Too much to do, too little time.

Sadly, I forgot about my blog after Spring Break. This is fairly normal behavior for me. When my brain gets overloaded with too many obligations, the small things that are probably the best for my mental health are the first to go - so, the blog went. It is that time in the semester where everything just seems to be piling up around me. The books, the papers, the appointments... they all just keep piling up until, finally, I am surrounded in a sky-scraping cubicle of stuff to do. I realize that the books will get read (or skimmed), the papers will get written, and the appointments aren't that important anyway... but right now, in this moment, I just feel overwhelmed.

Isn't is strange how the words of others can sometimes rattle around like a pebble inside of a coke can inside your mind. Words that create self-doubt, self-loathing, self-destruction. Erase those words, unless they are true? My mind is my worst enemy, spawning and entertaining thoughts that should just pass through without a moment of hesitation, but they don't. The thoughts linger and fester, creating more thoughts.

The ultimate separation

I'm feeling upset right now. Distant. Separated.

I do all that I can to move on and move past. And yet some ghosts just refuse to melt away into the darkness.

It's time like these I just want to run away. But this is real life. I think I forget that sometimes. I get so wrapped up in the fictive, the fake, and the imaginary that I miss where the lines of illusion end and reality begins.

Zero degrees of separation

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Lynn Bloom's Seven Deadly Virtues. I can relate to her as an aspiring academic, a mother, a wife, and a woman. While Bloom is writing from a much more experienced perspective that I have yet to attain on my own, I can take the wisdom that she offers me and run with it.

I know that I need to write more. Let me clarify. I need to write more for myself, about myself, and about the experiences that I have. All of the things that I think, I should write that down, but I don't. It's always when I'm washing my face, or showering, or driving, or standing somewhere with no pen or paper available to me. Sometimes I will scrawl random thoughts across my phone keyboard, never to be glanced at again. Or I will scribble it on a small piece of scratch paper - also, never to be found again. I feel like I need 40 journals to keep in all the places I might need one. One in my purse, one in my car, one in the shower, one next to the stove, one in the backyard... this would not be efficient.

When I sat down to start writing for my personal academic essay, I found myself THINKING and typing and editing... writing like I would for school. This is the problem that I find when typing on a keyboard, in a word document. When I write in a journal, in my own handwriting, it is as if I can feel the words traveling from my brain through my arm and down into my hand. It is natural. But sometimes the thoughts come too quickly and my hand cannot move fast enough. I miss things, elements that I could have recorded with my swift and nimble clicking fingertips against the keys. But it feels mechanistic. It feels like it must be perfected. It feels like it must be - academic. So, I must continue to write with my pen or train myself to write more openly on the keyboard.

This class is a challenge for me. I have mastered the ability to write academically. Give me a topic and I will research it and present you with a polished paper. I have not, however, mastered the ability to write personally. It is a goal of mine to become a better personal writer, a goal that I view as a difficult one. What stories do I tell? How will I know what to include? How do I present myself? I know that the readings we are experiencing are pointing us in the directions to these questions but it is all a learning process.

I agree with Bloom that writing and cooking are both "a messy mix of knowledge and improvisation, experience and innovation, and continual revision with a lot going on between the lines" (149).

Thus is life

I have my hands in too many mixing bowls. For me, this is quite common as I frequently bite off more than I can chew... perhaps only to prove that I can swallow and digest without much thought to chewing. If you put the obstacles and challenges in front of me, I will overcome them. This is what I believe and this is what I have proven, so far. What happens if I fail?

I have mastered the ability to be a student, in both an undergraduate and (hopefully) a masters program. But where do I go now? I feel defeated before I have even begun. I am becoming more comfortable with being a mother, although I question my choice in this matter daily. My son isn't a baby anymore, he's becoming a little child - a child that needs guidance and certainty. I know that I can give him love but I fear my ability to fulfill my role as a parent. I wasn't ready for this. I am still selfish. My mother tells me that parents always fly by the seat of their pants. But is this enough? I know I will fail. I know I will let him down. But I don't feel like I have any direction. Perhaps I should start by gaining some own direction of my own - make an effort. I am looking forward to becoming a wife but I fear my capabilities in this sphere, as well. Where am I in all of this?

Identity. Existence. All of these mysteries and complexities of life that we are each a part of every day.

Waiting for inspiration

I've been putting off clicking on the icon in my google taskbar - "blogger:dashboard." I was waiting for inspiration to come to me, inspiring me to write about something, rant about something, or just... something. Just nothing. I'm exhausted. There is nothing like a sick kiddo to make me realize how much I appreciate, adore, and absolutely LOVE sleeping. I need rest. So whatever comes out tonight, at 8:15 on Tuesday in this slight delirium, please forgive me.

I've been tossing around this concept of borderlands in my head lately. When I read about things enough in courses, think about them enough outside of these courses, and allow them to really seep into my life - they end up in my dreams. The concept of a borderlands - physical, mental, cultural, spiritual, sexual, etc. - intrigues me. I feel like I have live among these topics for my entire life.

My life is a borderlands. And not in the classical sense, if there can be one, or as I understand one. I am Anglo. I am feminine. I am Christian. I am married. I am an American. I am Hispanic - not by blood, by but immersion. I am masculine, in some senses of the word and its traits, although stereotypical - the same goes for feminine, I suppose. I am atheist. I am ashamed. I am free.

All of these things live within my simultaneously.

I feel as though I am living in a borderlands. And perhaps that is what your late 20s are... a borderlands. Between knowing yourself and understanding yourself. Accepting yourself. Forsaking yourself? We are given these roles. We do not choose each one. But we must take our lot in life and embrace it. I try, I falter, I am human.

It is strange when I sit down to question myself. I ask myself why I do the things that I do. I question how the voice inside my head at night speaks to me. That sounds insane. But a wise woman once told me that we should first consider how we speak to ourselves internally. Do we build ourselves up? Or tear ourselves down? Or allow ourselves to pursue selfish desires? It is in these moments alone with the complexities of my true mind that I am left with the answers to my questions. And I am somewhat frightened by the reality of them. Especially on paper. Write, woman, write.

Reflecting on nature, my long lost friend.

As I read through Thoreau and also through Annie Dillard, I began to reflect on my own experiences with nature - most of which occurred in my childhood. Here, in flat and monotonous Corpus Christi, there are no secluded forests or strange wildernesses to explore. I should not be so harsh, I know that we have the beach, the marshlands, the fields that seem to stretch on forever. But we have no trees, no forests, no places to wander and get lost within yourself.

Until I was 10 and my great grandmother passed away, my mother, older brother, myself, and sometimes my father would fly out to Chesapeake Bay, Virginia for a few weeks in June every other summer. This trips seemed to me like the norm of my childhood and I look back on these trips with deep affection. Many of the memories from these trips define my childhood, more so than the years spent living as a childhood in Corpus Christi. I do not recall ever having a deep connection with the beach, the waves, or the rolling dunes. I do remember my favorite thing to do on those warm June evenings was to gather my brother along with a pair of mason jars and trek out into the seeming-forest of pine trees behind my Grandma Riddick's house and catch as many lightning bugs as we could. We would each fill our jars with the bugs as they glowed past our heavy breaths, igniting and then fading into the deepening, darkening evening sky. When we had filled our jars with enough light to be content, we would head back inside to the smells of dinner simmering. We would place our jars on the bedside table that separated our twin size beds. The bugs would serve as our night light. They were always dead by morning, but we felt they had served their due purpose.

My brother and I, always with the help of our beloved Grandma Riddick, would clear walking pathways through the fallen pine needles, mow the front lawn on her riding lawn mower, collect sticks and branches for the traditional bonfire - complete with smores, feed the horses behind her property - across a small wooden bridge (maybe 3 feet long) that spanned a small creek bed; this image, of the bridge and the field beyond it, is one that is definitive within my mind, my imagination, I think of it often - we would run through the fields behind her house to her friends' house, they had at least 20 bird houses and would always let us ride their lawnmower around with a wagon attached to the back. We were always outdoors, always exploring, always roving. I think the reason these memories stand out to me so vividly, they are some of the most meaningful and vivid memories I have of my childhood, is because they involved my deep connection with nature. The freedom, creativity, and energy I found in nature had a profound impact on me as a child. I miss those days dearly.

Same address, renewed purpose

It turns out, I already had a blog through this website... that I forgot about in May of last year. Let 2011 be a more successful year for blogging. Perhaps this will be my new therapy. I am linking this blog through the Essay course I am enrolled in this semester and I am hoping that it will be an alternative way for me to write, with the help and convenience of technology.