What I Decided

All of your advice made it immediately clear to me how to move forward with this old/new writing/publishing/dream-achieving project.  Like most of you suggested, I’m going to go the direction I was leaning and keep everything here on my main blog.  Not only is there an audience already here, but promoting a third blog would take a lot of time and distract me from the whole point of this project: to start writing fiction seriously.

Writing up short descriptions of each novel, it became pretty obvious that the only time I ever make any progress is over the Summers and even then it’s pretty minimal.  I want to make writing fiction not just that thing I do when I have the time, but the thing I do all the time.  That’s what I want to do, but sometimes it takes self-discipline even to do the things you enjoy.

I don’t plan to change this blog in any dramatic way, but I will be writing more about writing.  You will find all the important posts right here and in my normal feed, but I will be using the new Writing Section of this blog as the hub for all of this stuff.  I will also be posting short updates over there, as well as random thoughts and different things that are inspiring me,  Tumblr-style.  It has a feed, but I mostly imagine people will just check it out once in a while when they’re already here (link at the top of my home page).

I’ve been itching to get started, but I was away on vacation in Phoenix.  (It was awesome; lots of drinking and sitting by the pool and laughing with my family and even some friendly political discussions and a Spring Training game.)  While sitting by the pool one day, I wrote out by hand (not my preference) a page for each of the two novels I’m working on with a basic summary, a history of my work on it, and a list of some of the music that has inspired me along the way.  I’ll probably add more as things progress.

I’m still on a break from blogging, but I’ll be back in another week or so to really get things started.  I don’t usually ask for advice, because I’m very independent-minded and, in most cases, it doesn’t even occur to me to get other people’s opinions on what I should do, but it was so helpful hearing from people; it gave me new ideas and helped me solidify the ones that were already floating around in my head.  If you have any more advice as I continue along, I would be happy to hear it.  I’d especially appreciate some recommendations for other writing blogs.

Thanks again for being awesome.  For reasons that make no sense to me, people in the blogosophere and in my real life are almost exclusively nice to me.  I have a bad habit of  disregarding most of the nice things they say and focusing on the other crap instead.  But, when people talk about my far off dreams like they think I’m capable of achieving them, it means a lot to me.  Whenever anyone ever mentions reading one of my books some day, it makes me grin.  And it makes me want to write!

I Need Some Blogging/Writing Advice

I really didn’t want to break my blogging silence after only a week, because even though I’m dying to blog, not blogging is forcing me to work on some of the things I have up to this point just been thinking about.  But, I am working on one of those things and I’m stuck.  I need your help.

We know I like to write.  And I love fiction.  It is my dream to write and publish novels (in addition to being a professor).  I have been writing novels since I was 16, but I had never actually finished one until the Summer I started this blog.  Since then, I have been working on stuff, but only here and there and without any real direction.

It has been my goal since junior year of college to take writing more seriously.  It’s really the only way to get anywhere.  I need to be writing to get better.  Finishing stuff so that I can show it to people.  Sending out queries, so that I can start a collection of rejection letters.  You know, doing all the stuff it takes to reach my dream of writing and publishing novels.

This blog has already helped me to start taking myself seriously as a writer, but it’s time for me to take the next step.  I think this blog is the platform to do that, but I have been thinking about how I want to do this for a couple weeks now, and I haven’t yet reached a conclusion.  I need some advice from outside my own head.

Let me first say that whatever direction I decide to take with this new project, it will only be in addition to what I’m already doing.  This is a personal blog and I’d never give up my freedom to write about anything I want.

Here’s what I hope to achieve with this project:

1. I want to start taking myself  seriously as a fiction writer.  You know, stop letting all the insecurities and doubt stop me.
2. I want to push myself to keep progressing, putting in the writing time and taking the necessary steps forward.
3. I want to get comfortable with other people reading my stuff (this is a big one).
4. I want to build an audience for my writing. With the way it is now, even in traditional publishing, if you’re going to make it, then you need to bring your own audience.

Here’s the part where I need your help:

I’m trying to figure out the best way to do this, but I have a lot of questions and even though I’m dying to move forward, I don’t yet have a clear feeling for where to go. It is a change for me to start thinking about my blog in a more professional sense, but I think we’ve all grown pretty blog savvy in the last couple years, so I would really appreciate your insight as bloggers, as people who know me, as writers, and as young professionals.

Here is where my thinking is right now.  Jump in wherever you have an opinion.

• The most immediate question is where should I do this? I’m leaning away from starting a completely separate writing blog, because a). Keeping up with two blogs is hard enough, b). I don’t really want to ask you lovely people to read yet another blog, c). this blog already has a clear writing bent, so it could fit in here, and d). it seems most practical if I’m trying to build an audience to capitalize on what I’ve already built and to keep everything in one place.   I have already set up a sub domain at writingtoreachyou.com/writing.  It’s attached to this blog, yet it can function as a separate blog in itself.  I could use that sub domain as a static page with just updates and projects I’m working on or I could let it function almost as a separate blog that I would just call the Writing section of this blog.  My hesitation in keeping it static is that it won’t really help me reach the four goals I’ve outlined above.  My hesitation in letting it function as a blog is that, though the idea of writing for another blog doesn’t bother me, promoting it feels daunting (though it will make sense to do it anyway).  Maybe I could keep the two separate, but find a way to include it all in my one feed (is that possible?).  Or, I could put everything right here on my main blog.

• The next most pressing question is what kind of content do I produce for this project? This one I’m more confident I will figure out as I go along.  I think I’ll include updates, my thoughts on writing in general (the kind of writing posts I’ve always done regularly), my journey down the road to getting published, and then–gulp!–my own fiction (excerpts from the novels, stuff I’m working on, short things I write specifically for the blog).  Probably not book reviews like I see on other blogs.  The focus is really on the writing and on doing something with my writing.

• This all sounds uncomfortably presumptuous to me, but I am uncertain on how to move forward in terms of the divide that exists between Ashley the blogger and Ashley LastName.  It’s two sided.  First, there’s the issue that most of the people I know (well, as far as I know) don’t know that I blog.  I’ve always blogged as if it would one day be in the open, but I am as of right now, not willing to take that step.  It’s a bridge I’ll cross at the point I decide to or it becomes absolutely necessary.  The other side is much trickier.  I don’t feel like blogging under my real name, so that anyone who comes across my blog will know my first and last name, is a possibility for me.  Googling my real name does not just bring up the embarrassing results from the half marathon I ran in 2005.  It brings up the exact names and locations of both of my employers, my school, books and articles of my professors that I’ve been cited in for research help, and basically a million different ways that one person with bad intentions could really mess with me.  The question is do I really want to move forward as a writer under my identity as a blogger with only a first name or would it be better to do this as Ashley LastName?  The answer seems obvious to me.  I’d much rather do this as Ashley the Blogger.  It’s unlikely to ever cause me a problem, but if it does, then I’ll deal with it then.

In all of this, what I most need is your advice in terms of the first bullet.  For the success of this project, where does it make sense to put it, especially considering its relationship to this blog?  I’d appreciate any other thoughts you have. I’m feeling kind of lost in this, so I’d appreciate even just hearing whether it makes sense.  Help a blogging, fiction-writing dreamer girl out!  If you don’t want to comment here, you can always email me at writetoreach[at]gmail[dot]com.

And, Break.

Hi.  So, I’m going to take a break from blogging.  A longer break than I’ve ever taken before.  Probably two or three weeks.

There’s no real reason for this break.  I’m not tired of blogging.  I’m not struggling to write.  I’m not feeling uninspired.  I’m not dealing with any personal problems.  I don’t hate you or myself.  I don’t need to sort out my priorities.  And, I’m not any more busy than I have been for the last several weeks.  The idea just came to me and it instantly felt like the right direction to take.  I make most of my decisions that quickly.

I’ve been brimming with excitement and enthusiasm for all kinds of projects and potential opportunties, so I think I’ll take this time to give some of those a little attention.  There are books to read and novels to write and professional goals to think about and programs to learn and plans to make.  If I continue to let these things just stew in my head, I’ll go crazy.  I love blogging to pieces and I don’t anticipate ever quitting, but it hogs all of my very limited free time.  It also hogs a lot of my thinking time–you know, those long hours at work when I should be focused, but instead my head is in the clouds.

I’ve got two really crazy weeks at school on the horizon with one week of vacation in between.  I will actually have–prepare yourselves–5 days off, 4 of which will be spent in Phoenix with my Dad, brother, and sister, hopefully sipping drinks by the pool.  Expect some of my this-is-what-I’m-drinking-now tweets.  I can’t even wrap my brain around having days (plural!) off.  It’s funny how short my memory is.  You’d think I’ve been deprived of free time all my life.  No, just since September.

I don’t have any plans to disappear completely from the internet.  I’ll still be blogging over at A Story of Debt, because I am more motivated than ever to destroy my debt.  This time next year, all the things I’m dreaming about will become even stronger possibilities, because I won’t have this weight on my back.  Debt is so limiting.

You can also find me on twitter: @writetoreach.  And I’ll see you on your blogs.  Don’t forget to be awesome!  I’ll be back right here very soon.

On Ashleys Past and Future

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what the me of the future will think of the me I am now.  I tend to assume that the me of the future thinks I’m an idiot.  I’m not sure exactly what it is about me that she’s so critical of, but she’d definitely give me an eye roll if she was here now.

This does seem to go counter to my experience, because I don’t think the me I was last year or two years ago was an idiot.  In fact, sometimes I read over the papers she’s written and think she was much smarter than I am.  I admire the way she would go running after work.  The way she picked up and moved to California.  I do sometimes think her weird for worrying so much about silly things when she should have been more bothered by her very uncertain future and that mounting debt, but I accept that she’s human.

I do sometimes think that 30-something me will laugh at my cynicism.  She will relate more to hopeful teenage me and think of these as the dark, serious years.  She will admire me for working so much, but think me silly for doing so.  She’ll regret the way I didn’t have enough fun, didn’t let people in.  She will wonder why I didn’t have more confidence.

But, I don’t think she’ll be as critical of me as I anticipate.  She will know that the challenges I face are realer to me than they are to her and that I faced them with uncertainty and not perspective.  She will have problems of her own yet to deal with and she will think these same silly things about what the Ashley of the future will think of her.

“I Am the Baby of the Family, It Happens So”

Written December 2009

I have always been the youngest in my family.  Up until the age of 10, I was the youngest of 3, and since the age of 10, I have been the youngest of 5.

I don’t fit a lot of youngest kid stereotypes.  I’m certainly no wild child, but I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now.  I guess I’m pretty independent, but so is everyone else in my family.

Still, I see ways in which I’ve been shaped by being the youngest child and I’d be lying if I said it had nothing to do with why I currently live 1,000 miles from home in a big state all by myself.

Being the youngest means I’ve never really had to look out for anyone else.  I’ve always had the freedom to do whatever I want without thinking of what kind of example I’m setting.

That freedom is a privilege I’ve never even thought about, but I spent a week at home with my two nieces who for some crazy reason really like me, the youngest especially. They look up to me.  They watch me; I would look around the room and actually find them staring at me while we were sitting at the dinner table.

I am deliberate in most of the things I do, but having two impressionable young girls watching my every move forced me to thinking about some of the things I do by habit and unconsciously.

We were praying before dinner one night and I didn’t even realize until I saw my oldest niece look over at me that I didn’t have my eyes closed.  I don’t know why I didn’t have my eyes closed; when I was a kid, I used to do it to be defiant—because I knew it was risky. Now I had no reason and wouldn’t have given it a thought if I hadn’t caught my niece watching me.

Later, they were begging me to try on my prom dress.  I didn’t want to.  I don’t like the dress that much and if it didn’t fit, I really didn’t want to know.  Trying to get out of it, I said, “I don’t think it will fit anymore!  I wore that dress 8 years ago.”  From my oldest niece, I got a response that suggested to me that she was concerned I had body issues, and fuck!, she is way too young to even be aware that some people (everyone?) have body issues and that is absolutely not the impression I want to give.  I distracted them from the issue entirely by suggesting we go rollerblading.  That is more the influence I want to have.

Maybe I would be more used to it if I had younger siblings or if I was around impressionable youths more often.  Until that moment I was being watched, as if under a microscope, I had no reason to even consider the influence of my own actions on the actions of others.

Contrast

It took me a long time to figure this out, simple as it is, and maybe I never would have if a favorite philosopher hadn’t described the phenomenon in words that I could not find on my own.  Lately, I am boiling over with creativity. There are so many things I want to do and I want to do them all right now!  But, the kicker is that I have so little time.  I know I know I know we always seem to find time for the things we want to do, but I don’t even find enough time for sleep and I love sleep.

Of course it’s no coincidence that now that I don’t have adequate time to pursue them, I am full of interests and giddy about them all.  In fact, it’s because I don’t have endless hours free that scenes for the next novel are taunting me and there are so many blog posts to be written and wouldn’t it be fun to take up design as a hobby?

It’s called contrast.

When I don’t have time to blog, but I sneak it in between other priorities, that’s when I enjoy it most.  It’s a break, a release.  It’s simply different.  Not that I want to make this point too strongly, but it’s the contrast of different things that makes them exciting to me.  It’s the urgency, the never having all the time I need.

I think this is true for everyone, but I see it particularly in the way I work.  I need structure and places to be and things I have to do in order to develop my creative life which stands in contrast to so many of these things.  I don’t live for one and not the other, but together they make up a productive and enriched life.

Much as I love to write, the idea of that being the only thing I need to do in a day removes all the creativity and motivation I have.  I don’t think that would be a happy life for me.  It’s not what I want.

And in a more practical sense, when I’m out living in the world, spending my time here or there, that’s when I experience the things that make up the content of my creative life.  That’s when I get inspired.

It’s frustrating to always be working with limited time, but I have never been busier and I have never been more excited about all the opportunities open to me.

“Time, No It Ain’t On Our Side”

This has been a rough week, and I wasn’t able to admit that to myself until Thursday afternoon when things finally got a lot sunnier.  Compared to last week, which featured death and stress and an emotional breakdown, this one was all sunshine and roses, but I kept feeling like it was just one thing after another.  And, when you’re already feeling borderline overwhelmed and emotionally drained, every tiny little thing feels like it could be the straw that breaks it all.

But, then, I got out of class yesterday and it was sunny and I felt good and with my break before work, I went grocery shopping and ran some errands and did I mention it was sunny?  I had to text my dad and say, “It’s taken four years, but California has officially won me over.”  Screw the stupid rain, which I have always claimed to love.  I’ll take sunshine.  Really, the thing is that rain is nice when you can sit by a window and read and it’s dramatically less nice when walking home from work, your flats get flooded with rain water and your jeans soaked up to the knees.

I know I’ve said this twelve times by now, but you might have noticed I regularly repeat things as if they are sudden realizations, because they somehow seem new to me.  It’s just that, I don’t understand my new miraculous ability to survive on so little sleep.  Five hours a night is about the max I get between Monday and Friday.  My dad is a workaholic who has gone decades on that little sleep, but then about a year ago we were talking on the phone and he said, “You know, it’s the craziest thing.  Lately I’ve been sleeping 8 hours a night and I feel so much better.”  Of course, I was like, “I could have told you that twenty years ago,” but I get it now.  You do start to feel super human.  Above sleep.  But, really what you’re doing is falling more and more in love with sleep than you ever have been before.  And, I do notice that though I feel great throughout the day, whenever I so much as lean my head against a chair, I’m suddenly so exhausted I could lay down in the middle of the library and fall asleep.  I actually fantasize about that.  I picture myself curling up in the corner of a classroom and wonder if I could fall asleep there.  Really, though, it hasn’t been that bad. It has, however, made me even more terrified of having kids.  Sleep deprivation is a good way to break someone and I hear the little ones are good at that.

It happened to me again yesterday that I didn’t realize how focused and concentrated I was on the things that had to be done right now! until suddenly they were mostly done and I could finally see beyond the end of my own nose again. I felt guilty, because I have been meaning to call my dad for weeks now (more than just texts and emails), but I can never seem to find a free moment, so I keep thinking, I’ll do that over the weekend when I’m actually at home, but then I forget or still have no time.  And the same scenario plays out with just about everyone in my life.   I’m the kind of weird person who forgets how much she likes and needs people.  When I’m finally not distracted, it feels nice to just talk to people: coworkers, classmates, family, friends.  Something in the region of my heart actually feels lifted.

So, things are looking up and I’m so excited to drink some wine or beer and write and maybe spend some time outside and call my dad (and my mom).  Waiting for me at the end of the next two challenging weeks is a Spring Break trip to Arizona and I can’t wait.  The plans have been set to drink by the pool, which in the last two stress-filled years has become my favorite thing to do.  Lisa and I have also been planning a number of exciting events that will probably end up mashed into one, because after years of joking about it, we actually are pretty busy and important (okay, less so important) these days.  But, there are Rob Pattinson movies to suffer through and Casper moments to reminisce over and a very special 10 year anniversary that I will have to blog about as it approaches.  Priorities, you know!

More Kolsterman and More Weeds

I take in a lot of content every day. I’m not just a person with senses and people to interact with, but I read blogs and listen to several podcasts and watch YouTube videos and catch up on TV shows and follow twitter and scan the news and reply to emails and listen to music. I’m so used to the steady stream of noise and visuals that when it’s quiet, I still hear the noise in my head, and when I have nothing to look at, I create scenes in my mind. This semester, my time seems more precious and I’ve become more selective about the things I distract myself with. I’ve stepped up the level of content and while it’s still far from what I’d pretentiously call cultured, it’s certainly more enriching. And worth writing about.

I read Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas over Christmas break and while there were a few standout essays, I wasn’t hugely impressed. Chuck and I, we just weren’t a good match. But, I usually enjoy Chuck on Bill Simmons’s podcast, so I thought I’d give another of his books of essays a chance. This time I went for Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto. The first half of the book confirmed my earlier suspicions that Chuck love just wasn’t going to happen for me and maybe I didn’t need to keep reading to convince myself to like some essays just because other people I like like them. But, then, just as with my first experience, there was one essay near the end that made continuing to read worth it. It was the essay on Saved By The Bell that I’d heard so much about. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It was full of all the facts about Saved By The Bell that would make anyone who watched smile. Chuck estimated that no one born after 1977 would get the show, but I was born in the last days of 1983 and I and all of my friends watched it, mostly in reruns. And, maybe that’s part of why Chuck and I aren’t bffs. He makes a lot of statements like, some more significant, that I find to be false–not just personally false, but decidedly false. But, then, he also writes about a lot of pop culture stuff that is not part of my generation and for that reason, doesn’t interest me to read about later.

The surprising part about the Saved By The Bell essay is also the point of the piece. Apparently when the gang were all seniors, Tiffany Amber Thiessen (Kelly) and Elizabeth Berkeley (Jessie) were mysteriously missing for most of the season, so they brought in another girl who was basically a combination of their two personalities, named Tori. But when Kelly and Jessie came back for the graduation episode, Tori mysteriously disappeared and was never mentioned or heard from again. This got Chuck thinking that we have a lot of Toris in our lives and sometimes we’re Tori ourselves. People, even people who matter to your life, pass in and out. You’re close to someone for a few months, because you have a class together, and then when the class is over, you just wave awkwardly when you see her once in a while. Or one of the friends in your group is going through something for a while and is absent for nights out. Or, as in Chuck’s case, your friends decided for a while in college that they hate you and you’re excluded from the group for months, and then you’re welcomed back in. The thing is that, these things happen. You won’t have the same friends your whole life and people will come and go and then reappear in ways you sometimes won’t even notice or remember later. So, maybe it’s not so weird that Zack never froze time to stop and look at the camera to say, “Tori got runover by a car and that’s why she’s not here for graduation.” (You can find more about The Tori Paradox (Klosterman coined) on the Saved By The Bell Wikipedia page. You should read the essay too, because I don’t know that I represent it well here; I no longer have access to the book and the details are fuzzy in my mind.)

I’ve somehow managed to mention Weeds in just about every post I’ve written in the last few weeks. All I can say is that I love the show. The last time I wrote about Weeds, I shared my disappointment in Season 5 and called Nancy Botwin the weirdest character ever. Having recently rewatched Seasons 1-4, I want to step back a bit. Even knowing what happens, I think it’s possible to relate to Nancy and like her at least up until Season 4. She does something crazy at the end of Season 3 that makes even her family, who have accepted a lot, stare at her in bewilderment. That’s when Nancy started leaving the ground. And, you know, that’s fine, but what’s annoying about her is that she’s so totally lacking in self-awareness that she never seems to recognize how responsible she is for the situations she finds herself in. I go back and forth about whether I just don’t like her character anymore or whether she’s no longer a well-written character. I think it’s a bit of both, because when Nancy started getting too far away, she stopped being interesting and engaging. I buy her as a character, but I no longer care that much about her or her story.

In Season 4, the show takes a major turn by leaving the suburbs. The writers said that they felt stifled by that setting (how fitting for the suburbs) and like they’d exhausted the story of Agrestic/Majestic. I first started watching Weeds over the Summer. I was at the height of my obsession when I went home to visit my parents in Washington. I remember telling my mom about the show (I might have left out the whole weed plot line) and saying, “I have lived in the suburbs my whole life and it’s nothing like this!!” What I meant is that even as an adult, I don’t believe that all of my neighbors were having affairs and smoking weed. I was super naive then and I’m still naive now, but I just don’t think they were all living these secret lives. Of course, I grew up in nice suburbs, but not super rich suburbs. Not the kind of suburbs where people have money and time to burn. So, there’s that. But, ultimately, it’s of course a heightened reality for the show and whether it’s accurate or not, it’s interesting and funny. And you don’t realize how much you love the suburb angle until it’s gone!

There’s this weird feeling I get when I watch Nancy and I get it with a lot of people. I see them going off track, standing still, or walking down a dark road and I just want so badly for them to pull it together or turn things around. I want it so badly that I can hardly stand to watch them continue to bury themselves, so I look away. I need for them to be okay–my idea of okay–for my sake. It’s pretty selfish, really.

I found out while watching the Season 4 commentaries that they film all the fake-city-near-the-border stuff in Manhattan Beach. After visiting there this Summer and then seeing it again and again on screen, I’ve decided for certain that I need to live there. When I say things like that to my dad, he’ll say, “you’ll buy a place with the money you make off your second book.” (The money from the first is to pay for my extensive education, of course.) There’s something really amazing about having someone believe in you a thousand times more than you believe in yourself.

I’m Haunted

I’m haunted, but not by a ghost.¹  It’s a character in the novel I started last November for NaNoWriMo.  And by started last November, I actually mean I started thinking about it Summer 2006–that very thoughtful Summer between college graduation and the start of graduate school.

It doesn’t take four years to write a novel.  Though I’d been thinking about my first novel at least that long by the time I finally finished it, the writing itself only took a couple months.  One advantage to this slow and distracted approach is that the characters get to live inside your head for so long that they start to feel like real people you once knew.  Sometimes you find that weeks and months have passed since you last thought of them, but there’s always the opportunity to get reacquainted.  You might just find they’ve changed in your time apart.

This character’s name is August.²  He existed for years with simple motivations and an undeveloped personality.  He was the stupid guy who broke the girl’s heart and would later come to regret it.  The story wasn’t even about him.  It was about her.  And it was so simple that after that first Summer, I never intended to actually write it.

But, then, this Summer, I started to think about the story again.  Maybe it was my desire to write about grad students.  Maybe I was bankrupt of ideas and so forced to pick up stories I’d thought of years ago.  Maybe these characters have some kind of power over me.  Whatever reason, I started thinking of this story I’d abandoned and suddenly August became a real character and he changed the whole story.

The story became much more emotionally complex and the result was two characters yelling in my head, fighting with each other at a volume I could not ignore and didn’t want to, because it was so interesting to me.³  My experience writing fiction is that some scenes, some characters, some motivations come out of nowhere and the rest you piece together like a puzzle, trying different pieces to see what fits.  But, unlike a puzzle, the end product is not already determined.  It could be anything.

I’ve struggled a lot with how to tell this story and in developing plot points aside from the major emotional core.  When not knowing where to go next combined with business and a lack of self-discipline, I gave up on NaNoWriMo.  But, I didn’t give up on the story and I find myself thinking of it more and more.

Lately, August is in my head.  He has a broken heart, the poor guy.⁴  And he haunts my fiction-filled life.

1. Though I can’t tell you how much 13 year old me wished her dad would move into a scary old mansion, so that I could be haunted by a Devon Sawa-looking Casper, who would ask me, “Can I keep you?”
2. I intended for his name to be ridiculous.  It says more about his parents than him.  But, after you repeat a name for a couple years, you forget how weird it is.
3. I’ve written about 15 drafts of that fight, which is approximately 13 more than I normally write of anything.
4. I sound like a crazy person. I don’t walk down the street talking to these characters, I swear.

Finding Meaning in Cliches

I have mixed feelings about cliches. I mean, they are a complicated business. Some are harmful. Others are harmless, but must be avoided in order for other people to think you’re clever. And yet others should be passionalety embraced, because liking them is fun and liking them ironically is a way to prove just how cool you are.

The kind of cliches I hate and think myself above usually come in the variety of sayings that people repeat because they sound good, but either don’t make sense or are simply not helpful. When I was in high school, I said I was going to write a book of all these meaningless sayings and publish them as if they were original or the the least bit worthwhile. Part of the reason I’m not good at small talk or, you know, general human interaction is that I cannot make myself say these things that people say. You know, stuff like it will all work out in the end. I would rather stare at a person awkwardly that say something like that.

Aww, but lately I have stopped resisting like a willful teenager and have begun to find meaning in some of these. I do, however, emphasize some.

The first is that old reliable take one day at a time aka cross that bridge when you get to it. This generally seems like bad advice. Plan ahead is better and it comes more naturally to me. I see now that take one day at a time is not advice for high schoolers, but rather for people who have a lot going on and several things to deal with each day. It has only really begun to make sense to me this semester. It’s not that you shouldn’t plan ahead. It’s more like you cannot worry about everything at once and if there is no end to the stream of crap you’ve got to deal with, then the only way to be productive and stay sane is to worry just about what you can do today. The number of email addresses I have to keep up with is a sign of the number of hats I wear. If I tried to wear them all at once, then I’d go crazy. Instead, I check the work email addresses only when I’m actually in the respective offices, and when I’m there, that’s what I’m focused on. I do what needs to be done that day and then I leave. I worry about the assignment due that week, because even if I start stressing about the paper due next month, I’m not going to start that early anyway.

I think some of the anxiety I’ve been dealt with was a result of worrying about everything at once, anticipating problems I couldn’t yet do anything about–somehow thinking that worrying was the same was doing something. I feel much calmer with this approach. It takes self discipline to get things done in the time allotted, but then those things are off of my shoulders and I don’t have to worry about them until it’s time for the next task. This is the peaceful and productive mode I’ve been trying to find for years and somehow this semester it found me.

This next requires some serious backtracking on my part. It’s don’t worry about what other people think of you. Okay, here’s the thing. This obviously doesn’t work as an unqualified statement, because any reasonable, sane, kind, and self aware person does care what other people think of her. And you need other people’s perspectives on you in order to better understand yourself and, I think, grow as a person. If you don’t care what other people think of you, then you’re probably a punk. Or, you’re one of those people who’s always proclaiming so loudly that you don’t care what other people think of you when the truth is that you really really care. I have in the past been very critical of these people, and while I think they could use a dose of self awareness, I get that what they’re really doing is trying to convince themselves not to care. Because caring too much what other people think of you is debilitating, especially because you don’t really know what they think–you only know what you think they think when the truth is that they surely don’t spend as much time thinking about you as you spend thinking about what they think of you. The result is time wasted worrying–time that could have been spent doing something productive, something that will make you happy, something that will really get people talking about you..

Knowing that we all care what other people think of us, I’d taken the cliche to the other extreme and just accepted that as the way it is. But that was a mistake too, because I let it limit me. I used it as a reason not to boldly pursue my interests. It might be the way it is, but that doesn’t mean I have to passively accept it. I can declare to myself don’t worry about what other people think of you and in that moment take a big risk. It’s not a one time fix, but it’s a mantra that works over time.

Cliches are exaggerations and it’s silly to think that I responded to such extremes by being extreme myself. It’s taken me a long time to realize that finding truth in something does not mean accepting it completely. And, hey, just because it’s unoriginal doesn’t mean it’s meaningless.

“It’s a Fool Who Plays It Cool”

I’ve become quite convinced that “Hey Jude” was written for me. It’s just that Ashley doesn’t rhyme with a lot of things and I was -15 years old at the time of its release. I guess it’s easier to believe that James Taylor’s “Shower the People” was written for me; I was only seven years from being born when it was released. The message is the same: don’t miss out on awesome things by playing it cool. Let people in. Play the fool.

The Beatles sing it, “Hey Jude don’t be afraid/ You were made to go out and get her/ The minute you let her under your skin/ Then you begin to make it better/ And any time you feel the pain, Hey Jude, refrain/ Don’t carry the world upon your shoulders/ For well you know that it’s a fool who plays it cool/ By making his world a little colder.”

And James Taylor sings it, “You can run but you cannot hide/ This is widely known/ And what you plan to do with your foolish pride/ When you’re all by yourself alone/ Once you tell somebody the way that you feel/ You can feel it beginning to ease/ I think it’s true what they say about the squeaky wheel/ Always getting the grease.”

Grad Student or Homeless

This is like the game hipster or homeless where you spot a person and then have to guess whether he’s a hipster or he’s homeless. Only, it’s less cleverly called grad student or homeless.

Let me first say that I’ve generally been rocking my crazy schedule. 4, 5, 6 hours of sleep, I not only survive, but thrive on them all. It’s like my body knows there’s no other option. But, I have my limits, of course, and one thing I can’t seem to manage on a regular basis is looking like a presentable human being.

I’ve never dressed fashionably, but now it’s a miracle if I show up anywhere not looking like I just rolled out of bed. If it’s the morning, then I did just roll out of bed. I rarely get up more than a half hour before I have to be somewhere. But, that’s nothing new. It’s the joy and curse of living 2 minutes away from anywhere you need to be.

It’s just that I’ve kind of stopped wearing outfits, so whatever shirt I happen to be wearing when I wakeup is likely to be the shirt I continue wearing. Then I put on a pair of jeans. I wear knee socks, because it’s cold in the morning and I want to be Punky Brewster. Converse. And one of two hoodies, though I own a gazillion more. My hair is usually in some kind of a messy bun.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I look like a mess, because this is just what I’m wearing to class or my second job. I’ll change later. What I fail to realize is that these things take up a good portion of my day and after spending half a day looking like a mess, I’m not going to waste any of my short lunch break trying to rectify the situation, so I make the few adjustments necessary before heading into the library. I pull a Mr. Rodgers and trade in my Converse for some flats, my t-shirt for a slightly nicer shirt, and my hoodie for the same black cardigan I wear all the time. Despite the upgrades, I still feel like a mess.

I guess that at 26, I’m tired of looking like a walking Gap ad, but I continue to do it out of convenience. Each week, I make it my mini goal to stop looking like a homeless girl who used to buy all of her clothes at Old Navy. I’d really like to burn my collection of hoodies (or, you know, give them away to someone who can use them), but then I would probably go cold.

It doesn’t seem that hard. I even try to plan out what to wear so I don’t have to think about it, but something about dressing half decent takes a lot of energy. But, I do want to start dressing a little more maturely. It’s nice that dress codes are lax around here, but I’m working among the people who will later write me recommendations or hire me, and I think it’s time I start dressing more professionally. I even have the clothes necessary to do so. It’s just that they’re never within arms length when I’m running out the door in the morning.

Yesterday Was a Bad Day

I never say the words, “I had a bad day.”  I just feel like in comparison to others, none of my days are bad, and I know it’s okay for me complain even though I live a charmed life, but it just never feels right, because even when I’m struggling I’m simultaneously happy about a lot of other things.  But, yesterday was a bad day and it pushed me to a breaking point.

Tuesday we found out that after battling cancer for more than a decade, a student here in the grad program died.  I didn’t know this student particularly well, but she was beloved by everyone here.  I met her a couple years ago and she gave me some advice and encouragement that was meaningful coming from a woman who was so passionate about theology and also, well, a woman in a program dominated by men.  We were just acquaintances, yet she went above and beyond to reach out to me and tell me the things I needed to hear.  She was not the kind of person that everyone looks back at with rose-colored glasses; everyone knew how amazing she was while she was here with us.

I knew that she was sick.  I saw her in November and she didn’t look well.  So, it wasn’t a shock to get the news and though I found it sad, I was okay.

But, as part of my responsibilities at my second job, I had to write something to share the news with others and offer our condolences.  I was initially stressed about it, because it’s hard to write things like that, but I was still okay.

I started not being okay yesterday afternoon when it came time to start working on it and I had to email her close friends to ask for more information and look up information online.  Everything that turned up proved she was not just amazingly nice, but also a very talented writer and just full of life.  I started crying at my desk at the library.  Thankfully most of my coworkers had gone home, but I still tried to be stealth about it, wiping the tears before they could roll down my face.  I cried off and on for the rest of my 8-hour shift.  No one said anything to me, but I’m sure they noticed my red and watery eyes.

I felt so completely overwhelmed and sad that I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I had to keep working, checking books in and out, and at the same time write something to represent what she meant to everyone here.  I was so relieved when I finally got off work, but on my way home, I really started crying.  The kind of crying I haven’t done in years.  The kind of crying that breaks hearts.  I couldn’t say what exactly it was and maybe I was crying for many things that had finally caught up with me.  I’m no stranger to tears, but in my life as an adult who lives alone and a thousand miles away from the people who have the power to illicit my tears, I don’t cry near as often as I used to.  I don’t even remember the last time.

By morning, I was feeling better, but I still had no idea what to write, so I asked for help, and then the two of us went and asked for more help, and then more.  And though I didn’t admit how much this whole thing had gotten to me, because adults seem too good at dealing with death and I am apparently not an adult, facing it with other people made me feel so much better.  It wasn’t all on my shoulders.  Of course, it never really was, but it felt that way.

Now that it’s done, I can think about other things.  I feel silly for reacting so strongly to the death of someone I wasn’t particularly close to, especially when there are so many people here who knew her much better.  And, really, what’s my bad day compared to someone who spent so many years fighting cancer and then had her life cut so drastically short.  I don’t know.  But, I can hardly remember a day where I felt so broken.

I have a headache from crying so much yesterday and I couldn’t help but cry while writing this, but I’m nearly back to my normal self.  I just feel a little more hollow than usual.  I also feel inspired by a wonderful person who lived a wonderful life, and it’s not that I’m consciously searching for a bright side to all of this, but how can you read about someone so full of life and learn nothing of it?  I worked so much today getting the piece put together and out to everyone that I have tomorrow off, and that’s a really good thing, because I know that part of what pushed me over the edge was having no time to myself to reflect.  Sometimes it’s nice to be a human being with feelings.

Not Just That It’s All You Need

A couple weeks ago, I started listening to The Beatles.  Every time I listen to the Beatles, I get “Paperback Writer” stuck in my head for weeks. This time was no different.  After a couple days, I started thinking about what The Beatles have to say about love–not just that it’s all you need.  It would make a great post, but I can’t articulate it thoroughly.  I guess it strikes me as simple, but not unreal.  Potentially heart breaking, something that shapes you, but not something you’ll never recover from.

For whatever deeper meaning they might have, the songs also make sense literally.  And I like that, because I prefer simple language and clear meaning over what sounds good and says nothing.  I am all about ambiguous feelings, but there’s something to be said about lines like, “I want to hold your hand,” “when I’m home, everything seems to be right,” “help me if you can, I’m feeling down. And I do appreciate you being ’round,” “love you every day girl, always on my mind; one thing I can say girl, love you all the time; hold me, love me,” and “if she’s gone, I can’t go on.”  Not to suggest the Beatles only ever said one thing about love–just that listening to their music gives me that transcendent feeling that makes me look at love differently.

As big of a place in my heart as there is for happy music, I tend to gravitate toward the depressing.  Maybe that’s why between the Eddie Veder Cover and The Beatles version, I’ve listened to “You’ve Got To Hid Your Love Away” more than a hundred times.  Maybe I don’t buy that love is all you need, but I tend to side with the theme that seems to underlie all of these songs: love is the most important thing.  Definitely the most interesting and exciting as well.

The weird thing about The Beatles is that I grew up listening to them, so some songs I like because they remind me of a time in my life.  But, I have never been obsessed with The Beatles like I have been obsessed with other favorite bands.  They’re just there.  That really stable person in your life you sometimes forget how much you love until you’re reminded.  It annoys me when people say The Beatles are overrated.¹  I guess it’s easy to say, because they were so huge, but it seems to me what people are saying is that they weren’t substantial.  And they were, whether you like their music or not.²

A couple weekends ago, I started watching The Beatles Anthology, a documentary film that was put together in the nineties.  Lucky me, the library owns the whole thing (there are six parts).  The opening shots, a picture of each of the guys when they started quickly followed by a picture (I’m guessing) around the time they stopped playing together, suddenly made me feel nostalgic for a time I was never a part of.  I guess the same way The Graduate makes me nostalgic for the 60s and The Big Chill for the 80s.³

Watching the documentary has basically been about correcting weird assumptions I have about The Beatles.  Like that Ringo wasn’t very talented; he was actually in a more popular group first and he had a really cool beard.  I always think that John was killed earlier than he was.  I’ve never heard George Harrison, who for no reason at all has always been my favorite Beatles, talk so much.  Somehow, and this is embarrassing, I thought George played bass and Paul played lead guitar; it was the other way around, of course, and apparently I’ve never looked too closely at them performing. I was also surprised at just how awesome their hair was in their earliest years; Robert Pattinson has nothing on The Beatles.

If you have one (or many), please do me the favor of naming your favorite Beatles songs, so that I can check them out if I haven’t already.

1. It annoys me when anyone says anyone is overrated.
2. I will never understand people who can’t see beyond their own personal taste.
3. Actually, the 60s as well, since that’s what it’s in reaction to.

Limits and Reversals