to be sorted later

I’ve been writing a lot of emails to myself lately. Mostly, I’m sending articles, essays, and short stories, but I’m also sending notes, quotes, and music. I get a strange kick out of emailing myself, because while on the one hand it seems like a completely logical method of reminding oneself to do something, on the other hand, it feels and is completely ridiculous. “Dear Me, read this later.”

These things that I've been emailing Me are not at all related to one another, really—mostly they're just different things that interest me and that have threatened to destroy my productivity at work on that given day. So instead of letting the Internet win, I have created a chain of emails to myself, all under the subject line "to be sorted later," not that I know what it is exactly I plan on sorting later.

(Source: violetas-verdes)

Currently, I am planning to sort the following things out later: a recent short story in the New Yorker, submission guidelines for a website that I'd like to write for, two writers' tumblrs, an interview with one of those writers, and something about Lars Von Trier, and something about walking. Specifically, something. One email says only, "LARS VON TRIER - ?" and “on walking…”

Yes, I am aware I sent these notes to myself, so I probably should know what these things mean. But I don't. Well, I sort of do. Two Sundays ago I watched "Nymphomaniac," Volumes 1 and 2, and it left me feeling odd and unsure of my feelings and vaguely disturbed, but not as disturbed as I thought maybe I was supposed to feel. I think I wanted some critic to tell me if Von Trier was a misogynist or pro-woman. Then I thought that maybe I should be an adult, and come to my own conclusions. Then I got annoyed by the whole thing and put the question of Lars Von Trier out of my mind entirely.

As for the "on walking..." note, your guess is as good as mine. I like to walk?

Moving on: I still have more to sort. Come to think of it, I haven’t actually sorted any of these things yet. I haven’t read that short story yet. I haven’t yet read Roxane Gay’s piece in The Guardian about Ferguson. I still haven’t read the poem “The Lost Art of Letter Writing,” for fucks sakes!

(via razorbladesalvations-deactivate)

One of my problems is that I want to read everything at once. Sometimes this gets more out of hand than others. I still haven’t finished my summer Shakespeare project. My brother and I are in our third year of doing this. We pick a different Shakespeare play each summer to read, and then we might talk about it a lot, or a little, or not at all. The point is the reading of it, mainly. Jay texted me three weeks ago, saying, “Finished Lear” and still, I’m not done. The underachieving younger sister strikes again! Ha, ha.

It’s no wonder I haven’t finished King Lear yet. I’m also currently reading: The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles, Living History (because I felt it was required reading before reading Hillary Clinton’s latest book), and Bad Feminist. Oh, and A Wrinkle in Time, because I learned it was going to be made into a movie, so of course I needed to read it again. (My most recent reading of it was in 2010. I am insane.) I’m supposed to be halfway through another book, Cutting for Stone, as part of a book club my friend Natalie invited me to join. I haven’t opened the book. It is 658 pages long.

I’d say I’m not always like this, but I’m always like this. I have a permanent stack of books. The other night I grabbed Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention off the shelf, and then The Dream Songs, and then I realized I had two other books, and my journal, in my hand. And then you add the Internets, including access to the New Yorker archive (!) to this equation, and that’s it. I’m dead.

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never get around to sorting it all out later. Constantly, I’m reminded of my mother, sitting in her green chair, which is now my green chair, with a stack of books on the floor next to her. She had bookmarks in all of them, including Les Miserables, which I stole from the pile after my mother died. I’ve added it to my own stack of books from time to time over the last 12 years, but it never makes the cut. It always ends back on the bookshelf, to be sorted later.

(via brittanickel)

Like Fire Balloons in the Sky: The Inspiration, The Courage, to Share

"I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done. I knew there would never be another night like this.

No one said anything. We all just looked up at the sky and we breathed out and in and we all thought the same things, but nobody said. Someone finally had to say, though, didn't they? And that one is me."

— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

My fixation with Zen in the Art of Writing has probably spiraled out of control, into a strange place. (Not probably, clearly: after all, inspired by said book, I’m writing things like THE LAMP and THE MOUSE.)

But lately, I keep opening the book, in a desperate search for some inspiration, and keep feeling drawn back to the passage above. Out of context, it can mean anything and nothing. To give you the actual context, though: he's describing a final memory with his grandfather, lighting a fire balloon and releasing it into the sky on the Fourth of July in 1925. It's incredibly beautiful. It even inspired him to write a story called "The Fire Balloons," many years later. Bradbury also wrote about that night, and about his inspiration for the story, for The New Yorker:

But I could not let it go. It was so beautiful, with the light and shadows dancing inside. Only when Grandpa gave me a look, and a gentle nod of his head, did I at last let the balloon drift free, up past the porch, illuminating the faces of my family. It floated up above the apple trees, over the beginning-to-sleep town, and across the night among the stars.

We stood watching it for at least ten minutes, until we could no longer see it. By then, tears were streaming down my face, and Grandpa, not looking at me, would at last clear his throat and shuffle his feet. The relatives would begin to go into the house or around the lawn to their houses, leaving me to brush the tears away with fingers sulfured by the firecrackers. Late that night, I dreamed the fire balloon came back and drifted by my window.

Fire balloons or no fire balloons, I'm still drawn to this idea from the passage in Zen, of sitting quietly, looking up at the sky and relishing the moment. Not sure when, if at all, to say something.

It's like how I feel about writing; how I feel, specifically, about this blog. As I've strayed from posting on this blog—even neglecting my beloved Monday Mix Tapes for months, gasp!—I found myself losing inspiration in general. After only publishing a post here and there every couple of months, it's easier to think, maybe this blog has almost run its course. I don't know. But the more you wonder when is the right moment to say something (to write, rather), the more you continue to merely sit quietly. (In my case, this means getting an idea, thinking about it, and watching Frasier instead of writing, and sharing it.)

Maybe, like many things, this blog, and what I get out of it, is just not quite what it was before. And that’s okay. Maybe it’ll just be exactly what it is. Whatever that may be. Ultimately, though, I hope to never lose the inspiration to write, and to share, however that happens. And wherever it goes on the Internet, or even if it just stays in my journal.

Would releasing a fire balloon into the night with his grandfather have remained such a poignant memory for Bradbury, had he never written about it? Probably. But luckily he shared it, so we could see, if only for a moment, the way he saw it, looking up in the Illinois sky in 1925.

I’m certainly no Ray Bradbury, but I like the idea of saying something. There may never be another night like this, after all.

Like he wrote:

“And, after all, isn’t that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside other people’s heads to look out at the damned fool miracle and say: oh, so that’s how you see it!? Well, now, I must remember that.”

THE LAMP

The lamp next to my bed is broken on the top, and tilts slightly to the side. A crack runs across the top, past the jagged edges from where the glass had shattered.

I love it. I cannot bear the thought of ever having a different one. (I used to have two. But the other one, that matched it, broke as well, years ago. Back when the breaking of such a lamp was just an annoyance rather than a complete devastation.)

I still remember how I felt after my then-boyfriend knocked the lamp off the nightstand, as I kneeled on the carpet in my bare feet, picking up shards of glass. I don’t remember why it got knocked over, though. Was it a careless gesture during a fight? Was it from a drunken stumbling? I can’t remember. I just remember how I felt, picking up the shards. Knowing it was never going to be perfect again.

It’s dangerous to leave it, he said. The edges of the glass are sharp.

I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care!

I hated him for breaking the lamp. I hated me for caring so much about a stupid lamp.

But:

It was my lamp. My mother had bought the two lamps for me, to match my new, big bedroom after my parents expanded our house. I had been so special, with my new, huge room. To get to my new room, you had to walk through a hallway—and to the left, right before my new room, was my bathroom. My own bathroom, with my own shower.

I was special, then. I was a child.

The matching lamps—one for the nightstand, one for the dresser—reminded me of the ones that had been in my grandma’s bedroom. Antique (looking, at least), with two globes, one big, one small. If you twisted the knob in the middle once (one click to the right), the bottom, small globe would glow. One more click, and the top would, too. Another click: both, glowing. The lamps were flowered, much "girlier" than most things I liked. But I loved the clicking: one, two, three.

I’d put my book down next to the lamp when it was time to go to sleep. One last click, and then darkness.

The lamp is broken on the top now, and tilts to the side. A crack runs across the top, past the jagged edges from where the glass had shattered.

But I still love the clicking: one, two, three. I still put my book down next to it when it is time to go to sleep. With one last click, darkness.

It reminds me that at one time, I had a mother who bought me two matching lamps, to match my new, big bedroom.

And that is something. That is special, still.

This post is part of a little writing experiment inspired by Ray Bradbury, to "conjure the nouns"—read more details here. Former entry: The Mouse.

Let the Breeze In

[image via herpaperweight]

After last week's Chicago heatwave—and spending much of that directly in the sun while attending all three days of Pitchfork—today's almost-cool breeziness has been so refreshing. And that's not to say that I've been wandering around, enjoying the weather all day. I actually spent my day waiting on a technician from AT&T to show up (who finally arrived 40 minutes past my 4-hour service window)—and then waiting another three and a half hours for him to fix the lines that would give me my Internet back. 

But my windows are all open, and from the second floor of my apartment, the breeze has been blowing in since I woke up this morning. While I waited for my Internet to return, I read Vogue and Vanity Fair. I painted my toenails. I folded my laundry and poured extra cream in my coffee. I tried a new circuit workout. I wrote a letter to my grandmother. Life without the Interwebs wasn't so bad after all, I figured. Aside from the increasing anxiety that I was never going to get work done for the day. 

Once the lights on my modem finally flashed from red to green, I started frantically catching up on work for the day. But then I decided to calm down. I'd get it done. I poured myself a glass of wine and listened to Camera Obscura and Daft Punk while I wrote. 

I got it done. 

And I feel just like this picture. 

A Big Open Book Between Us

“Some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.” — Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes

When I was a kid, my mother loved to take pictures of me reading books. Curled up in the recliner on Christmas morning, reading a new book while still in my pajamas; stretched out on a towel on Wrightsville Beach; laying across the floor at Grandma Hamm’s house. All with a book in my hands.

I didn’t realize just how many times she’d taken photos like this until I graduated from high school, and she gave me a present: A photo album that chronicled my life so far. All 18 years of it. And on almost every other page, I’d find these sorts of photos.

My favorite, though, is one that my mother didn’t take. That’s because she’s in it. It’s from 1995. We were at my Uncle Gary and Aunt Deborah’s house, probably for Thanksgiving. I love it because of our matching smiles, dorky glasses, and the way we both have one hand placed on the big book open between us. Mostly I love it because it says so much.

I couldn’t tell you what the book was, but I do remember the comfort, the safety, of being curled up next to my mom on a couch, reading a book. I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember—even when I wasn’t technically reading, but as I listened to her as she read us The Berenstain Bears books, my brother Jay and I on either side of her.

It started with the Berenstains. Later, we had Laura Ingalls, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden. And then: Margaret. Steph. Deenie. Sally J. Freedman. Karen.

If you grew up in the 70s or 80s, you might have recognized many of those names. They’re all characters from Judy Blume books. By the time I became familiar with these girls, I’d outgrown the nighttime ritual of Mom sitting at the end of my loft bed, reading me Little House on the Prairie books or her old Trixie Belden’s.

But it was because of my mom that I did get to know them. And when I say get to know them, I mean exactly that. Like so many other young girls, I devoured Judy Blume’s books—always finding something in each protagonist that I would identify with so deeply, so intensely, I’d think, How did she know? or, It’s not only me!

Then, in high school, I snagged Mom’s paperback of Summer Sisters. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with Vix, the main character. I obsessed over Caitlyn, her “summer sister,” just like Vix did—and resented her, too. It felt real.

I’ve read Summer Sisters almost every single summer since that first reading. I took it to Wrightsville Beach, the summer after Mom had died, when it was just Dad and me. I sat on the balcony of our hotel reading it, just like Mom had sat reading books so many different summers when we had visited, all as a family. Reading it was like taking a vacation from my heartbreak. I didn’t feel sad or angry or confused. Everything felt right again.

I owe my mom and Judy Blume for that gift. From my mother, I have my love of reading, a lifelong comfort. When I want to talk to my mom sometimes so badly that my chest actually hurts, I can pick up a book and feel okay again—or at least not think about it anymore. And obviously, so many women have Judy to thank for writing the stories she has, for sharing these characters that so many of us can find ourselves in, even if it’s in a small way.

Last night, I had the absolute thrill of meeting Judy Blume. She finally made a movie out of one of her books, Tiger Eyes. Out of all of her books, she had to make a movie out of the one I never read! The movie played at a theater nearby last night, and Judy Blume was there for a Q&A session following the screening.

She was wonderful. She was down to earth, kind, and full of joy. She choked up talking about how meaningful this story was to her. She talked about her son, Larry, who directed the movie, with such love in her voice. When the Q&A was over, even though she had made a comment about how exhausted she was from all of her traveling and weekend’s events, she still stayed and talked to the people (mostly women), who were lined up waiting to meet her. My favorite was the woman, probably my age or younger, who was standing behind me, clutching a beat up paperback of Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. She’d had her mother FedEx it to her so she could have Judy sign it.

As for me, I stood clutching Mom’s now very worn paperback of Summer Sisters. I nervously handed it to one of my lifelong heroes and asked her if she would sign it, telling her it had been my mother’s.

Judy flipped to the title page and sort of raised her eyebrow at me before she started to sign. “You must have been pretty young when this came out.” Then she laughed. “And I was 60!”

It was a quick moment, and nothing extraordinary. But to me, it was extraordinary. Like this wonderful writer (and person) wrote in Tiger Eyes, “Some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them.”

No one but me knew that at that moment, I felt as content as I did sitting on a hotel balcony reading my mother’s old paperback. No one but me knew that for just that quick moment, meeting Judy Blume, I felt like I could almost hear my mom laugh again. Almost. And it was enough, almost.

I think of Davey, the protagonist of Tiger Eyes, so distraught over the death of her dad, but yet still so strong. At the end of the movie, she dives in the ocean and swims. You know she’s going to be okay.

Thanks to a little help from Judy Blume, so many of us know the same.

Writing Experiments: Working Up the Courage to Humiliate Myself

For the last five days, I've been thinking incessantly about how I can best humiliate myself.

That sounds insane, so let me explain: I read a lot of writing about writing. As in, writers talking about the writing process, and in particular a lot of the do's and don'ts of writing personal essays. The New York Times has this section in its opinion pages called Draft, which I suspect is a huge snooze for those not interested in writing. It's the opposite for me, obviously.

A recent post from Susan Shapiro is the reason why I can't stop thinking about how to humiliate myself. It's called, "Make Me Worry You're Not O.K." and in it, she describes the first assignment she gives her students in feature journalism classes:

Write three pages confessing your most humiliating secret.

Thank Jesus she wasn't one of my journalism professors. One of the worst—and of course, best—experiences I had with journalism class humiliation was the professor who would read aloud our essays to the entire class, not caring at all to mask the sarcasm oozing out of his voice during the sections he found particularly pathetic. So I can only imagine the levels of my anxiety were I asked to write three pages confessing my most humiliating secret to a new professor.

But really, it's genius (and probably why she's been assigning it for more than 20 years). As she says:

It encourages students to shed vanity and pretension and relive an embarrassing moment that makes them look silly, fearful, fragile or naked.

You can’t remain removed and dignified and ace it. I do promise my students, though, that through the art of writing, they can transform their worst experience into the most beautiful. I found that those who cried while reading their piece aloud often later saw it in print. I believe that’s because they were coming from the right place — not the hip, but the heart.

I can't stop thinking about it. Of course, I have written my share of personal shit, but I've never been ballsy enough to write about the worst of the worst, in a sense.

Recently, I wrote an essay that terrified me: It was scary to put the words together; to admit certain feelings I had felt; and above all, scary to draw any sort of conclusions about what had happened. I shared it with exactly three people, who gave me positive enough feedback that I braved submitting it.

Not two days later, I got my rejection email.

I started to go through my usual rejection routine—feeling like a fraud, feeling like no one will ever publish anything I write, feeling like the whole, incredibly personal thing I had agonized over was a bunch of shit. (Dear God, are all writers as fucking sensitive as I am?)

So I said fuck it. Maybe I'll submit it elsewhere, maybe I won't. Or maybe I wrote something that I was brave enough to share with three people, and three people enjoyed it. And maybe that's enough.

Either way, the rejections aren't going to stop me from an attempt to humiliate myself. Again, and again.

Forget It, Baby, Just Let it Be

I think I've caught the New Year bug. You know, the one the first week in January, that beautiful time when you can tell yourself, with utter conviction:

This year, I'm going to do it! I'm going to do all those things I planned to do last year, you know, until I sat on my ass for hours and hours watching Breaking Bad in its entirety.

It's in the air. It can't just be me, I know it. Why else would I suddenly have so many yoga and gym membership deals to write at Groupon? Why else would my Gmail inbox be packed with emails that say things like, "Resolve to Reinvent (Your Closet, Your Lifestyle)"; "New year, new skin!" and "The Exercise You Should Do Every Day in 2013"?

Like I wrote last January, I really do think there's validity in taking this time, post-holidays, right at the start of the year, to think seriously about goals for the coming year. Last year, I was thinking not only about what I wanted to achieve—more, better writing; a healthier lifestyle (shocking, and so original!)—but also about revisiting old habits and remembering not only things I liked, in general, but what I liked about me. 

I have to say that it took pretty much the entirety of 2012 to figure out the latter part of those goals. And, while I didn't write as much—or maybe better put, didn't achieve as much with my writing—as I'd hoped, I actually did something far more important. I got back to being me. That may sound completely cheesy and ridiculous, but it's true. Now, sometimes "me" is a confusing concept. Sometimes I'm not the biggest fan of myself. Sometimes I don't know who the hell I am at all, quite frankly. But as long as I can honestly say to myself, or the cat, or whoever: I'm doing the best I can, and I'm staying true to myself while doing so, well, I think I'm doing okay.

I beat myself up a lot over the last year thinking about this blog in particular, feeling disheartened with it, feeling disheartened with myself over the lack of posts. I had reached a point where I was feeling rather silly about the whole thing, thinking, What am I writing any of this for, anyway? What's the point? 

Finally, the other day, I figured out the answer.

I'm writing it for me. That's the point! That was the point all along. Writing and posting on this blog, no matter how silly or how embarrassingly in-depth I discuss a song, or a mouse, or whatever, it's me, writing and putting myself out there. And while I mean it when I say it's for me, I'd also be lying if I said it didn't make my damn day any time someone tells me he or she read a post and enjoyed it, or discovered a new song because of it, or whatever.

I guess what I'm getting at is this. While we're all caught up in a time of New Year's resolutions and goals, while I spend an entire weekend running around my apartment cleaning like a madwoman and doing yoga and trying to read everything at once, that it's also a good time to remember the beauty of just being present. Of not feeling silly because I wrote something personal, published it on the Interwebs, and no one said anything about it. Of not worrying about what bills need to be paid. The beautiful feeling when I stop thinking about all the things I'm not doing, or should have done the day before, and instead think: Today, I drank a smoothie. I did two loads of laundry. I wrote this. Today I felt happy. 

That is something. That is enough.

My brother Jay got me this crazy, awesome book for Christmas called Be Here Now. It's about the transformation of Dr. Richard Alpert into Baba Ram Dass, through a spiritual journey that involves yoga, meditation, and probably a fair amount of LSD. So let me end all this with a passage from this trippy book that I never knew existed until I received it as a perfect surprise on Christmas day.

You don't have to have 
that urge    that desire
that unfulfilled
THING

Just let it be
Just
be
be
BE
Be More
MORE
MORE

What's holding you back? Your thoughts, huh?
You've got to give them up
Just ego planning
What are you doing?
Planning for the future?
WELL
It's all right now
But later? ...................... FORGET IT BABY

That's later
Now is
NOW
Are you going to 
BE HERE
or not?

IT'S AS SIMPLE AS THAT!

The Mouse

Someone wise—maybe my cat, or more likely Eleanor Roosevelt—once said to "do one thing every day that scares you." 

It really is a great idea. So that's why I'm doing it, right at this very moment. No, no, that one thing that scares me isn't blogging. (But maybe it should be, and then so many of my thoughts and feelings over the last several years wouldn't be splashed all over the Interwebs.) 

Here's what I'm doing: I am typing this while sitting on a cushion on my apartment floor. 

Why is sitting on my floor scary, you might ask?

I'll tell you why. It seems I have a new roommate. 

This past weekend, I was having a rather terrific Saturday. I slept in until almost noon for no reason, other than the fact that I am a GROWNUP, dammit, and I do what I want. I talked to my dad on the phone. I did some laundry, which always leaves me feeling smug and pleased with myself, because that's a perfectly normal reaction to an everyday task that I put off for no reason every week, RIGHT?

My wonderful Saturday continued when I decided to try a new, more advanced yoga routine. I was having so much fun with all the crazy angles and falling down on my mat with side plank variations that I was grinning as I stepped back into downward dog. What a great day! I was thinking—yes, I was actually grinning, thinking positive thoughts while doing yoga on a Saturday, what the hell—and I looked back at my feet. 

Right at that moment, a mouse scurried out from my front closet, across the room and into the utility closet.

So I did what any reasonable adult would do in that situation.

I yelped, grabbed my phone off the coffee table, and immediately texted several people. While perched on a stool with my legs in the air, of course. I'm sitting in my sports bra and yoga pants on a stool, sweating, and texting people that I saw a mouse. 

Uggh. And I thought I was annoying with all that positive thinking before! Now it was official. WHO AM I?

I got off the stool, because this whole thing was stupid. It's a mouse, Alison! I'm now thinking to myself. Don't be a fucking ... GIRL ... about it. 

(GASP. I know we're all shocked by that sexist rhetoric that went through my brain. But: It happened. Dammit, society! This is your fault! Gender! Ok. Moving on.)

So, I got off the stool. And I promptly put on my boots that were sitting by the door, because I was scared to be in my bare feet. 

That's right. I was now sweating, grasping my iPhone for dear life, staring at my utility closet in fear—while dressed in a sports bra, yoga pants, and boots. To make the situation more ridiculous, I started chastising my cats.

"Layla! Mufasa! There's a mouse! Go get it!"

Layla was hiding, likely because all my frantic jumping around and perching on a stool freaked her out. I looked at Mufasa. 

"Mufasa! THE MOUSE!"

From her perch on the living room chair, she looked at me, blinked, yawned, and stretched out on her back.

Thanks a lot, assholes. 

To make a long story short, I called my landlord, and he came over and set up some traps for me. There have been no more mouse sightings as of yet. But I'd be lying if I told you that I haven't been taking giant leaps past the utility closet, or if I pretended I didn't yelp in bed last night because I was convinced the mouse was on my pillow. (It wasn't a mouse. It was my cat's paw.)

Yesterday evening when I was doing yoga I think I was actually holding my breath for the first 15 minutes, looking back every other pose to check for the mouse. What did I think it was doing, hanging out behind me and eating popcorn? And as it turns out, breathing is sort of, you know, important when you're doing yoga. So I cut that shit out and just focused on my yoga.

I was getting a little tired of the nonsense. Specifically: my nonsense.

Because spotting the mouse came at the end of a weird week for me. I was feeling out of sorts for the better part of last week. Insecure. Moody. Anxious. Then I see this mouse, and my first reaction was, well: "EEEK!" and then, heart still pounding, I'm already judging myself. Telling myself I'm not supposed to react in a certain way. Good lord. Of course I was a little freaked. Does anyone anticipate seeing a mouse run across their 2nd floor city apartment in the middle of the afternoon? 

What did I think I was supposed to do? Immediately catch the mouse, then release it to the wild, all without feeling at all nervous? 

Enough! Let's all give ourselves a break once in awhile, shall we? Because in all seriousness, I think it is a wonderful idea, to do something every day that scares you. It's just that sometimes, that thing is simply recognizing that you're afraid of something in the first place. And after recognizing it, just accepting it. Here goes: I was afraid of a mouse. WHEW. We all feel better now, right? (I hope it's at least somewhat clear that I'm thinking about other aspects of my life than just a mouse at this point.) 

So tonight I sat my ass down on this pillow on the floor to write. My butt hurts. But dammit, I am showing that mouse who runs this house. Since I've done this, maybe tomorrow I can do something really amazing. One day at a time.

Of course, I'm directly facing the utility closet. If that mouse comes out, I'm ready. And we're gonna have a chat about this living situation. 

This post is part of a little writing experiment inspired by Ray Bradbury, to "conjure the nouns"—read more details here. Or, just wonder why I wrote so much about THE MOUSE.

The True Test is in the Doing

Wow, the Rainbow Chronicles are looking sad as fuck lately, aren't they? Two posts in July. Five posts in August. One in September! One! Inside, my soul is dying. I’m totally failing my role as the narcissistic essayist if I’m not inundating the Interwebs with all my thoughts and FEELINGS on at least a weekly basis. My man E.B. would not be proud.

I’d like to say that I’ve just been so busy chasing my rainbow lately that I haven’t had time to post, ha, HA. Or, we could talk about how I haven’t had an internet connection for about a month. Apparently, one of those helps when you’re trying to, you know, WRITE ON THE INTERNET.

But hmmm...that doesn't really excuse the lack of posts in July or August. Anyway, I’m a terrible blogger, blah blah blah, etc. etc!

In the meantime, with all the non-blogging, I spent a week in Cape Cod last month, and have been doing all the reading I apparently do when I’m not spending hours dicking around on tumblr, reblogging photos of macarons and cats and yoga poses. (But seriously: tumblr! Neat! I like it!)

I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about writing, which is not nearly as good as actually writing, but I suppose it’s a start. One new trick I’m doing is writing on my phone notepad every day, writing really silly things that probably no one should ever see, but I’m a glutton for embarrassing myself, so here’s an example:

So yeah, mostly just rambling weirdness, but at least it's keeping me from tweeting every thought that runs through my head. (But seriously: twitter! Neat! I like it!)

I also read Ray Bradbury’s book, Zen in the Art of Writing, which is just jam-packed with great ideas that I should really do, and not just think about doing. I posted about it on my tumblr last week, speaking of how much I love tumblr. It’s short, so I’d like to repost it here.

Conjure the NOUNS

Ray Bradbury, in his book Zen in the Art of Writing, recommends that writers put down a list. Lists of titles, long lines of nouns. He said that “These lists were the provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface.”

His list went something like: THE LAKE. THE NIGHT. THE DWARF. THE ATTIC.

Lots of circus themes. Lots of old people and creepy shit.

He said he would run through his lists, pick a noun, and then write a long prose-poem-essay about it. As he was writing, this THING would turn into a story. Brilliant stories, as a matter of fact, because he is—was—Ray fucking Bradbury and of course they were brilliant.

I decided to give it a go. What would be on my list? I had a few ideas, a few NOUNS.

Things that were on my mind, that were “hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.”

My list went something like this: THE AIR MATTRESS. THE INTERNET. THE DENTIST. THE PAINTING.

So far I have written about the air mattress and the dentist. Both are a little creepy. Both started as a poem-prose-essay thingy, and both ended as such.

It’s hard to be brilliant when your NOUN is AIR MATTRESS. And when you’re not Ray Bradbury.

Still, I love the idea. I’m gonna keep trying it.

“Conjure the nouns, alert the secret self, taste the darkness,” wrote R.B.

Now that this idea, to conjure the nouns, has been planted in my head, I can't stop thinking about it. As I'm locking my door when I leave for work in the morning, I think about it: THE STAIRWAY. THE APARTMENT. THE MAN ON THE BICYCLE. 

So that brings us to the next aspect of R.B.'s advice: the doing. The actual writing.
The seemingly obvious tactic a writer should take in order to produce great creative work: A writer should write, duh!

He wrote: “You have been working, haven’t you? Or do you plan some sort of schedule for yourself starting as soon as you put down this article?

What kind of schedule?”

When I read this, I felt so sheepish that I actually put the book down and looked around, as if I’d just been caught naked at work or something. The cat stared at me, yawned, and rolled over. No one was there. No one cared that I haven’t been putting in the work!

Nobody but me, that is. So I went on to read:

“Something like this. One-thousand or two-thousand words every day for the next twenty years.”

Planning for the next twenty years feels juuust a bit daunting, but ok, R.B. I can write one-thousand or two-thousand words every day. Watch me!

So, last week, I set my alarm 30 minutes earlier than usual, vowed to myself I wouldn’t hit the snooze button for the entirety of that 30 minutes, and went to sleep blissful, ready to wake up and write something genius.

Well, it’s nothing genius by any means, but I did sit down to the computer, and I wrote something.

At the end of his essay, R.B. really hit me over the head with why it might be useful to take his advice. He wrote:

“Let me assure you I speak of all these things only because they have worked for me for fifty years. And I think they might work for you. The true test is in the doing.

Be pragmatic, then. If you’re not happy with the way your writing has gone, you might give my method a try.

If you do, I think you might easily find a new definition for Work.

And the word is LOVE.”

I’m not always the best at following advice, but I guess now is as good a time as ever. So, I’ve started my R.B. Training, as I’ve decided to call it, right now, this very minute as I type.

He’s right: ‘The true test is in the doing’—so I am done with the restlessness, the days and weeks pass by that I create nothing.

I’m ready to put in the work.

So every day, I plan to write some more. It might just be a run-on sentence typed on my phone about pigeons. It might just be a silly little blog post like this one.

But sooner or later, maybe something wonderful will appear on the page. I only have about a thousand words left to go.

Every day.

For the next twenty years.

Telling a Very Simple Story

After a day spent staring at a computer screen, trying to form words into coherent sentences, I sometimes—or maybe five times a week—leave the office feeling completely brain dead. It’s not just because of all the words, of the mind-numbing yet still sometimes wonderful aspect of copywriting, but it’s because of the sheer overload of possibilities. I'm at a computer with an Internet connection. Anything is possible: a new album to listen to, a beautiful essay to read, a horrifying piece of news to discover. The wondrous thing that is the Interwebs is also a never-ending distraction!

It all gets to be too much.

When I left the office tonight, I had to go to CVS to refill a prescription. (And guess what, Paul Ryan? It was birth control! Ha, HA, you dickhead!) Sorry. Paul Ryan being the antichrist isn't the point, here. The point is, I could barely even communicate with the pharmacist. Words suddenly made no sense. I think I might have actually been growling at him rather than speaking English. It’s all a blur. I really don’t know.

Thankfully, I have my walk to the train to help clear my brain, and help me return to being a human. Then, on the train, I started reading Maya Angelou's interview with The Paris Review, and it was like waking up from a good nap.

Maybe you're not also a geek who likes to read about writers discussing writing, but I bet it's safe to venture that all of us feel a little brain dead after a long day at work. And while she's talking about writing here, it's about so much more than that. It's about dealing with the "serious business" that is life, about growing up, and the utter scariness of "the truth about the human being"—and I find it brilliant and refreshing.

I hope you do, too. Here's the excerpt I'm referring to (all emphasis is mine):

INTERVIEWER

Aren’t the extraordinary events of your life very hard for the rest of us to identify with?

ANGELOU

Oh my God, I’ve lived a very simple life! You can say, Oh yes, at thirteen this happened to me and at fourteen . . . But those are facts. But the facts can obscure the truth, what it really felt like. Every human being has paid the earth to grow up. Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs—anybody can have that—I mean in truth. That’s what I write. What it really is like. I’m just telling a very simple story.

INTERVIEWER

Aren’t you tempted to lie? Novelists lie, don’t they?

ANGELOU

I don’t know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they’re telling the truth. The fact is they’re using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they’re telling the truth about the human being—what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other.

INTERVIEWER

James Baldwin, along with a lot of writers in this series, said that “when you’re writing you’re trying to find out something you didn’t know.” When you write do you search for something that you didn’t know about yourself or about us?

ANGELOU

Yes. When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I’m trying for that. But I’m also trying for the language. I’m trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for what it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and the delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.

Sometimes it's nice to step away from the computer, put the phone away, and just be reminded that, like the brilliant Maya Angelou, all of us share something (or at least I hope). Because aren't all of us, whether we're writers, or pharmacists, or politicians, just trying?

"Trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up..."

I know I am. And like she says, "It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs—anybody can have that—I mean in truth. That’s what I write. What it really is like. I’m just telling a very simple story."

That's exactly the kind of story I want to write to live.

Shameless Self-Promotion: 'It's Never Too Late' for HelloGiggles

[image by Marco Nelor]

I wrote about my love affair with yoga, and HelloGiggles was kind enough to publish it! I'd love it if you check out the entire post, but here's an excerpt:

A few years ago, I dated someone whose mother was a yoga instructor. He’d be a ball of energy after doing mysterious stretches in his living room, saying strange things about “sun salutations” and “downward dogs” — I’d think how weird the notion of a “down dog” was, then go back to reading my book and feeling annoyed by his energy. A couple of times, he tried in vain to get me to attend his mother’s yoga class (if I remember correctly, my stubborn refusal led to a rather embarrassing argument in Border’s). No way. I was not going to a yoga class. I was not going to sun salute in the effing living room.

But then, I would see lithe, calm-looking young women on the train, a yoga mat rolled up and nestled in their bag. I would scowl at them. Yet inside, I secretly wished that I could be the type of woman who commutes across the city with a yoga mat in her bag. Later, further evidence about the magical powers of yoga happened when one of my co-workers started strolling in the office with a grin and energy levels that seemed almost manic as she hopped on my desk where I sat slumped, drinking instant hot cocoa. Her face was glowing. It was actually glowing.

“I’ve been doing hot yoga!” she would squeal. “I’ve been getting up at 5…”

And then I tuned her out. Getting up at 5 in order to take a bus halfway across the city, only to enter a steaming, 98-degree-heated room packed with all those lithe, calm-looking young women I’m seeing on the train? No, thank you. I will stay in bed and sleep. So when I thought again this fall about how much I wanted to be active, I said nothing about it. I just decided to do it. [read more...]

Hope you like it, and thanks for reading!

Meanwhile, at Dating While Feminist...

I've been writing about my love of Louis C.K., bossing up with Nicki Minaj, and most importantly, helping reveal some really great news.

And while we're on the subject of other writing endeavors, posts around here have been scarce not because I no longer have anything to say, but rather because I've been focusing my efforts on freelance work. (err, attempting freelance work, that is.)

Don't fret, though, my loves! I'm working to channel all my limitless energy fueled by yoga—and more accurately, falling face first on the floor while doing yoga—so I can keep up with my one true love, this blog, while also trying to be, like, A REAL WRITER.

Wish me luck, and hope you enjoy Dating While Feminist as well!

xo,
alisoncomposes (aka, "God's Creation")

yep, this happened. all of it.

"But What Will I Write?"

I’m reading Simone De Beauvoir’s roman à clef, The Mandarins, right now—and I say roman à clef partly to sound superior, snotty, and French, and partly because, well, that is what it is. In it, she fictionally depicts the lives of some Parisian intellectuals at the end of World War II. And, because I looked it up on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia knows all, I can break it down for you a little bit more: the character Henri Perron is thought to be Albert Camus; Robert Dubreuilh, Jean-Paul Sartre; and Anne Dubreuilh, Simone De Beauvoir.

Et voilà!

So, now that we’ve gotten this far, perhaps I can get to the point. Henri, who is also the editor of a leftist newspaper called L'Espoir, has recently published a critically acclaimed novel and has announced his plans to write a “light novel.” Of course, the more he talks about this, the more everyone gets excited and asks him a lot of questions about this “light novel.”

Too bad he doesn’t have the first clue what it’s about.

Now, bear with me, as I’m certainly no French intellectual—I know, I know, you’re shocked!—but my favorite aspect of the book so far is Henri’s inner struggle with self-definitions. Is he political, or is he a writer? Is he both? And his bigger question, considering how much he and everyone he knows has changed since before the war, is:

What in the hell will he write about, the past or the present?

So I might not be a post-WWII French intellectual, but anyone who defines oneself as a writer could likely identify with these nagging questions. You ask me what I’m writing, right now, and while on one side, the honest answer is, I’m writing Groupons five days a week and some blog posts here and there; the other, equally honest answer in my mind, is that I’m writing much more. I am writing scribbles of thoughts in a journal; I am constructing ideas and sentences in my head that may or may not ever make it on a page; I am questioning multiple times a day, “What will I write?”; and yes, I am writing Groupons and blog posts.

Yet still my head alternately feels too full to narrow down an idea or too empty to write anything at all. This has been driving me absolutely out of my mind, until I read the following passage, and I suddenly calmed the fuck down.

An excerpt from The Mandarins:

Henri imagined a solitary country home, pine trees, the smell of the scrub. ‘But what will I write?’ He continued walking, his head empty. ‘The trap is well laid,’ he said to himself. ‘Just when you think you’re escaping, it slams down on you.’ To recapture the past and preserve the present with words is all very fine. But it can be done only if there is someone to read them; there’s no sense to it except if the past, if the present, if life counts for something. If this world has no importance, if other men mean nothing, what point would there be to writing? There would be nothing left to do but yawn in boredom … Only there isn’t time enough for everything, that’s the tragedy of it. Once more the refrain began repeating itself insistently in Henri’s head… What was he to do? Give in? Not give in? Get involved in politics? Write?

He went home to bed.

I can only wonder if this “light novel” of Henri’s will ever even happen. That’s the problem with questioning yourself so much, isn’t it? After awhile, the only thing you have energy to do is go to bed. But maybe, later on, all that questioning will lead to action, and you’ll write something better, and more worthwhile, than you ever imagined.

After all, Camus wound up winning the Nobel Prize in literature. But it wasn’t for his novel. It was for his political essay, Reflections on the Guillotine.

Maybe I should start telling everyone I'm in the midst of writing a light novel. Next step, the Nobel Prize!

Just a thought...

Writer's Block: The Gun Has No Trigger

I haven’t been writing lately. Well, that’s a lie. I write all day at work, five days a week. But that doesn’t really seem to count.

This blog hasn’t been updated in weeks. The last entry in my journal was in March. There’s just…nothing.

So I write all day at work. Then I come home, and my laptop sits, closed, on the chair, on the table, on the cat-hair covered rug. It might as well be locked in a closet (which apparently, I did to my poor little kitty all day yesterday). I read The Hunger Games series. I do yoga. I watch New Girl and Mad Men. I keep having the same conversation, over and over. I look at my laptop. I feel my journal in my bag, smacking against my thigh as I walk to the train.

But still: nothing. No writing.

I went to Indiana last weekend to visit my family. By Sunday afternoon, my dread at driving back to Chicago, alone, was overwhelming. I felt it in my stomach. I didn’t want to go. It’s not that I was dreading coming back to the city. I shouldn't have been dreading the drive; after all, it’s not like I haven’t taken the trip alone, countless times.

I just didn’t want to do it.

About halfway back to Chicago, right when I was passing the windmills that seem to go on for infinity, the little red lights blinking, the blades spinning rhythmically, I figured it out: I didn’t want to be alone with my own thoughts.

No wonder I can’t write.

You guys, I don't mean to get all emo on you and everything, but it makes me feel like this:




Maybe that's not it, exactly, but I had to get that song on here, somehow. And it's something. (In more uplifting news, I'll be seeing The Dirty Projectors at Pitchfork this year!)

I'm off to my hot yoga class now, where I'll try to focus, find my center, and most importantly, not fall down. In the meantime, I'll just try to keep in mind:

You'd see a million colors if you really looked.

The Size of the Past: An Ode to Sharon Van Etten (And Me)

I used to write these poems,
Sometimes.
They weren’t good,
Exactly.
 
Really, I know that they were
Nothing that made much
Sense at all.
I’d mix in some words
In between a couple videos
Or pictures




And to me,
It was beautiful.
I swear, it made perfect sense
To me,
At least.
Almost no one would
Remark about these—
In fact, one friend said,
(and I can’t be mad at the honesty):

“I don’t really get it;
I just like your stories
So much more.”

That’s fine,
I guess.
The thing is,
This was a story
Just the same,
And sometimes it’s easier
This way

Like, to me,
It seems ridiculous
The way Layla won’t just
Hop on the bed:

Instead,
She sniffs,
And sniffs,
And shuffles up to it,
Until, satisfied,
She makes a giant leap
And even then, she sniffs me,
My book, my arm,
Like she’s never seen me before.
Then she kneads her paws,
Slowly, steadily
Until she’s satisfied,
and she'll curl up in my arms,
her paw on my hand.

It’s totally ridiculous,
But it’s just her way.

I wrote this essay
About my ex-best friend
And how I cut her out
Of my life
But I was angry with it,
Dissatisfied
I kept sniffing at it,
Not sure what to do.

Found all these pictures
To go with the words,
But they didn’t make sense
Like this won’t make sense.
Because it was about her
and about something else
entirely

("It wasn't about me, so I didn't care,"
he said, without a hint of irony.)

You get that, right?
Tell me you get it.

The thing is,
I don't expect anyone to get it, really,
other than me,
And I know this time
you won't care to stop me
and say anything;
in fact, you probably won't read it at all.
That's fair; I get it,
I swear, I do. 

But I’d be lying if I said
I didn’t secretly hope
You’d look at me
And say:
“I get it; I always got it”


Because while I never meant to linger
I never meant those looks
Sometimes I can help it
And sometimes I can’t help but not.

It’s totally ridiculous,
But it’s just my way.

Tomorrow I’m going to see Sharon Van Etten sing
I already know the slightly
Mournful way I’ll feel
If and when she sings
“Give Out”
cause it’s just like
when you don’t look at me

and all I'm doing is looking (and you know it) or you do look at me but I can’t bear to look up (and you know it) 

“There was your breath on the back of my neck/ The only one holding/ The only one I had felt In years”

When I looked up from the table,
You were devastating.
I remember the way I watched you
That time,
I was late (I'm always late)

From across the street
I waited for the light to change
You were there,
Just waiting.

It scared the shit out of me.

Like how it scares me that you get me
So completely
Yet don’t,
Not at all.

You’re right, you know?

But still: You’re wrong, you’re so wrong.
As long as I think that, then maybe I can still be right.

It's My Baby's Birthday! The Rainbow Chronicles Turn 3

Holy crap, you guys. So, I've been sitting here, watching Young Frankenstein and painting my nails (don't even pretend you're not jealous of this wild Wednesday evening) and I remembered:

Today, the Rainbow Chronicles turn 3! If only I had some Funfetti! Quick, go get a cupcake to eat while you read this!

It seems that last year, I neglected to host a blogging birthday celebration—I was far too busy feeling a lot of feelings about my recent discovery of James Blake—but this year, I'm in more of a celebratory mood. I mean, Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle are dancing on the television right now, and if that doesn't put you in the partying mood, what will?

For the first birthday bash, in 2010, back when I was still a young girl of 25, I recapped my favorite moments of my first full year of blogging. There was a lot of talk about Swayze, Schwinn Breezes named Patricia, and waiting tables. And of course, some more serious posts about family and my seemingly never-ending job search.

Now, two years later, though Sunday Swayze Fest may not happen as often as we'd all like (and by "we" of course I mean "I"), I can still say with all honesty that my most recent viewing of Dirty Dancing was three days ago and I now own a t-shirt with Patrick Swayze on it (clutch Christmas gift from Jay and Jasmine). So never fear, faithful Rainbow groupies. Swayze Fest will always be here in my heart, if not every Sunday on this blog.

And while I still occasionally have elaborate daydreams about riding my Schwinn Breeze all over town, I think we all know in reality I'm far too clumsy and terrified of Chicago traffic for that to happen more than twice every three years.

Speaking of clumsy—today at the coffee shop, I may or may not have knocked a framed record off the wall. Glass shattered, people stared, and I turned beet red, slumped into my seat, and cursed my elbows.

Back to the birthday bash, and away from my awkwardness, if at all possible. One thing I love about looking back over the last three years of blogging is how, in many ways, it's a tidy chronicle of my life. Of course, it's not a complete chronicle, and it never should or will be one, but as I look back I remember a lot—good and bad. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I think, "What kind of a creep reads her own blog archive?" But basically, looking back over this blog on its "birthday" makes me happy, and it makes me a little sentimental. Kind of like an actual birthday.

Three years ago, I sat in my first Chicago apartment's kitchen, listened to some Fiona Apple, and braved my first blog post, "Small Town and Scared Shitless in the Big City." Looking back, I'm almost shocked by my fears of exploring new places, and I'm still a little embarrassed about sharing those fears with the Interwebs. I may no longer be the young woman who's "scared shitless in the big city," but I don't mind admitting that no matter how long I live in Chicago, I'll still be that same "small town" girl who listens to Fiona and enjoys hanging out with my cats in the comfort of my home.

I recently reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Like many of my books, it was originally my mother's, and I vaguely remembered reading it when I was younger. When I found an index card tucked in the pages with my name and a sequence of numbers on it, I realized with glee that it was my 7th grade locker combination. I loved every minute re-reading the story of Francie and her family. Pretty much all of my reading happens in one of two places: on the train to and from work, or in bed. Sometimes, I get a little self-conscious after being completely absorbed in a book on a crowded train—I can only imagine the faces I must have been making as, teary eyed, I read the scene where Francie's mother shoots the man attempting to attack Francie in the stairwell. When I realized I was at my stop, I shoved the book in my bag and noticed some middle-aged guy was giving me a similar look to the ones I give the people shouting nonsensically in public. (Yes, that happens. I blogged about it.) But hey, if my funny faces keep a fellow commuter entertained on their commute, so be it.

As it happens, I was on the train when I finished the book. It was a beautiful ending to a beautiful book. I didn't care that the train was crowded, and I was sitting in a seat directly facing strangers. I smiled to myself, closed the book slowly, and then reopened it to the first page, where my mother had written her name 18 years earlier. I ran my index finger across her name and sighed.

It was a happy feeling. It was a little sentimental. It was something to be remembered.

Thanks for reading my little blog these last three years. Any time I find out someone's read any of these essays, rants, or even just a long, winding sentence I wrote, it makes me feel just like that.

kisses,
Alison(composes)

A Settled or Regular Tendency or Practice, Esp. One That Is Hard to Give Up

habit |ˈhabit|
noun
1 a settled or regular tendency or practice, esp. one that is hard to give up: this can develop into a bad habit | we stayed together out of habit.

Although I hate to be cliché, sometimes there’s validity to certain clichés (Read: New Year’s Resolutions) if you’re really serious about something. I’ve been thinking a lot in the last week about my goals for this year, and the active steps I want and need to take to reach those goals. Doing so, in actuality, is something that’s been building up for several months, as I’ve been trying—and yes, it requires actively trying—to work on being a better me, if I may continue to sound like a total cliché.

Mostly, what I mean by that is actively working hard to achieve what I want out of my life. Taking work seriously. Thinking about where I want my career to lead. Writing. My health.

And so on. And so on. Insert the other standard clichés about how people hope to better themselves. Is it still a cliché when it is your reality?

There’s something about all this thinking and pondering and planning out this person you want to become. It’s inspiring, yes, and helps me stay motivated. But somewhere along the line, I tend to forget about the person I already am, and like. Or maybe more accurately, certain things in life I really enjoy. Little things, you know, little habits and behaviors. Like the way when I order an orange San Pellegrino at my favorite coffee shop, Café Mustache, I never take a glass of ice so I can pour it from the can, but instead, I grab a straw. Once I’m seated at my table, I peel the top foil off slowly, click on the top of the can with my nails, then pop it open and put the straw in, afterward taking only slow sips. At no other time in my life or in any situation does it occur to me to drink out of a can in this way, or to really enjoy a drink like this at all. I like how it looks, sitting next to my laptop as I write for work, and how it tastes perfectly clear and delicious as it comes up the straw and then down my throat, smooth and refreshing.

It’s silly, in a way—I don’t even order that every time I go to the coffee shop. Most of the time, I’m just drinking glass after glass of ice water and nursing the same large El Jalisco (seriously, go try it sometime) for the entire afternoon I sit there, writing. But for many months, dragging my laptop the few blocks to Café Mustache on Wednesdays was my habit, my thing, because I work from home on Wednesdays. Many weeks my girlfriends and I would all meet over there so we could work together, or just sit and talk. Or like the day after the big blizzard last year, Rachel and I trudged over there, knee deep in snow and basically walking down the middle of California Avenue because there was no other way to get through the heaps of snow. There have been plenty of solitude afternoons spent at the coffee shop, but there have also been the heart to hearts with Lauren, swapping music with Natalie, the Tarot readings at the big table, or just a group of us laughing and talking, maybe a little too loudly. It was a comfortable habit, one I looked forward to each week, and more so if I knew one or more of the girls were meeting me when I was finishing up with work for the day.

So today — in the midst of all this thinking about creating new habits and breaking old, bad ones —I decided instead to revisit this special one of mine. It had been months since I’d worked at the coffee shop on Wednesday, and months since all of us had met up there together, and both are for plenty of reasons, like changes in schedules, one or all of us being too busy, or for me, just needing a change of pace. I had somehow gotten sick of my routine, and as with other places in the neighborhood, I had started to avoid the coffee shop like it was haunted. But when I walked in today, right when there were plenty of open tables and Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” record was playing, I felt the same sort of happiness I feel every time I pull my car into my dad’s driveway. Like I was coming home.

I had my San Pellegrino, with the straw, of course, and a bowl of the veggie chili. It was everything I’d wanted it to be. That morning, I’d been struggling to write and focus, but once I was seated at the familiar big table, I just kept writing. After awhile, I took a little break and texted Lauren, and right then they started playing Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” which for a lot of reasons makes me think of Lauren. (The year we had our joint birthday party, we’d sat at the bar together, feeling anxious before everyone showed up, and the only thing that seemed to calm us was the song “Videotape” for whatever reason.) It was an odd, but wonderful, moment of timing.

By 5:15, I was finishing up with my work and still feeling good, but a little uneasy. About what, I’m not sure exactly. I packed up to leave, and as I walked out the door and down the sidewalk, my left hand caught in my tangled ear buds in my pocket and my right hand hoisting up my bag, I almost turned my ankle by sort of tripping over my own boot, right after I passed someone I thought I knew, but maybe I didn't. Because I wasn't sure, and mostly because I'd almost tripped over nothing, I didn't turn around to double check.

Some things never change. Although I’d like to hope that one day I’ll stop tripping over my own feet, that’s probably something to add to that list. But just like new habits can make you feel accomplished, sometimes there really is nothing better than indulging in the comfort of an old, safe one.

My iPod was on shuffle as I headed home, feeling like I'd just seen a ghost. This wasn't necessarily a good or bad thing, just a feeling. And this is the song that came on:



If it had been "Thinking About You," I probably would have died, or at the very least, completely tripped. But even so:

I got something, I got something I don’t know…

In Which I Ring In The Blog's First Post of 2012, The Only Way I Know How.

Hey Rainbow Groupies!

Layla wanted to tell you all something.

 

No, seriously, she does. I'm not forcing her to sit on my lap or anything. Go on, tell them Layla.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Confession: Neither of these cats are Layla. They are frauds I found on the Google.

 

 

Anyway, happy 2012!

I'm planning on a more blog-tastic year than last, so I thought I'd ring in the first blog post of the year with cats. Because they are the mascot of the Interwebs.

You might have thought it didn't get any geekier than the cat pictures. But it does. Oh, it does.

In accordance with my goals for the year (Note: I use the term goal, not resolution, because I don't like to be a joiner), I just finished writing and submitting a piece for an undisclosed publication that of course I'll shout about wildly, aka typing words on my Macbook to be posted on this blog, if the piece gets published.

Another confession: Those pictures of Layla and me are from ages ago, back in 2011, when Layla still sat on my lap long enough for me to force her to take pictures with me and my forehead still made an appearance. Bangs, guys. Bangs.

Happy New Year. Love,
Alison(composes), Layla, and my Retro Camera iPhone app

 

NYE Contemplations: In 2012, Time to Treat Writing Like a Job.

So: Amanda Hocking. I'm about six months late on this one—seriously, have you heard of this woman?—but I was reading about 20 young up-and-coming professionals during my (admittedly cliché) NYE afternoon of writing down my goals for the coming year, and I am astounded.

Amanda Hocking has already grossed approximately $2 million from self-publishing her 10 novels on Amazon. And now, she has a multimillion dollar, multiple book deal with St. Martin's Press. She is 26.

What stands out the most to me about her story was one line in the NYT profile about her, remarking on the turning point in her writing career and success (emphasis is mine):

It was January 2009, and Hocking started treating writing as a job. Before, it was “something I always did . . . like playing video games.” After, she wrote even when she didn’t feel like it. Over the next year, she wrote “at least five or six new novels.”

I have definitely been guilty of treating my writing as merely something I do. So in 2012, my main goal is to start treating writing like a job. (And in case I'm being confusing, yes, I do still have a full-time job as a copywriter. I'm talking about my writing.)

Maybe I should give Ms. Hocking a call. Maybe I should seriously think about writing YA fiction. Or maybe, I should just shut up and write.

What are your goals for 2012? 

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! Make some merry, and please, don't drink and drive!