Tea-drunk and Writing

Guys, I am sleepy and tea-drunk. Originally, I was going to post some thoughts on writing and they were going to be good and clever, but then I drank too much tea. Now my head is all warm and fuzzy, and all I can think about is how I wish I had been closer to certain people when I was in college. I wish I could Facebook chat them and find out how they're doing without it seeming weird as hell. Tea-drunk is not close enough to real drunk for me to feel confident in my ability to say, "Hi! What's been ups?" without feeling like a creepy stalker who shouldn't still be trying to be friends with people I only had 2 classes with.

Drinking too much tea, or maybe thinking too much, has also given me the sort of stomach ache you get when you're anticipating something. My brain receives these "I-drank-too-much-tea" signals and interprets them as "oh God oh God I'm so nervous right now!" Sometimes bodies are incredibly stupid. Mine in particular.

Here are my thoughts on writing that I drafted half an hour ago. There is a dramatic shift in tone between these two blog sections. During this second part, I'm sober:

First of all, let me start off by saying this: I don't know shit about writing. Really. I try to and the more I read and listen the more I learn; college and workshopping and everything like that, it all helps. But when I sit and put pencil to paper, everything I've learned about process and craft works together in unconscious ways that I don't pay attention to. It's a bit like driving. You don't always pay attention when you're doing it, but you make it home safe from work every day.


Sometimes something that I love comes out of it, and other times it is absolutely awful and I look at my notebook or my computer screen and sigh and tell myself that this is why I need to find a real job. But I do love writing. When I start working on something it's what I imagine being addicted to drugs is like. It's all I think about, it's what I breathe, I try to get away from everyone at work at lunch time so I can sit in a corner and script dialogue that I wont ever use because it makes me feel something.  When people come near me I snap at them and am basically really rude and awful, but it doesn't matter because I need the words to be on the page more than I need people to like me (this is not very nice, but it is true. The fact that it's true really lends itself back to the drug metaphor well, because when I'm not writing I am a very dependent person. When I'm doing it, it changes me.)

God, that was so much more coherent than this. All this writing talk started because I've been feeling really inspired lately, and I believe it's because of all the good writing I've been steeped in. Sometimes reading or listening to writing that's better than yours is discouraging. That used to be how I felt all the time. I'd write stuff and I'd be like, "Ugh, this is nowhere near as good as Shakespeare!" and then crumple it up and start over. But I'm at a place right now where good writing (Adverbs by Daniel Handler {again}, Sherlock {yes, that fucking TV show again}, Adventure Time {the comic by Ryan North and the TV show}, Travels With Myself and Another by Martha Gelhorn, everything by Frank O'Hara, and the collected works of Paul Verlaine {in both English and French}) is just pushing me. The more I listen and read, the more I want to create and do. Tonight it's all sort of jumbled up in my head and I can't really manage to get any of my own work done because I keep Googling poems by Frank O'Hara and Paul Verlaine. Seriously, everyone else: stop being so fucking amazing. You are driving me to drink. Too much tea.

XOX

(Click the pic to check out its source. Should be your go to for AT screen-cap needs.)

ALL THE FEELS!

Guys, this is going to be a post about feelings. I'm sorry. I know it's lame, but I'm working through some stuff right now, and it might help to write it all down and my notebook is in my purse and my purse is on the other side of the bed and the bed is a queen and there is a full human lying between me and the purse side of the bed! This is a post about growing up and change. If those topics don't interest you here is a picture of Chris Hemsworth without his shirt on:

  

And for the gentlemen, here is Scarlett Johansson and her boobs and an explosion(!):

You're welcome. I can't wait for The Avengers. NOW, onto my feels:

I graduated from college nearly a year ago, almost 11 months to the day, and it was great. It is great. Getting paid for working hard, having all your time to yourself, never having homework, all of it is fantastic. But after a bit, I guess about 6 months in, all of that stuff didn't seem so great anymore and I started to miss school. Not just college, but school. For 18 years of my 22.5 years, I have been spending a majority of my year, every year, in school. 80% (really about 40% considering we got half a year off every year) of my life I have been being taught things. Which is really wonderful, if you think about it. Think about how much smarter I got; it's probably why I feel so fucking smug and know-it-all-ish all the time now (or because I am a bit arrogant about my knowledge, maybe both.) But honestly it's great and it is so easy. It doesn't seem easy when you're there, but if you take the socialization part out of education, really all you're being asked to do is learn things. Like, "hey man, here's something you should probably know." and then it's taught to you. What? That's the best! And then there's the socialization part, which over time evolves from "you should share" to "you shouldn't say mean things about other people" to "just because someone says something nice to you and shares with you doesn't necessarily make them a good person, or someone you should want to have sex with" and you learn all of these things, either through experience and the experiences of the people around you. Socialization is, I think the trickier part of education, but its not so bad and its not half as bad as what comes next which is... you graduate.

You graduate and now you have to apply all the things that you spent 80% of your life (40% knowledge, 40% socialization -or wisdom, if you're playing D&D) learning to real things. Real fucking things, like paying your taxes, finding a job, buying groceries. None of this is hard. But no one is there to teach it to you anymore. The world, at this point, sort of assumes that you know how to handle being out in the world. It educated you and the rest is on you now. And there are still people you can ask for help from, and there are and should be people you still look up to. But as you grow up you realize that these people have their own lives too, and while you are asking them to help you figure out how to do your taxes, they are actually trying to figure out how to do their own taxes. Sometimes this is good and you can work together on it. Sometimes it isn't and you have to go different ways because you realize that doing your taxes is just something you have to figure out on your own. Maybe the person you went to for help doesn't look for deductions the same way you do. And then you realize that you can't talk to them about taxes; they don't understand your taxes! And then you feel alone. You aren't, but you feel it in a real meaningful way. The people who used to understand you are gone or far away now. Everything shifted around you and you saw it happening but didn't quite realize what it meant until later. You accepted the change, embraced it even, because you knew it was what was supposed to happen. Now sitting here with your taxes spread around you like so much documented chaos you realize: this is the result of change. It is horrible, and I am so lonely. I miss a place that doesn't exist anymore, and people who probably already don't remember me. There's no going back, and progress comes in waves. Finding a job, going to see the world, buying a new computer, moving forward, moving on... it takes time. It's not like moving on to the next grade, or changing your major. It's not instantaneous. You're in flux. For 6 months, I've been in flux. A place where you know change is happening, but you don't know what the world is doing, or why, or where you'll end up. Kind of like editing in photoshop. Applying a fake moustache pixel by pixel, hoping that when you zoom out after 20 minutes of color matching it looks right. If loneliness is the first result of change that you notice, then realizing that you aren't alone might be the beginning of finding stability again.

I'm curled up in bed with my boyfriend right now (eww T.M.I, amirite?!) I still feel sort of alone, but not so much as I did a few days ago. And going to the Fountains of Wayne concert with a new, but already very close, friend was what first brought me to the conclusion that I'm finding very comforting now: Change is painful, but when you can finally glimpse where all of your change has brought you, when you can finally see a new place to fit yourself into, you start to understand why you had to go through it all in the first place. I imagine what some people see when they first look at where their change has brought them is probably pretty scary, and not at all what they wanted. Maybe that means you just aren't done yet. Back into the swirling space time vortex that is being pushed and pulled by your decisions and the decisions of the people you care about. Change never really stops, but graduating from college is a time where your life is changing, compounded with lives of all the people you care about changing too. Everyone just swirls about like the TARDIS in the opening of Doctor Who, and we ping off each other and rocket all which-ways. It's uncomfortable and scary. But it just is. And really, it is okay. We'll all figure out where we fit eventually. And there are always people who will be there when you need them to be.

XOX