I Miss Brave

I finished crocheting a scarf that I am going to give my mom for Christmas. It only took two days to do, and so tonight, as I was watching Bag of Bones, I started a new one. I am not sure who I am going to give this one to yet, but hopefully they will like the light blues and greens and grays that make up the yarn. I also read a lot today, and I am almost through with the first Vampire Diaries book, the one that contains The Awakening and The Struggle. I am pretty sure that I read these books when I was younger, I was pretty sure that I had read everything that L.J. Smith ever wrote, but so far I am sorry to say that I like the show better than the books - that hardly ever happens. 

Why am I recounting all of these daily banal activities? Because I am still not writing. Today, I lay in bed with my laptop for hours, looking at (probably literally) hundreds of books on Amazon, trying to figure out how it is possible that so many people have already done what I want to do so badly, and to think furthermore that I could probably do it better than some, if not a lot of them. 

I guess, maybe, not finishing my NaNoWriMo story is hitting me harder than I had originally let on. I told so many people about it this year, I feel like I let so many people down, but really, I let myself down. Lately I've been all about doing and finishing things that I say I want to do, and this is one of the things that I totally bombed at, and it was one that was important to me. It's going to take some time, I think, for me to get my groove back. For me to get the confidence back to begin something new and not question myself too much about things.

I have to close my door. I have to close my door.

There's this author, Nova Ren Suma, who has a wonderful blog on writing, and last month she did a blog series on "What Inspires You" and a bunch of other writers share their thoughts on writing and inspiration, and on what keeps them going when they feel like giving up - all those things that "aspiring" writers like myself just eat the hell up. Veronica Roth, who wrote Divergent, one of the best books I've read this year HANDS DOWN, added her two cents, and she said something at the end of her post that I couldn't stop thinking about, so I just had to go and look it up again to share it here.

Writing isn’t everything—a life is much more than that. But for me it’s a little microcosm. It’s a safe place to try to make life better, to gather up my strength for the times when I step away from the computer. And sometimes, when I do, I’m a little braver than before.

She gets it. This is ME. I feel like people who are writers and bloggers live completely different lives than everyone else in the world. We make our own worlds, and additionally we are part of this other, bigger world of the blogosphere where people read our words and know our names and think of us as friends or aquaintances even though we've never met. People who don't have that - people who don't have Twitter followers that ask how we are and care about what we're doing - they don't get it, and it's hard explaining it. 

I feel like I have two lives, two completely separate lives - one of them I live in the world - I go to work, I have dinner with friends, I spend time with family.. And then, in the other life, I write, and I think, and I create, and I am constantly shocked and thrilled when I see that people actually give a shit about what I have to say. It's amazing, and it's something that is SO HARD to share with others, the way it makes me feel. 

But see, without writing, I am just this lost thing, that's how I feel right now. I'm just puttering about in my little virtual world without a ground to stand on, without characters to keep me company, without adventure to find. I need to start writing again, something big and significant and GOOD, to be able to be brave again, to be able to get out of bed in the morning with a smile on my face instead of weeping as my feet hit the floor.

Things I Think About at 2:45AM

I hate winter. I hate it for a lot of reasons, number one being THE COLD, and then there are all of the other little indignities that aren't worth mentioning yet, because we've been lucky (in my opinion) and have had a lot of unusually warm weather lately. 

The second thing of winter that I hate more than other things is the depression. I am SAD. Well, I have SAD, and I really need to get to the doctor and do something about it before it really brings me down.

I haven't been writing lately, and I've been trying to brush it off as just me being lazy. I've been spending too much time in bed watching TV on Netflix instant, I have been reading books and never finishing them, I have been staying up way too late at night and in bed way too late in the morning, I've been eating way more chocolate than usual, and have been afraid of getting on the scale. 

All of these things shouldn't surprise me though, I realize now. Maybe all it takes is reminding myself that it's not ME - I'm not really a lazy fatass chocolate addict that would rather do ANYTHING than be productive in any way. I want to do things, I DO do things. It's just that in the winter getting out of bed is so much harder, and letting myself get sucked away from the world and into my own head is a lot easier.

I'm trying to figure all of this out. With every day that passes I feel like I am getting closer to some threshold, some point I am going to cross over when things will really change for the better, and slowly but surely I am getting there. Aren't I? I wish I had a map for this journey.

So Much

- from Exploding Dog

+ It was another great weekend - Sailfest weekend, actually. For as long as I can remember (seriously) I have been going downtown to enjoy Sailfest. Sometimes by myself, sometimes with friends, sometimes with Elise - but this year I didn't go. I had no wing-men, Alisha had invited me to her house, so I just went there instead. We ate summer food with her family in the backyard and watched the fireworks from her living room window, then drank more Mojitos until the wee hours of the morning, again. It was like any other day, but with fireworks. I didn't miss the hustle and bustle and commotion of the streetfair, I didn't miss getting fall down drunk with hundreds of people who aren't really my friends, I didn't miss throwing up gallons of beer at the end of the night like I usually do when I finally stumble home from the last downtown bar at 2:30 in the morning. Maybe I'm growing up. Maybe I'm just growing into myself, and letting myself admit that this girl I keep writing about really is probably the best friend I've ever had and I'd rather do anything with her than anything without her, and that includes things that I once thought were the most fun ever.

+ You see, I spend a lot of time by myself. Five nights a week, the nights I have Elise, after she goes to bed I am alone unless someone comes to visit me. This makes my time without her, the time I can spend doing "grown-up" things, or at least childless things, that much more special. I've had an increasingly hard time lately pretending to give a shit for people, and I am not sure what to do about that. I am not a confrontational person by nature, so I can't see myself sending an email or text message saying: "I know you think we're friends, but we're not. Let's just stop pretending, ok?' But lately I've gotten more and more unsolicited invitations from people who I don't really want anything to do with - but because these people are friends with my friends, it makes it uncomfortable to just say no. How do you tactfully tell someone to leave you alone when you are 28 years old and your group of friends more closely resembles a street gang than kumbaya?

+ I need mental help. It's something that I've talked to Alisha about extensively and she's given me all of the resources that I never sought out for myself - who to call, and what to say to get the help I need. But I haven't done it yet. I don't know why, exactly. Is it laziness that keeps me from making a simple phone call? Certainly one hour of my life per week talking to a therapist would be well spent, and not an inconvenience. So, it's apathy I suppose, and isn't that a sign of depression? I'm not a sad person, for the most part. I'm anxious. I'm afraid of things that aren't real, things that don't exist. My fear stems from the impossible, the improbable. I guess I just keep telling myself that whatever it is, it's not that bad. People are way worse off than me. But is it normal to constantly have terrifying things running through my mind? Do normal people hear a truck coming down their road and freeze up with terror that it will just come crashing through the front of the house and kill them? Do they? These are things I think a therapist would be able to tell me, and then maybe help me relax. 

+ Online dating sucks. I talked to a few guys, but then went a few days without responding to any of them (because I was, you know, living life OFFLINE) and now none of them seem to want to talk or have any interest anymore. We'll see what comes of this, but I am at a loss. It is my personal belief that for some people, there is only one fish in the sea, and mine has already swum away. 

+ I wrote a letter to my friend Steph last night, and put it in the mailbox today. In the letter, I wrote her secrets that I can never tell anyone out loud, and I worry that the six page letter I sent will become a burden for her, and not a bridge to reconnection. Yes, I told her secrets because she lives so far away, because she isn't friends with my friends, because she can keep them, if she is so inclined. But also, because she was the one who always held my secrets like stars, when we were children and then seemed to mean more. Sometimes I wonder if I miss her for her, or if I miss the relationship that we used to have. Regardless, missing is a feeling that I'm feeling fiercely for her.