on what I want to do

Yesterday I talked to one of my sisters, a high school English teacher, and she said she’d always known what she wanted to do. She’d always wanted to be a teacher, and, even though she had moments where she considered her other loves, she still felt certain about that choice.

I wondered what it would be like to feel that way. Because I never have. I’ve never just known where I wanted to take my life with any kind of certainty. I’ve had goals–I’ve said “I want to be teacher.” “I want to be an editor.” But I don’t think I’ve ever really felt like those choices were real. Like they were actually what I wanted to end up spending my days doing.

Maybe it’s just fear of committing. I was reading the book Fight Club for a class a couple weeks ago and this line stuck out to me, painfully: “she’s confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing and so she won’t commit to anything.”

I don’t think I’m afraid of commitment in general. I am married, after all, and that’s a commitment I feel certain about. I guess I’m so invested in my own happiness, my own need for self-fulfillment and sense of ability, that I worry I’ll end up in something that’s ultimately not fulfilling or, worse, that makes me feel incapable.

So I’m giving myself one year to find a path. One year to explore everything I’m interested in–photography, web design, writing, and anything else that comes up. And at the end of that one year, I’m going to have a plan. I’m going to know what I want to do. Realistically, I know that what comes out of this year might not be the end-all-be-all of what I want to do. But it will be a start towards doing something meaningful, something that speaks towards my passions and my need to live within a purpose.

I can’t wait.

on busy-ness and an attempt to decrease the importance of time

So…here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking a lot about how much we (Americans) value time.

Time is money.           Don’t waste time.               How do you spend your time?

I’ve decided I don’t buy it. I don’t want to spend my life counting minutes, ruled by a schedule that dictates how many important tasks I can fit into an hour, a day, a week. I keep hearing this line from Coldplay’s “We Never Change”:

“I want to live my life and have friends around”

and I think that’s it. Each day, I’m working more on embracing moments for what they are, fretting less over what I should or shouldn’t be doing with the minutes as they pass. Living here; living now.

p.s. Hangovers make sustaining a thought for more than 3 minutes pretty difficult.

on the news

I’m sitting watching Sunday morning news right now, something I never do. Sunday mornings for me usually mean Joan Baez with coffee and a baked good instead of Meet the Press with health care reform and John Boehner. But they’re voting this afternoon and I want to be a part (in my own small way) of whatever happens.

Regardless of your politics, we’re teetering on something big here, making a movement in an area that’s been roadblocked for decades. I like to think that someday my children will read about these days in their textbooks, and I’ll get to share with them my memory of the excitement, the confusion, and the hope that pushed everything forward.

on “spring”

Welcome, Spring!

Oh, hey, don’t mind the snow and below-freezing temps. They should be moving on any day now.

Right?

RIGHT?!

on tattoos and personal mottos

I don’t have any tattoos. No butterfly on the hip, no fairy on the ankle, no questionable Asian character on the lower back. I am completely undecided about tattoos. Some days I think one would be fun; a self-chosen birthmark of sorts (though, clearly, not from birth). But each time I drift towards even considering one, I’m struck by how decidedly permanent they are and how hopelessly indecisive I am. I know that, if I had a tattoo, I would want it to have lasting meaning for me, a word/sign/symbol that I felt spoke precisely to something that does and always will define me.

Which leads me to personal mottos. Because I believe I am ultimately defined more by words than by anything else. My own, of course, but also those of others that have helped shape me and my perspectives, those that have pushed me along my way, challenged my approaches, illuminated my path. Critics of the quote-lover will say that we  shouldn’t use others’ words to express ourselves, that to rely the words of some poet, artist, or saint is cheap and unoriginal. It’s a thought that haunts me when I read words I love, ones that speak to the truth resting inside me, because I can’t help but wonder how adopting such carefully crafted phrases can really be wrong. Finding that someone somewhere in time has been able to capture in words a sensation I’ve only felt seems to me like a valuable link to another person, another time, another place. I have a hard time believing that ties like that can be anything but good.

So what, then, is my personal motto?

I don’t think I’ve nailed them all down yet. Most of them are mash-ups of my own words and others, but they all run along the themes of self-awareness and development, hope, tolerance, creativity, beauty, and, of course, love. Here’s a few:

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
{Confucius}

Know thyself.
{Socrates}

You can’t ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.
{Tove Jansson}

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is because man is disunited in himself.
{Ralph Waldo Emerson}

You do what you love, and fuck the rest.
{Little Miss Sunshine}

on true sentences

I’m reading Ernest Hemingway’s  A Moveable Feast right now. I love Hemingway. Love his honest tone, his crisp prose, his candidness. In many ways, his writing stands in direct contrast to my own; I think that’s why it inspires me. His sentences are so direct and carefully crafted, whereas mine tend to be these long, tangled vines, curling upon themselves and blossoming here and there with flowery turns of phrase. I want to learn from Hemingway, want to learn to write in a way that he could appreciate. Not because I value his voice over my own, but because I think he possessed a skill that few writers can claim these days. A skill worth modeling now and then.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want the purpose of this blog to be. At times I want too much from it, so I’m trying to winnow down my expectations and draft an idea of what my place in this overcrowded arena could look like. It’s beginning to take shape, and I’m beginning to believe in my own ability to create something worthwhile, for both myself and anyone else who happens along. I think, above all, I really want this to be a space where I can cultivate my own expressions, to sort through the chaff of all my ramblings and emerge with something meaningful. That may take some time, but I’m finally beginning to realize that time, if well used, is my greatest tool.

mind games

I remember reading a list of ways to keep cool in the summer–I think it was from an American Girl magazine or related book. One of the ideas was to imagine the coldest scene you could think of and place yourself there. I would sit, close my eyes, imagine I was in Anartica, buried in a mound of crunchy snow, winds howling by. Only my face sticking out from my cool cool haven. Or in an ice cavern–one like you’d see only in a movie, white puffs of breathe streaming from my mouth, sliding around on frozen icy surfaces, so cold.

I think about that now, sitting here in mid-February, so so tired of the cold. It’s the last push of winter, and I’ve been cold for so long that warmth is just a memory. Cold has become a part of me; as much as my green eyes and size 10 feet. I am cold, have always been cold, will always be cold.

But I remember this trick of my youth, and hope it will serve me now. I close my eyes, think only of the sun. Not the milky, weak, winter sun that I have become so familiar with, but the dazzling, scorching sun of summer. I picture its beams, radiating down towards me, arms outstretched, wanting to gather them in, let them seep through my pores into my very bones, warming me from the outside in and the inside out until I burn with a warmth so deep that it purges the cold, boils my blood, stays with me forever.

on yoga

I just finished an hour of yoga and am so glad I got off my bum to do it. I was feeling a little wishy-washy this morning, a little apathetic, unmotivated, maybe even a little pathetic. I knew some stretching and breathing would help, so I shook off the mean reds and went to it.

And now I’m glad. There’s this peace and calm and presence that comes over me after yoga. It’s so serene. I feel bolstered and encouraged, but at that same, reassured and quieted.

Basically, just what I needed.

on temperatures and errands

Today is the first day in 2 weeks that the temperature will rise above the teens.

Also, the sun is going to be out. This means I can leave the apartment without feeling like I’m going to die within 2 minutes.

And that means I’m heading to Barnes and Noble for a new planner (in the history of me buying planners, it usually plays out like this: I find one I’m enamored with after searching for 30 minutes. I bring it home, write in the birthdays of everyone I know, jot in it religiously for 1.5 months, and then forget all about it).

Also to Target because we’re out of coffee and tomorrow is the first day of classes and I am not at all interested in approaching that uncaffeinated.

on keeping a journal

Last night I spent a good amount of time reading through a couple old journals of mine. I’ve kept a journal since…hmm…maybe 4th grade? Can’t say for sure, but a long time.

I used to write copious amounts in my journals. Blah blah blahing about anything and everything. I still keep a journal, but entries are much shorter now; usually just one brief page. And I’m okay with that. It’s much more quality over quantity these days. I’d say one page of my current journal says more than a weeks worth of entries in my 6th grade diary.

Speaking of diaries, I was reading the other day about the difference between diaries and journals. Not something I had really thought about, but an important distinction in some contexts. I’ve pretty much always referred to my personal notebook as my journal. Diary sounds dumb. Anyways, the distinction made in whatever it was I was reading was that a diary is a record of events, whereas a journal is a record of thoughts (oftentimes about those events).

Now I’m wondering what it would be like to keep a diary. An actual record of what I do each day. Not like “Woke up. Showered. Drank coffee. Scanned facebook.” But a memory of important moments. I remember a brief span of time–probably a week–where my goal in my journal was to record a moment in time from the day. Just a simple moment that I thought would be good to hold onto. The point was to give me something worthwhile to jot down, but also to be a touch more aware of my day in reflection, to appreciate the moments more. Maybe I’ll try that again.