Celebration: Writing Because I Like It

Sometimes it feels like there's a deadline on success. If I don't get a story published in the next year...if I don't get a higher paying job by the end of the summer...if I dont, if I don't. Sometimes it sets my mind into a whirl and even when I'm standing still I feel like I'm running around. Sometimes it is hard to remember that I can choose to be at peace and to be happy. Sometimes I can't figure out how.

Sometimes I forget why I want to be a writer. Sometimes I contemplate how much work it is going to take to make a story or a piece of a story really good and my knees start to quiver with the weight of the imagined burden. Sometimes there are too many distractions, too many things that I must be or do, and writing becomes one item on my list of responsibilities, one more thing to avoid doing. Sometimes I forget that I write because I like it. Sometimes I forget that when I open myself up and write what comes from my core I feel beautiful.


Sometimes I have to sit down and force the distractions out of my head. Ignore my homework, my list of unanswered emails, the mess of clothes and dishes and old homework papers growing in my already cluttered apartment. Sometimes I have to sit and stare at a blank computer screen until I have something I want to say, until I can open myself up and write what I want to. Sometimes when I do this, even though I may not have put on any makeup that day, my head may be pounding with leftover sinus pressure from my cold, and I may be wearing my pajamas and yesterday's socks, I feel like the world is one big bundle of happiness ready to envelope me. That's why I write. Sometimes it's nice to have a reminder.

Celebrations: or THE GREAT LIST OF HAPPINESS!!!

Going out of town and being wicked ill can really put a damper on one's internet communications. I have encountered so many things to celebrate in the past couple weeks but there's just not enough time to expound on them all. Here is a list and maybe I'll expound on some of them later:

• Legs
• Lavender-colored finger nail polish
• The free samples that come with online Sephora orders
• Open mindedness 
• Charity
• Self forgiveness
• Being mostly likeable
• Letting myself by happy
• The changing of the seasons
• Emotional tenacity
• Sleep
• The power of believing in hope
• The combination of taste buds and a clear sinus passage
• My professor saying something I wrote was "so, so good" and knowing that she's right
• SISTERS!!!

I've encountered many more things recently that are worthy of celebration but I can't remember them right now. Stay tuned for more celebrations.

Celebration: Hair Grows!

Hm. This actually doesn't give a good angle on the CUTEST part. Maybe next time.

When I got bored one time I cut my hair. Or rather I got my hair cut. I like the woman that cut it, but I guess I didn't communicate well and, though still cute, I didn't get what I wanted. As it's been growing out I've touched it up a little and it is finally getting to a length and shape that I love! As my sister would say, WOOooWOO! (Or something like that.) It's amazing what a good hair style can do for your strut.

Celebration: Being Friends With Someone Appreciative

Out of all the regular, free museum-like locations in Washington, DC, the one I have probably been to the most is the United States Botanic Garden. (Or maybe the Natural History Museum, but let's just say it's the Botanic Garden for the sake of this story.) This weekend I had to go back to the gardens to do some research on Brazilian plants for a story I am writing and my friend Emily (see here and here) went with me.

 These topiary bears always remind me of the book The Children of Green Knowe

There is something about going to the Botanic Garden in the winter that borders on magical. You walk in from the cold and are nearly overwhelmed with warmth and the smell of thriving plant life and COLORS. This weekend they were doing a show on orchids so the entirety of the main corridor was brimming with them. It was like scented happiness.

And the Chinese dragon added some color too

The Botanic Garden is the sort of place that can reveal who your real friends are (okay, okay, that's a big exaggeration/made up story). So far I've managed to always go there with people who like it as much as I do. This is key because otherwise they wouldn't understand why I would get so excited about the fact that the garden sports a real live mandarin orange tree:

Or that they have trees that look like hippy hair:

(Only, it's really lusciously beautiful hippy hair.)

Or plants as adorable as this:

(Don't you want to take it home and keep it for your very own?)

   

Emily and I had a lot of fun. At least I did and I'm guessing that Emily did because who wouldn't, am I right? I'm glad that she appreciates the same sorts of things that I appreciate. Being so far away from most of my family, it's nice to have good friends. 

Celebration - Being Someone's VMIP

Jordan knows someone who gets really bothered by the idea that he might not be the most important person to anyone else. I've always thought it was a dangerous thing to worry so much about something like that, to put your sense of worth in someone else's hands (It doesn't mean that I don't do it; it just means that I think it's a bad idea). I thought, maybe we should settle for being one of the most important people to someone else.

This weekend, though, I had a sudden realization that I really am someone's Very Most Important Person (I'll give you one guess whose: he's pictured above--and he is mine too, but he doesn't like it when I make lovey-dovey overtures to him using public forums so I'm making this one all about me). I still think that everyone should try to see their own worth free from others' judgment and believe that they are worthy candidates for being someone else's most important person, but I also think it's a wonderful feeling to know that if you are in a crowded room and someone tells a really good joke, you will be the first person that a certain someone will look at to share the joke with every time.

Celebration - Jordan's Subconscious

I have a hard time falling asleep. Jordan doesn't. He could fall asleep in the middle of a rock concert if he didn't like the band. Sometimes Jordan can help me fall asleep by lulling me into drowsiness with his voice--he tells me about things like how much force is needed to propel a rocket into the air, or the particularly lovely features of his currently most coveted Jazzmaster guitar, or the difficulties of patenting certain types of intellectual property like the Google search engine.

The problem with the Talk-Rose-to-Sleep method is that 8 times out of 10 it puts Jordan to sleep first, often in the middle of a sentence. And when he starts to fall asleep he says crazy and nonsensical things that result in hilarity.

One time he was rubbing my aching back and telling me the different bones and muscles that make up my body. At one point he paused for a minute with his hand on my spine and said drowsily, "And they drilled two holes here to make room for more pickups." (That's guitar speak.)

This week Jordan was talking me to sleep by telling me about an episode of Law and Order that was about a case involving custody of a child. Jordan started to fall asleep and we got this gem of a sentence: "...they gave it to the father who was only concerned with the thickness and quality of her domestic debate."

I like these moments both because they make me laugh and because they reveal what's filling up Jordan's subconscious. They tell me something about him that he wouldn't quite be able to do himself.