When I was in high school---fresh outta middle school, just entering the scary world of 2000 plus people milling about in super small hallways, yelling things, bumping to music, seniors pushing past still snot-nosed fourteen year olds, scoffing on the way to their cars in the senior lot down at the bottom of the hill---I used to blog. Almost every day. I would allow myself to care, allow myself to bleed, to show emotion, to cry, to be sad over the people and the things and the places that I missed. I never felt apologetic. I never really worried if someone saw me crying.

I'm twenty now. I'm supposed to be moving into adulthood. Every one around me has a grown-up job. And I am ashamed to cry.

I am scared to show weakness. I am scared to grow up and most importantly, I am scared of being alone. Even as I pray to the god I choose, I am scared of being alone. My phrase this year has been "What's easy is not always right." The choices I've made haven't been easy. I don't know if that makes them right but I don't care to analyze data in search of regret fragments. Did I choose based on other people? Did I choose based on what I wanted?
How can you possibly separate out those things? But those questions I ask.

I think of her face. The fourteen year old girl...pensive, now, not because of the algebra but something she won't say and instead she hides behind slightly caustic, sarcastic comments, and she reminds me of my fourteen year old self. Perhaps that is what takes me back, or I'm just prone to nostalgia....

I write to survive and nothing less. I write to live life the way I want to live---both painfully and joyfully aware of all of the ups and downs it has to offer. How do you choose without looking to others? How can you stand on your own two feet, refusing to lean on anyone, without missing something? P.D. used to say you must avoid dependence, and independence, and work towards interdependence. He won't even meet with me now. I don't care. I will love him until the day I die--the professor who helped to show me the light of the world, helped me to believe that the written word can ignite the fire in the soul, can breathe life in God's words, and nothing less.
But only if they're written right.

I am scared to make bad choices. I am scared to give in. I am scared to not give in and let the outside make my choices for me. I only speak of high school so much because it's not where I am at right now. When I was in high school, middle school was where it was it. Fuck man...in middle school I was probably talking about how great elementary school was. Sentiment--it'll get ya.

You know that one Vagina Monologue? where she lists the memories?
"Memory: five years old. The pretty lady....."

I have those. that is the order in which I often think.
Memory: 17 years old. I am driving down the interstate I frequented every damn day. There's the bronze dome. Why do they say it's ugly? It completes this city. Bitterness ekes out the side of my beloved car. My runaway car. My escape car. My everything car. I live in him, think in him, dream in him. He is part of me. He can span a state in a day. With him I can go anywhere. Bitterness runs down the sides...becomes a part of the oil and the tire grease left on the road. It is nothing and of no comparison to what I experience now: a greed-less power. An effortless and want-less existence. And I zoom away knowing I have deep black coffee to look forward to and hours of mix cds. Goodbye. If you didn't want to say goodbye you didn't have to.

Memory: 17 years old. Three black coffees later. I am ready to see this new town. Village, as I think of it. Global wanderer, proudly stamped on my chest, but ready for a humble abode. It is nothing. All of a sudden...where is this place? Is that the mall? Is this it? a Meijer? Too small to be acceptable...but i'll wait...Flash forward to first day of school. Matching North Face backpacks. Blond, flowing hair. (why are they all blond?) pavement leading up to a beautiful glass structure. (how is this a high school?) Perhaps everywhere is like this. Small town midwest. Africa. Asia. Europe. Perhaps everywhere there is cattiness...there are hierarchies....there are people who'd rather blow each other off. There are structures you cannot disentangle. There are mean people, there are nice people, there is everyone in between, and there are only a few with whom you feel a spark in your chest and feel the need to latch on, sharing with them an invisible cord that you don't want to let go of your grip on.

Perhaps you cannot help it.

Like Carrie from Sex and the City...I recap my day by typing up a journal entry at 12:30 am.

Coming home from the cleaning products section of the grocery store at exactly 12:12 am, I'm eager to get started on the bathroom, the kitchen, and whatever else I can find to tidy up and clean. I have my new green products spray cleaner, extra sponges, and new paper towels. I get to the bathroom, finish the quick little cleaning it needs, then head back to my room....and plop down on my bed.

The thought of cleaning a community space excites me. I like doing dishes...(a new development) because I know that my roommates like to come home to a clean sink. Cleaning the bathroom...I mean...I wasn't able to do much because it was clean already, but, who doesn't like to come home to a clean bathroom? Who doesn't need a clean bathroom, actually? When I return to my own room, however, a different feeling settles over me. I try to coax myself to treat me as nicely as I try to treat others, but that proverbial horoscope wisdom doesn't last as long as I might like it to. I don't want to do work for myself. I don't want to. This is my problem, I've discovered. This is why I need a career goal in mind. Not necessarily because I need to know my five year plan and have every step mapped out, but because I need assurance that I'll actually be doing tangible THINGS for others and that I'll be able to see the results of that. Teaching was something I could latch onto and be like "hey, I'll be able to witness myself helping kids, kids will know me, every day will be....rewarding." Saying, "I might do something in art," is so vague, it's almost mind-numbing if you consider the scope of what that could be, not to mention terrifying when you look at alumni from art schools that are now just working for a simple branding company (gosh forbid one for cleaning products like the ones I just sifted through for a good hour while the stock boys looked on in confusion).

It's not that I don't believe in the work that I'm doing here. Or, the "process," I'm not sure if taking a couple of classes and spending most of my time wandering and pondering can be considered "work." I am enjoying art so much. Enjoying treating myself to new colored pencils. To a canvas. To a new tube of paint. I'm also being more materialistic, and more wrapped up in my own head....(have you noticed?) But since I am so separate from the rest of the world, currently, only seeing a few people and not my usual 1000 per day, I find myself enjoying the solitude but longing to create, to make an impact, for heaven's sake to come down here and BLOG at least instead of playing Xbox or watching American Pie 2!

Isn't that everyone's longing, though? To leave something behind in this world? To leave a mark, because we are impermanent and so we long to create something permanent? A legacy, a masterpiece, a legend, a history?

I have a thirst for a lot. I want to create art because I want to say something. Being around so many "liberals" or at least similar people to me on shallow levels at college, it's like, I don't so much feel my voice is completely unique but yet.....there is something there, you know? I think the space I occupy as a human being IS unique. I don't think there are that many people out there who are actually like me. And I think that's worth something.

Unsticky Resolutions

So. It's been awhile since my last blog post, though I promised myself that this (blogging regularly) would be a New Year's resolution that would stick. It's the start of my second month here in Columbus. I do not at all regret taking time off to explore my true interests and to take a break from large loads of work. Knowing I'm missing out on a semester with friends and friendly, familiar faces is hard but knowing I'll be back in the fall is a great form of security.

I ended up dropping my intense design course, so now I have the one Figure Drawing course until the middle of March. When the middle of March hits, I will begin an online 5-credit intensive Spanish course, and a course at OSU for beginning design principles. I'm happy with the switch. This means that I will be occupied with two 5-credit classes from March until June. On the very first day of June, I will be leaving to prepare to go to Brazil. Brazil will last for one month, then I will travel around South America for a bit. After that, I'll return to Columbus for the last month and a half, then move back into my house at MSU.

My Figure Drawing course is fantastic. It's everything I want art to be. Relaxed, intense, inspiring, natural, beautiful. I love studying the human figure. Actually, I thought it might be boring to like study anatomy and look up anatomy books and try to figure out how to draw muscle of the body...now, I feel, what could be better? Though people are all different shapes and sizes, the actual form of muscles never change and the general composition of the body, so there are ways to improve at particular body parts, or the like. I like the idea of that kind of mastery. Or aiming at it.

Officially, I have declared my majors and have mapped out a plan. It sounds silly, but last night when I couldn't sleep after driving back to Cbus from MSU, at first I was watching tv programs I've never seen before but secretely been curious about--(Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab, anyone?), but also, those ended and became mush or something and there was suddenly nothing on but infomercials and I stumbled across one for Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker and educator. I felt like--even though you have to pay 19.95 to actually get the deets--this quenched my thirst. Tell me, Tony! I wanted to yell out, though there were two people already asleep in this apartment, plus a hyperactive cat. Tell me how to improve my life!

Well, he did. Maybe I squeezed the already-squeezed orange to get out as much juice as possible, but hey. NOW, I want to change! No, I mean, really. I want to make a plan and stick to it. I want to accept that uncertainty exists but still make decisions anyway! So I've made decisions. No to Ecuador currently, yes to Brazil. Yes to going to OSU for a quarter. Yes to taking Spanish online. No to getting an internship right now. Yes to staying in Columbus until school starts in the fall. Finally, I have actually declared my second major as interdisciplinary humanities. This allows me to get credit for all the English courses I've already taken, credit for the public affairs classes in a new way, and finally, the ability to take art courses as part of my major. Aka, the perfect way to complete my glob of randomness in an organized fashion! My diploma will be two-fold. First, a traditional public affairs degree, and then another in art, english, and public affairs. In addition, this will allow me to work toward the specialization in design that I've always wanted. It may not prepare me directly, but my interests are so scattered and my experience so all over the place that it's obvious that I don't want to be funnelled down a particular tunnel anyway. Law school? (not really though)Grad school? Becoming a teacher in Teach for America? Volunteering abroad? Whatever! All are options.

I'm finding that the best, the very best advice I've ever gotten is "Be Yourself." No one else CAN be you. You already know who "you" "are," and you just have to tune into that and believe that you can't help yourself unless you just go along with what you already are.

coming back from MU

This weekend Erika and I headed down to MU to go see Deirdre for her birthday. I am really glad we did so---it felt very familiar to go see her, her family, and Phil. Also, I enjoy the town that the college is in--it may have a plethora of interesting "Miami people" but it's quaint in its own way and beautiful to me. My only wish is that we could have gone away for longer. Now we are back in Columbus and I'm taking advantage of all the stores and buildings and things to do around me but I'm wishing to be in a small town, just playing Gamecube and waiting for E to come home, possibly hanging out with friends every now and then and writing poetry that I think is getting somewhere. :)

I'm not sure about this whole art thing....I keep rethinking taking this second class because it is a LOT of money and almost as much as like a short study abroad experience or something---should I just be taking Community Ed? Am I really going to do something with this class? These are questions I ask myself but in order to find out anything you have to actually dip into things. Try them out and see if they work. Then go from there. Navigating the adult world of work, or preparing for work, is crazy to me....That's why I kind of just want to be a teacher and play with kids all day long. Okay, I KNOW it's not that simple, but I think it would bring me happiness and make me feel fulfilled at the end of the day. All this art stuff--what am I going to do with it? And politics...hm.

This semester, though, is to lay off forcing a decision or a lightbulb aha-moment, and to just be. Number one on my list besides getting to my first Design class on time is to contact that lady back at the volunteer place I want to begin at. Number two on my list is to sign up at the Y and get moving, get running again, now that I have a working music player and some motivation to get moving again. I have to keep setting goals for myself and focusing in on those goals. I think the physical movement will especially help.

Artsy Fartsy Wandering

I'm here in Columbus. I have to physically come to the library when I want to check email because I don't have internet in my house. The house is wonderful, as a sidenote---kitchen that overlooks the snow, warm and welcoming family room, perfect spacious bedroom. But, all along I've been saying to myself--you need to go blog! Now that I'm here in the library, here at a desk, I can't remember what it was I wanted to say.

I like having nowhere to be. Classes start next week but this entire week I've done nothing but hang in the library and explore town. There's nowhere I have to be. No deadlines, no meetings, not even lunches with friends yet. I am a free spirit....traversing the city boundaries, bounding through thrift stores and every branch of the Columbus public library, languidly waking up and brewing tea for myself as I read the books I check out and watch the movies.

I've wanted this for awhile. A breath of fresh air. A departure. A separation from papers and grades. I mean, what college student doesn't, right? But, I don't know, I feel like it's more than that. I'm used to leaving. If I can't leave, I get antsy. If newness in my life doesn't involve a completely different environment, it's not good enough. I want new streets, new buildings to look at when I'm driving around, new bars to sneak into. I can't. Stay. in the same. place.
Is that bad?

"we do not grow absolutely, chronologically.we grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another.The past, present and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."
anais nin

"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so love the ones who treat you right and forget about the ones who don't." anon

i mean...something to mull over, i guess.