*This blog was started Saturday, September 11th. Incidentally, I ended up being social and leaving it unfinished until now. I can't recall what I ended up doing with my time. All I can remember about that day-apart from the obvious patriotic particularities-is that this is the day I didn't finish my blog. Probably shouldn't let that happen again. As I'm obviously traumatized.
I've been going through some sick blog withdrawls. Writing withdrawls, really. Committing certain aspects of my life to writing have helped me make them real. I look back at the last month and already I'm forgetting what happened, how I felt, and most importantly, what I've been thinking about. It seems like most of what goes on in my life-where the action is-is in my head. Now I know that sounds kind of mental but it's really not, I swear. But I ground and classify the days events by the thoughts I associated with them. So forgetting my thoughts feels like a loss of those days.
Anyway, I have a to do list the length of all my needing-to-be-sharpened pencils when they are lined up in a row. The thing is, I really really don't like feel like getting on it. I suppose it doesn't help that the first thing on said list is: find planner (so I can write my list down, obviously). By the way, I did clean what there was to clean in my room. Then I went for a run and tore it apart looking for my ipod running band. So the room has been re-cluttered and the band is still lost, thereby undoing the only productive thing I've done all day. Unless you count going running again, which I probably should. I should maybe mention here that I think my knee is better. Victory! Now I can start building up that mileage again. Joy of joys.
So here I sit, in a half empty room, smelly from my run but perfectly un-sweaty thanks to my new nike running gear. Might I add here that if nike wanted to pay me to advertise there stuff, I would gladly buy it and wear it all the time. Might I also add that my running capris look amazing. Which is great motivation to keep up running because if I don't well then, they won't look amazing anymore. Sounds like a fail proof plan to me.
So yes, back to me sitting. I got back to my apartment and was running over all the things I need to do. I was in serious turmoil because there's this part of me that feels the need to fill the whole day with busyness, productivity, efficiency and general lack of laziness. Then there's the other part of me that feels like I deserve a little lazy, don't I? Even if that lazy still feels ever so slightly like work. Like reading a book in Spanish. Watching a movie in French. Painting. Or better yet, getting caught up on my blog. The two sides of me, as always, put up a good fight. Then a voice of reason called a time out. Usually this voice is my mother's or my father's, whether in my head or on the phone. Today it happened to be my voice. I recalled this post: http://fromthebelltower.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.htm in which I talked about the things that make me happy pretty much no matter what. And I realized that a to-do list complete with check marks next to every item does help me sleep at night, but it doesn't really bring me joy. If anything, it just makes me feel overwhelmed with the need to fill whatever time I have left and to do it effectively. Sometimes, I take my play way too seriously.
Maybe later on today I will be productive. Maybe later on today I will be social. I don't know and I'm not going to plan it out or write it down. It's time to take part of the "il bel far neinte. I feel like writing on this blog. I feel the need for some "intellectual and emotional indulgence" which doesn't require me to take several hours out of someone else's busy day to get it. I've been hearing a lot of really good advice lately. And I think it's time that I give myself time to commit it to paper or at least think about it. If I am going to insist on using a planner and having a to-do list, I should probably pencil in an hour everyday for unadulterated and guiltless thinking or blog writing. I may have been overly pampered in Colorado this summer as far as "me time" is concerned. Maybe an hour is a bit excessive. But then again, je suis excessive, moi.
So on with the advice. Or the conversations that led to my thinking. And don't expect closure. My thinking rarely wraps up nicely.
So a while back I finished Eat, Pray, Love. And maybe it was because at the time of my reading, I was rather embracing my more volatile side instead of denying its existence and so I felt like I really related this time around to the author. And I mean freakishly related to her. And whereas before I would find myself kind of annoyed that people said she reminded them of me, this time around I was utterly flattered. Obviously, Liz Gilbert's selling point is the sense of kinship-her book inspired, though probably not intentionally, vicarious living. The hate in my love/hate relationship with her comes from the fact that I want to live vicariously through my own life. I don't want to sit on the sidelines and read about someone else doing it, inspiring as that may be. So not only is she out there living her life and not someone else's, she's written and published a hugely successful book about it. Totally hate-worthy, right?
But even though the fact that I see so much of myself in her makes me feel like maybe I'm not that original after all and she's like the grown up, classier version of the me I will never grown up to be, I am grateful for the kinship factor. Because it makes me feel, cheesy as it may sound, less alone. I was reading on her website and came across this. It really describes a thought process I've had, especially last summer. And a big part of me still wants to subscribe to it. The difference being maybe that I don't know how serious I am about a "life of writing". I think I would be content to write something-one thing-that I feel really good about and that people hear about enough that a few people read and maybe it means something to them. Like "Quest for a Maid". Either way, her line of reasoning is scarily similar to mine, even if she is way more committed than me:
I believe that – if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression – that you should take on this work like a holy calling. I became a writer the way other people become monks or nuns. I made a vow to writing, very young. I became Bride-of-Writing. I was writing’s most devotional handmaiden. I built my entire life around writing. I didn’t know how else to do this. I didn’t know anyone who had ever become a writer. I had no, as they say, connections. I had no clues. I just began.
I took a few writing classes when I was at NYU, but, aside from an excellent workshop taught by Helen Schulman, I found that I didn’t really want to be practicing this work in a classroom. I wasn’t convinced that a workshop full of 13 other young writers trying to find their voices was the best place for me to find my voice. So I wrote on my own, as well. I showed my work to friends and family whose opinions I trusted. I was always writing, always showing. After I graduated from NYU, I decided not to pursue an MFA in creative writing. Instead, I created my own post-graduate writing program, which entailed several years spent traveling around the country and world, taking jobs at bars and restaurants and ranches, listening to how people spoke, collecting experiences and writing constantly. My life probably looked disordered to observers (not that anyone was observing it that closely) but my travels were a very deliberate effort to learn as much as I could about life, expressly so that I could write about it.
So there you have it-in someone else's words-a justification of my desire to travel. The question has now become: when I go away for months on end every summer and come back with only a few pages of writing to show for it, can writing really justify these travels? And when my French is already fluent, can I justify traveling for the sake of unnecessary improvement? Especially when these travels interrupt any semblance of a social life I might have...?
My current epiphany has been to go abroad only a few weeks on a "holocaust tour" of sorts. Because the holocaust has always fascinated me and because I think it would yield a different kind of touristic experience, all while not imposing on my social life.
A recent conversation with a friend brought home to me the fact that my indecision is due to the fact that I've got nothing to dream for, nothing to build up to. Another friend (coworker) alluded to the fact that this lack of a dream is because we are living it and our lives are so fulfilling in the present that it becomes difficult to anticipate and plan (for) a future in which we aren't satisfied.
And I am fulfilled. I really am. And yet.
Restless.
Which begs the question: do I simply lack a dream or do I instead need the opposite?: to take a step (a big one) outside of myself and really just get over myself and my myriad of interests and personal development and delicious management of my needs and my time and give up of all of egocentric efforts for the sake of helping other people. If only for the sake of becoming less of a control freak/hermit.
Which leads me to the end of my logic.
Some words by the great Henry B. Eyring:
"
The thirst for education that comes with the change the gospel brings can be a blessing or a curse, depending on our motives. If we continue to seek learning to serve God and His children better, it is a blessing of great worth. If we begin to seek learning to exalt ourselves alone, it leads to selfishness and pride, which will take us away from eternal life."I have a lot of motives to question. But I'm fairly certain that if it's a dream I'm lacking, it's because I am no longer satisfied with a dream that is merely self-serving and validating. Which is an aspect of my life that anything that were to take me away from school-the one place where I do feel like I do in fact give and contribute in some small scale-would inevitably magnify.
In the meantime, I have to get to it eliminating those pockets of time that don't serve anyone else and not really myself either. Talking on the phone might be one such habit. Facebook most definitely. Though I won't go all hard core and quit, I think it's time I enforce rules.
Again, Elder Eyring is applicable:
"We too often fail to take advantage of the moments we spend waiting. Think of the last time you sat in a barber shop or a beauty salon or the waiting room of a doctor’s office. It is so easy to spend time thumbing through any magazine that is stacked on a table there. In fact, if you think about it, you will remember how you wondered where they get those out-of-date magazines. There is much valuable reading you could do if you took a book with you to fill those islands of time. It takes neither modern technology nor much money to seize the opportunity to learn in the moments we now waste. You could just have a book and paper and pencil with you. That will be enough. But you need determination to capture the leisure moments you now waste."
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I had more good advice and thoughts to share on my digestion of said advice. But it got lost in the time between hearing it and writing this. So it's random and doesn't correlate, but I think I'll end with this, from my dear Paulo Coelho's Manual of the Warrior of Light:
A warrior of light carefully studies the position that he intends to conquer. However difficult the objective, there is always a way of overcoming obstacles. He seeks out alternative paths, he sharpens his sword, he tries to fill his heart with the necessary perseverance to face the challenge. But as he advances, the warrior realises that there are difficulties he had not reckoned with. If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never set off; he requires a touch of madness to take the next step. The warrior uses that touch of madness. For - in both love and war - it is impossible to foresee everything.
