs. so you build a bridge to divert people away from your river. let them go over instead of through. but you think about them stomping over the clear water and kicking down bits of dirt and throwing rocks over the edge and you're seeing red in a place that used to be green. you are yelling at the people that are trying to cross and scaring away the ones that even get close. the people you used to feel connected to now just look like the enemy. with the purest of intentions you have become the troll under the bridge.

***

sometimes the smallest hint of an idea comes into my mind and instead of letting it stew and marinate, instead of waiting until it forms itself into something that makes sense, i write it down. and the next thing and the next and the next and in an almost panicked state i am putting down mixed metaphors and half-baked ideas and imagery just this side of good. and then i read over it and it sounds like a hurried jumble and instead of editing it or carving it for pieces i decide to leave it alone and post it. because why not. 

she believes that life is made up of all that you're used to

tuesdays smell like iced peach and violet and taste like scrambled eggs.

routine hangs heavy around us like a fog that we forget to look through, and when it rises it's as if it was never there, but when it falls it becomes all we ever knew. my alarm shrills its wake up call at five:forty am and my body, the same one that protested just yesterday that ten hours of sleep could never be enough, is already awake and responding to it. the panic of forgotten to-do lists and appointments that need to be made, meetings that need to be had, reports that need to be written, and emails that need to be sent crawls up my spine and swims through my veins.

my feet grow heavy and find the familiar paths that they walk down every day from september through june. my eyes forget to wander. my chest welcomes back the sense of unease that hangs just under everything else. i start missing the people that i haven't even said goodbye to yet, and my skin yearns for the warmth of the summer sun that is shining right outside.

i loved summer vacations as a child, but i did not crave them like i do now. i did not need them like i do as a twenty-something year old that is still trying to find her way. it is within these three months that i can turn my head away from everything "i should be doing" and just be me. it is here in these three months that hope can be found. that promise is still alive. that possibilities are real.

and so i hold tight to them. i scream out for ice cream and fountains and lazy days in the sun. i close my eyes tight for one more day where i can eat burgers and drink lemonade and not think about the growing list of things i cannot do.

but fall is coming. it is unavoidable.

and tuesdays smell like iced peach and violet again.

*3 AM - Matchbox 20 

and sometimes you close your eyes and see the place where you used to live when you were young

there are some things that act as time machines, that pull us back through time to a moment that we may have thought was lost. these can be songs, pictures, foods, movies... anything really. we all have some, and they are all different. for me, one my time machines is the morning call to prayer (athan).

there is a line that is only said in the call to the first prayer of the day. (it basically says that prayer is better than sleep.)

when i hear that line, i am suddenly back in california. i am six years old, and the house smells like fresh paint. there is new hardwood on the floors where there used to be carpet, and later, my sisters and i will fill some time with sock slides. our screams and laughter will fill the rooms of our townhouse. but now the house is quiet and dark. it is ramadan, and we have finished the morning meal. we have prayed. my sisters are asleep - on the floor since our beds were packed up - and my mom is, too. my dad reads his morning quran by a small lamp, and i sit quietly wrapped in my blanket watching tv. the animated adventures of dorothy gale and david and goliath and gulliver's travels. the tv screen grows brightly in the dark. when the cartoons are over, the house will wake up. but for now, there is only me, only the stories.

when i hear that line, i am engulfed in a pocket of peace from the past. the quiet hum of the tv. the silence of an entire neighborhood, minus two, sleeping. and the muffled call for prayer coming from our first athan clock: gold and shiny and shaped like a mosque but with speakers that don't allow for words, only sounds.

half a breath later, i am twenty-six again and sitting on my couch in my little one-bedroom apartment. it is ramadan. i have finished my morning meal, and i am reading my morning quran by a lamp. the world outside my living room is dark and sleeping. our new athan clock is black and sleek and the words pour from it clearly.

and every morning when i hear that prayer is better than sleep, i am six years old again.

*When You Were Young - The Killers

i am taking today to write. whether it will be prosetry, novels, dissertations... i'm not sure yet, but words will be coming out of my head and into some semi-permanent format. by the end of the day i will have something that i can pass on to someone and say, "look. i wrote this today. these words were just thoughts this morning, and now look at them. all grown up."

so of course i'm procrastinating on blogger. i mean, what else would you expect from me?

on a related (for once!) note, last night i had a dream that i had published a novel and that was really only one small tiny overlookable part of the dream, but i am going to mention it here because the novel was titled mary had a little lambda. and i dunno about you, but i am really in love with that title. i feel like i now need to write a book about a math nerd or something just so i can use it. maybe a short story. whatever it is, though, has to be good enough to deserve the dorky glory that is that title.

anyway, i am off to write. and at the end of the day i will edit this post to include my favorite line or something of whatever it is i have written. just to prove to the world that i wrote today. that i have thoughts in my head right now that, by the evening, i will be able to look at on paper and say, "they're all grown up."

***EDIT: so i did do a bit of writing. not as much as i was planning on or as i was really hoping for, but there are words that are written down. there are a few paragraphs that give a rough outline of a story that started as an introduction to a character in a blog draft and has kind of been simmering in my head for a while since then slowly developing a plot of sorts. there is also an extra scene in my nano2013novel. and to be perfectly honest, i probably could have written more if i didn't start rereading that. but i remember less of the novel than i thought i did, and if i want to finish it (which i do!) i will have to know what it has now. so cue the read-through. (this was all to say that i don't think i have a favorite line to put here. i guess maybe, "you can't even grow a beard" would be my favorite of the day just because it is kind of ridiculous out of context.)

but anyway, words. they exist now as pixels on a screen and bits in my computer's memory instead of just abstract thoughts in my mind. i can look at them and say fondly, "aww they're all grown up." mind you, they're grown up in the way that a child is grown up on their first day of kindergarten and the day of their sixth grade graduation. the way that means that they have made important strides on the journey of growing but that they still have quite a long way to go. the way that means, i'm proud of you but you're not finished yet. my words have started kindergarten and i just hope that one day they'll make it through high school and college and into the real world. (note to self: stop abandoning elementary students on their way through life.) (note to self number two: stop dragging out analogies.)  

and sometimes you can still lose even if you really try

words scare me in the way guns would scare me if i had one pointed at my head and another clasped tightly in my sweating hands and pointed at everyone i have ever loved. i will destroy everything. it is not a choice, not a possibility. it is a fact that hasn't become true yet, but it will.

i want to introduce you to my characters, but i know that if i try i will be presenting you with their corpses, dripping wet with my tears because i should have known better.

inspiration is rolling her eyes and saying that i complain when she doesn't visit and then ignore her when she does. she's right. i know she's right. but i can feel the weight of the gun in my hand, the metal cool against my feverish skin. i try to thank her for coming, try to show her to the door, but she just laughs and shakes her head. says that the only way she's letting me kick her out is if i kick out fear as well.

***
ugh. there is so much that i want to write. there are unfinished stories calling out for the endings that live in my head. there are fanfiction drabbles that claim the relatively short time it would take to finish them will be so worth it. there are characters that tell me that they finally found their stories and all i have to do is write them down. i literally dreamt of myself presenting my completed dissertation last night, and i'm pretty sure that that first chapter i've been trying to get down is hiding, perfectly worded, right behind the lyrics to the gilmore girls theme song.

but i haven't felt this in so long. i have had nothing but the company of characters with nowhere to go in my head and stories that i knew needed to be finished but that i also knew i lacked the creative abilities to do justice. and now here i am. filled with the hope that buoys me up before i sink into a new writing project. and i can't get myself to do anything about it, because i know that as soon as i put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard i'll realize that it's all just not as good as it was in my head.

so instead i'll sit here clinging to the thought that maybe it will be.

*All I Need - Matchbox 20

i don't belong here

i was born with two ears, two lips, and ten toes.
i was born with eyes that are not great with long distances
and a mind that grows infinitely inwards.
i was born with a propensity to blush and two hands that i never quite learned what to do with.

i was born without my sense of belonging.
i have spent my whole life searching for it.

i have tried to belong to countries, but my soul is spread too thin over the continents
and there is not enough of me in any one place to
hold on.
and anyway, land never needs you back.
i have tried to belong to ideas, but
i am too abstract to belong to something that is not concrete.
and anyway, my tongue does not stop whispering why and how. thoughts don't like doubts.
i look for it inside every person i meet,
but the poets tell me that i can't make homes out of human beings.
and anyway, people always belong to someone or something else.

and so for now i turn to books,
because they cannot turn away.
but i find myself searching behind every letter and hoping that
i will find it with the turn of the next page.

*****
attempt number three to write chapter one of my dissertation failed. i wrote poetry instead. still unsure about this piece. i will probably move the lines that i like into a piece without line breaks one day. there is something freeing about prosetry, but my thoughts today were not flowy enough. oh, and the not making homes out of human beings is from the poem "for women who are difficult to love" by warsan shire. it's one of my favorites. you should read it.

*Creep - Radiohead

i'm perfectly aware of what i'm yet to know

hello, and welcome to another edition of sarah blogs instead of doing work. *theme song plays* *fake studio audience claps* today we find our main character very much not working on writing the first chapter of her dissertation despite having said that she was definitely for sure one hundred percent going to spend her office hours researching and writing because she completely failed at doing that on wednesday when she was also definitely for sure one hundred percent going to get that first chapter done. she is seated in one of the comfy maroon chairs in the third floor student lounge of the engineering building, singing the vaccines "under my thumb" in her head. her legs are crossed one over the other and james, her laptop, is resting on her thigh. her hoodie is just two shades darker than the chairs, and she has the sleeves rolled up in an effort to fool her head into thinking that it is time to get down to business. she refreshes tumblr for the fifteenth time in three minutes and sighs when nothing new pops up on her dash. she switches to the browser window that has the tabs of research related work open (using a different window was her way of making sure she actually got work done) and her eyes immediately glaze over. she goes back to tumblr. refreshes the page. resists the urge to fall to her knees, throw her hands in the air, and scream "give me something to reblog!" to the heavens. she goes to check her email - again - and sees the blogger tab. her eyes light up. yes, she thinks, the perfect distraction. she clicks the "new post" button, takes a deep breath, and begins to write. cue voiceover.

so the other day i had the meeting with my adviser that i had been putting off for longer than i'm willing to admit because i didn't want to have to say, "i know it's been basically an entire semester since i last saw you, but nope. haven't done anything in that time. not a thing. what was my project going to be about again?" the thing about meeting with my adviser, though, is that i walk into the meeting panicked, lost, and ashamed and i walk out of the meeting confident, hopeful, and ready to work. he's magic. you cannot convince me otherwise. (because i cannot resist being a complete embarrassment, i told him during the meeting that his office is my happy place. i am surprised i have not been arrested for creepiness yet. if i suddenly disappear, that is why. well, that or laziness. one of the two.)

anyway, in the midst of suggesting great suggestions about methodology and committee members and the like, he said, "this part of the phd process is where you are designing the class. in the next part, you actually take the class." and i had a perfect moment of clarity. the skies parted, and a ray of light shined down on his office bathing us in a heavenly glow, and that "aaahhhhhh" angelic music filled the background. because of course i'm supposed to be designing my own class right now. i mean, duh. some part of me knew that, i swear, but it hadn't registered. see, up until that point, i had felt like i was taking a class that i didn't know the rules to. i showed up every week to an empty classroom because there was a room change and i didn't get the memo. i had never gotten the syllabus, either, and there were assignments i was supposed to be turning in i just knew it, but i didn't know what they were. or how to find out what they were. and i probably wouldn't know how to do them anyway.

but now i can take a deep breath and figure this out. a new perspective was all i needed. i mean, at least until this adviser-high wears off and i realize that a new perspective does not change the fact that i have no idea where i am going or how to get there and that i probably should have gotten off this education train one or two stops ago.

voiceover stops as our main character looks up to stare out the window, contemplating her feelings on this whole post-grad thing she got herself into. the ding of the elevator can be heard and a babble of voices draw our character's attention until they fade down the hall in the opposite direction. her stomach grumbles loudly. she looks around the now empty lounge, glad that no one is left to hear. she's starving. she glances at the clock on her laptop. just over one hour left. she takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. she can do this. she opens the tumblr tab and hits f5.

*Under Your Thumb - The Vaccines 

then why do i keep counting?

sometimes i try and remember how i started. when. and why.

i can't, though. for as long as i can remember i have been counting letters, arranging them. i hear a phrase and i start writing it out in my head. sometimes i'll scratch it into my palm or write it on the roof of my mouth with my tongue or scribble it into the air. maybe the letters can be neatly arranged in pairs. maybe in groups of three. maybe they fall into a one-two-one pattern or a two-one-two. i keep trying until they are ordered. sometimes i have to switch between writing numbers out and not, between having contractions and not, between abbreviations and none. sometimes, if nothing is working, i'll add a word or two. nothing big, an "oh" here, an "and" there. just small things so they'll finally fit.

i never really thought much about it. it was just something i did. we all have our quirks.

and then i started to spend my time in movie theaters wondering when the shooter was going to come in. debating whether i would run or hide when he did. looking at the exits. figuring out exactly what i would to to protect myself and the people around me. every single movie, every single time. of course, it's been about six months now and the shooter has never come. there's also the thing with the headlights in my car. every minute or so my fingers move a few centimeters away from the wheel to make sure that my lights are still on. that people are still aware that i am here. they always are. i still check. and when i'm not driving, my fingers itch to know. "are the lights on?" i ask again and again and again until even i am sick of hearing the question.

so i arrange letters, and i never really thought much about it. but maybe being overly fond of sadness isn't all there is to me.

***
i know i already posted something today and i dunno why i'm writing this other than the fact that it is eleven:seventeen pm, my husband is playing video games, and there is the ghost of a lump in the back of my throat. i was too lazy to shower today and now i'm too lazy to walk to my bedroom to read and sleep. i was going to write something pretty... but then i didn't. maybe tomorrow.

*Why Do I Keep Counting? - 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

there's a moment in time, and it's stuck in my mind, way back when we were just kids.

draft last saved: june third, two thousand and thirteen, eight:nineteen a.m.

i stared at the picture of the man, trying to find the face of the little boy that i used to know inside of him, trying to look at it objectively. i supposed people might find him handsome. people might look at his muscled arms and squared jaw and say that he was just the right amount of conventional hot. his hair was long now and the goatee that sat on his chin was new, and i supposed they gave him just enough distance from conventional to be exciting. to be adventurous. to be someone you could fall in love with. but me? i could only see the anger in his jaw, the perverted leer in his eyes. i tried to remind myself that they weren't his, at least i hoped they weren't. i hoped he hadn't inherited the meanness with the bone structure. i hoped he hadn't adopted the manners with the looks.

i looked at the man and tried to find the little boy i used to know inside of him. the boy that would hide with me in the closet under the stairs, holding our breaths so his father, thundering through the house, wouldn't find us. his father, that would beat the little boy. his father, that would send the little boy out of the room and do things to me that left me with a fear and shattered trust that i still had not gotten over.

i looked at the man and tried to find the little boy but saw only his father instead.

i closed my eyes and turned away.

***

this was supposed to be part of something longer that i never got around to. it could also use some editing. but oh well.

*Kristy, Are You Doing Okay - The Offspring

tell everybody i'm on my way, and i'm loving every step i take

well, i wasn't able to add forty thousand words to the novel, but i did add thirty-six thousand and a few. i just can't put anything else in without reading the whole thing first. (also, a lot of the stuff i was adding at the end resulted in me ctrl+f-ing a word and then just adding in exposition or a little characterization and i have no idea where in the story those things fell or if they even make sense where they are and if they should be moved. but they're in there and that's really all that matters to me right now. although that's another reason that i need to do an entire read-through before touching it again.) but the second draft is done, and that makes me extremely happy. i'm not planning many big changes for the third draft, just the basics: get rid of any word-padding (though i was trying really hard to keep that to a minimum) move around plot points if needed and fix the time line which right now is very, very messed up. months pass in a single weekend. one day it is saturday and the next day is friday. there are three days left in school and at the same time summer vacation started two weeks ago. obviously, this needs to be fixed.

but the second draft is done! woohoo!

of course, this means that i was a little under four thousand words short of winning camp nano and i refuse to lose any nano session so i started on the potential sequel and can i just say how much i have missed writing a first draft. so much easier. so much more fun. the words just flowed out. all month i've been struggling to get five hundred words down at a time. it took me hours to get my thousand words a day. yesterday i sat down to a new open office document and when i looked up again there were over two thousand words in it. it was fantastic.

except now a middle-grade story that my brother and i were excited about has been haunting me. (i mentioned the idea to him and he got really into it and helped me hammer out a rough outline for it. which i think i lost. oops.) it's the one that i was originally planning on just getting out during this camp session but then abandoned in favor of fleshing out forbidden (which is the working title for this novel that i just cannot think of a title i am happy with for). part of me wants to take a break from editing and sequel writing and write about mermaids instead. (that's what it was about. a mermaid war. there are kidnappings and fighting and friendship. it's pretty awesome in my head.)

since august will be full of family visits and school preparation, i don't think i'll be able to get much writing done. maybe i'll use august to step away from the story, then push out a third draft in september-october. i will use nanowrimo (november) to write the mermaid story while at the same time get some beta readers for forbidden. and somewhere in all of that, i should probably work in time for school stuff.

anyway, i promise that by the first week of august i will have things going on in my life besides writing. but at the moment writing is my main focus. especially since i finished the second draft. did i mention i was excited about that? oh, and i've finished knitting a third of the patches needed for my blanket. and i decided that if i ever get rich and famous i will hire someone to hold my book open and turn the pages for me while i knit because sometimes i want to knit and read at the same time and since i only have two hands, i can't.

*On My Way - Phil Collins

sometimes i worry that i lost the plot, my twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts

[one] while fleshing out my novel, i realized that, once again, i'm taking too long to actually start the story. i can basically take out the first three chapters is what i'm thinking. i haven't done it yet because i need the words for camp nano and there are also some parts that i want to keep in. so maybe compress it into the first chapter and try not to make it seem too fragmented? we will see. i also added a house on the corner to add to the description and that accidentally added an entire character and will really help with a side plot thing that needed work so i am happy about that. i'm hopeful about the outcome of this camp fleshing.

[two] i always wanted to be a published author of novels. that has always been my dream. but somewhere along the way i found prosetry and fell in love with it. (i even published a book of it that you can buy here. you can read what other people thought about it here. /self promotion) i've been more geared to noveling recently and most lines that come to me are either put into my novel or left in a half finished blog draft "for later." i didn't think i'd miss prosetry as much as i do.

[three] i have recently discovered that the pitter-patter of guinea pig feet is one of my favorite sounds. who needs kids when you can just borrow your sister's pets? but seriously, it is adorable and makes me so happy. i love darcy to bits, but those guinea pig feet are just really something.

[four] part of me wants to drop out of school and pretend that i am at the same level in life as the senior citizens in my pottery class. i just want to handbuild, knit, and write for the rest of my life. hopefully make a living off of it, too. i mean, amazon has been trying to tell me that i am a middle aged woman for years now. maybe i should just listen to them.

[five] on the other hand, while watching the news recently (especially stuff about the aaron hernandez case), the computer forensics analyst in me gets super interested and excited. like, that is what i want to do with my life too. i just wish it was easier to actually do it.

*Easy Luck Free - Bright Eyes

well i feel like something's gonna give

i've had occasion-cake in my fridge since early march. it's a little ridiculous, to be honest. what is occasion cake, you may ask. well, cake made for an occasion of course. i made a cupcake rose bouquet for the going away dinner for my neighbors early last month. the cupcakes that did not make it into the bouquet made it into my fridge instead. a couple days after that, and before the cupcakes were finished, i made birthday cupcakes for my husband. a week or so later, with the cupcakes my husband told me to save for him growing stale (because, let's be honest, if it was me those cupcakes would be eaten before they even started to think about getting stale) i made the butterbeer cake for my youngest brother's birthday. with half of my family on a diet, my dad sent half of the leftover cake back home with me and it ended up in my fridge. then my sister got me a birthday cake and leftovers went into the fridge. then my husband got me a birthday cake and most of that went into the fridge. then my other sister sent me chocolate covered strawberries (which aren't technically cake but still count) and half of those went into the fridge. then i made black bean brownies for my younger sister's birthday (side note: she turned twenty-three yesterday and had her party at chuck e cheese's. it was awesome.) and, you guessed it, some of those joined the party in the fridge. i'm slowly working my way through everything (except for the stale cupcakes that are still sitting there looking sad) but oh my goodness is there a lot.

anyway.

i've been doing a lot of thinking lately about stuff and things. vague, i know, but a lot of it is still just feelings trying to work themselves into thoughts, and i couldn't really express them right now even if i tried. part of it, though, is this expectant feeling that something is going to happen. something good. something big. i'm crossing my fingers that it has to do with writingslashediting (i've been reading things very critically this year, noting what works and what doesn't, what i do well and what i need to improve upon, and i'm hoping that this will prove helpful once this semester is over and i pull my editing hat out from under the piles of dirty laundry i will finally get around to doing) but i'm not so sure. 

(i also kind of think that i've been subconsciously sabotaging my phd attempt. like, i'm doing the bare minimum to scrape by, but not putting in any effort to really move forward. i'm making a show of putting in effort, but i know deep down that if i really wanted to, i could have found myself a committee by now. i have always had a default defense mechanism where, if i'm not 100% sure that i won't fail, i won't give it my all so that i'll have an excuse when failure does come around, but i don't think that's entirely it this time. i think part of me is digging in my proverbial heels because it wants a different future, and until i make up my mind one way or the other i'm not going to be able to do anything. this summer will include some major soul searching (in between movie marathons and reading sprees), because i really need to figure some stuff out already.)

*Push - Matchbox 20