Writing Is Hard! Argh!

There is something singularly terrifying about a blank sheet of paper (or, more relevantly a blank word doc) waiting to be filled up with clever words and brilliant ideas. It’s easy, at least for someone like me, to be totally overwhelmed every time I sit down to write. Seriously, it’s become a part of my writing process. I leave space in my brain for the inevitable freaking out and indecisiveness that I have to cycle through before I can write anything work keeping. It’s all very frustrating because I’m supposed to like writing and yet the actual process involves a lot of teeth gnashing and declarations of “I hate writing.” I’m sure many of you know the feeling: one thirty AM, trying to make a random medley of paragraphs fit together or trying to make two pesky sentences sound less clumsy. I wish writing was a simple activity with a single intended result. I like to know when I’m succeeding and when I’m failing.

My fear of writing has spawned some pretty bad habits, the worst of which is my procrastination. It makes it really hard to do a good job when I’m sitting down to write a four page paper the night before it’s due. Another of my bad writing habits is censoring myself as I write. If a word feels off or an idea seems half-baked or rings false, I simply can’t keep writing. I usually delete whatever I’ve written and leave myself some kind of reminder that I need to fill in whatever is missing. I am totally incapable of just letting go and writing without stopping. When I write I work on two or three paragraphs simultaneously, adding a sentence here, scrolling up to briefly outline an idea, typing out anything interesting I can think of to say. And I usually I find myself opening up Firefox every two or three sentences to check Facebook or my email or go in search for a better mix of writing songs, further interrupting the flow of my ideas. Between copy and pasting sentences and deleting chunks of words every couple minutes, everything seems to end up in a jumbled mess. Writing feels like a game of MadLibs—I’m always trying to fill in the blanks and hopefully achieve some kind of unity.

I probably think about writing more than most people do. I’ll share something a little personal to explain why. A couple years ago I decided that I wanted to get one fundamental thing out of my education: the ability to be a good writer. And as far as hobbies and passions go, I’ve always thought of myself as someone who loves and cares about writing as the most wonderful and important form of self-expression. I want to be able to win people’s hearts and minds with my words, there’s the embarrassing, icky truth. I want to be a great writer, and each time I sit down with a blank sheet of paper, I tell myself “this should be amazing.” It’s exhausting, but hopefully I can find a way to translate my ambition into actual, tangible productivity sometime soon.

Sometimes I Talk About My Hair

(in which I ramble about my hair, occasionally bordering on vanity but mostly just being trivial and silly)

Last summer, after months of contemplation, I finally took a leap and cut my hair short. This decision came to me one afternoon with great urgency. It sounds a little crazy, but I was overcome by such an intense need to change my appearance and remove the long strands of hair around my face and shoulders that I went into my bathroom, closed my eyes, and snipped a jagged line all around my face. Impulsiveness at its best. It looked absolutely awful, which I’d expected, but I managed to find an appointment at a salon the very next day and got it fixed. I wanted to look like Bob Dylan off the cover of Blonde on Blonde, but I ended up looking like myself, only slightly improved.

It was a good choice. Obviously I feel strongly enough about my hair to write a blog post about it. But I should clarify, my obsession with short hair is not just a cosmetic one, though I do find it extremely attractive on almost all humans. I have had hair below my shoulders for the majority of my life, so cutting it off seemed like a good change. No more would I be held back by my lackluster hair! I was a brand new woman! I was free and confident and prepared to face all my fears and achieve my dreams! Me and my haircut were kicking ass and taking names!

Just kidding.

At least, I am mostly kidding. I think changing my hair has afforded me a certain degree of confidence. I can’t imagine growing it out again—the very thought fills me with horror. For at least a year now I have been having these daydreams and sleeping dreams about chopping off all my hair. I’m sure Freud would have something to say about that, especially since this desire has only intensified since I actually cut it. I guess I’ve just come to associate short hair with personal progress, which is not really something I can explain so I’ll just have to write it off as a ridiculous impulse.

I’m thinking of cutting it again soon, actually, for practical reasons. I need to keep it off my neck and out of my face during soccer and I also need to get some more practice doing my own hair. The first time I cut my own hair was a disaster, but I’ve kept trying since I don’t have the funds to get it cut at a salon as often as I’d like and I keep getting these urges to cut it. Sometimes when I’m bored and restless, I make myself feel better by having adventures in hair cutting. There is nothing like the satisfaction of hearing that snip, and feeling a lock of hair fall away.

I could go on and on about this, but I think I’ve already run out of compelling things to say. In short (oh, a pun), short hair is awesome and feels really good on your head. I haven’t brushed my hair in months and it looks more or less normal. I urge everyone who is considering cutting their hair to give it a chance and see how lovely they feel. I think more girls out there should consider androgyny and stop wasting time combing and curling their long locks. Short hair is liberation!

A Confession of Messiness

Let me describe to you the unfortunate mess that is piled across my desk at this moment. On the far left is a shoebox of three dollar cosmetics and hairclips. Beside that, a clutter of half-full of water glasses and crusty-bottomed tea and coffee mugs. Two pencil cups crammed full of paintbrushes, pens, and colored pencils. There is also a rusty fork in there which sort of baffles me. Underneath that are scraps of paper with to-do lists and doodles and crumpled homework assignments, blank notecards, jewelry, my wallet, headphones, borrowed CDs, a book of Phillip Levine poems, and a thin layer of dust. I can’t remember the last time my desk was even remotely tidy, despite my valiant attempts to keep everything in order.

The rest of my room is in similar disarray. It has been like this for years, much to my mother’s chagrin. A couple years ago, when my brother left for college, I took over his room, which is signifigantly larger than my old one. But somehow my mess is always also proportionately slightly too large for the space I’ve been allotted. It’s not like I have a particularly large volume of possesions—my childhood obsession with collecting endless tchotchkes disappeared years ago and now I try to buy as little junk as possible (though I confess it is still sort of a struggle). It is just that everything seems to pile up and overflow; even things I haven’t used in months seem to surface on my bedroom floor and get in the way.

This has caused a certain amount of tension in my family. I remember getting in trouble for leaving messes around the house more than anything else when I was younger. There was a period when I was very young when I’d leave balled up socks around the house. I remember fighting with my parents almost daily about it, but for some reason refusing to change my habits. Later on I graduated to leaving half empty cans of flat fizzy water in my room, which frustrated my parents even more. I have no if I was simply unable to change or if a seven-year-old me was playing passive aggressive games. Despite being the world’s sullenest child, I have to suspect the former. Either way, at this point it is a steadfast habit; it is my way of life.

And it isn’t just the way I keep my room or locker. My everything is messy, my brain is messy—and I like it that way. My notebooks are always full of doodles and nonsensical scribbles. I keep my hair and clothes and social life in what I hope is a cheerful disarray. I don’t mind being a slob. I think other people who are forced to cohabit or share spaces with me mind a lot more than I ever will. I’d like to think that messy=free spirited, but I’m more and more convinced that messy just equals messy. But this also means that being messy doesn’t make me lazy or impolite or boorish, which is all I really want to convince people of. I guess it is just a bad habit.

Musing on The Institution

(Note: I realize this is a fairly long post, but I'd be really tickled if you guys took the time to read it since it is sort of relevant to our lives as students)

I have started to think that Uni is causing evil to my soul. Being here is also causing undeniable good and positive growth, but I’m cross and buried in homework right now so we can address that reality later. I have been having this thought, I need to be elsewhere, for a long time, born of the universal angsty angst of teenage existence and the sneaking suspicion that I’m being given the runaround in regard to my Future. I shall explain the feeling further. I can cite numerous conversations with fellow students in which we have mused together “what we are getting out of this? Why are we here? What is reality and what is a dream?” I wonder if I’m wasting my time at Uni trying to get good grades and achieve what I’m expected to achieve.

And here is the real question I asked myself tonight: when did doing what I like become a distraction? Sometimes I want to spend my time on other planes of existence than the cycle of school-home-study-sleep, rinse and repeat. I get it—feeling a little bit dreary and dull is nothing particularly special or worth publicly groaning about, especially at this time of year. But underneath the layers of slightly melodramatic complaints, there is some real contemplation which I’d like to think is valid and honest. Being at this school takes away a massive chunk of my free time and replaces it with—what, exactly? an unending stream of tests to pass, assignments to speed through, chunks of reading to skim? It isn’t too hard to get by with decent achievements here, but it means so more time commitment than it does actual interest or creativity.

Sometimes I feel dull at school, zombified, knowing that every fact or fragment of information goes in one ear and out the other. I make a good effort to sleep plenty, since I’m the type of person who handles being alive badly on less than 6 hours of sleep, but it never feels like enough. And I try hard to focus in class, but I’m spacey by nature, and the moment I start to think that understanding or remembering these words is only appealing to me so I can pass an exam and get an acceptable grade so that I can succeed in the way the Uni High has defined success, I get a little queasy. There have been moments—many in fact; they happen daily—when I’m sitting in class realizing that I’m actually being inspired in some legitimate fashion, that I’m doing something I find important and indispensible. But mostly that is not the case. Mostly I’m bored and half-asleep or dreaming.

I’m thinking about all this, and I’m also thinking about the stress associated. Even if those first paragraphs were totally useless to you, I’m sure that word stress makes good sense. I’ve tried many times to divorce myself from the anxieties of school and tests—I know that my value as a human being should not be informed by the grades I get—but it is sort of inescapable. Do you guys ever have dreams that you have a paper due the next day that you forgot to write and you are trapped in a room with a 15 page long math exam and you lost your calculator and if you don’t finish in time a giant spider will burst through the wall and devour your family? I hate that my subconscious is so afraid of school. And I’m sort of tired of hearing about how everyone is going to fail every test they get how it is going to ruin their life because really everyone could just calm down a little and get some perspective.

But these are just my two cents, at this particular moment in life. I don’t mean to apologize anything I’ve said, because I believe it all, but I would like to remind anyone who finds my irritation excessive that I do in fact, possess a grain of affection or two for Uni High. But the system is flawed, and sometimes I wish I had the time to be more than a student, or that the general consensus on success was a little less grade oriented. I wish that being interested in learning about the world was more virtuous than being interested in cramming three hours the night before an exam. I wish there was something more interesting for me to be interested in. But I’ll be out of here soon enough and maybe time and distance will allow me more sentimental appreciation for the place.

Dudes I love The National

I turned on the TV at 2am last night to catch the tail-end of The National playing Austin City Limits. If asked to describe their music--beyond the cursory genre categorization “indie rock”--I think the word that comes to mind is “depressive”. Lead singer Matt Berninger’s stage presence conveys discomfort, even anguish, as he hunches over the microphone, gazing at the floor. They introduce the next song “About Today” off the 2004 EP, Cherry Tree, by advising the audience that this would be a good time to cry. Their music seems invariably dark at times, as if their inspiration is only born of experiencing loneliness and anxiety. They are solemn and awkward, not here to party.

If we are friends then I have probably mentioned to you that The National is one of my very favorite bands. Yet I feel irresponsible saying that the music I love is defined exclusively by sadness, or that I buy into a romanticized vision of depression, because those things are not true. They make beautiful music and that is the why I choose to listen. The last song on the set is followed by an interview with Matt Berninger and another band member, where they addressed their reputation as being a “depressed group of guys”. They talked about the fun and catharsis of writing songs about sadness, about how deeply satisfying it feels. And I agree—there is something entirely excellent about acknowledging and expressing sadness. I have always thought that the discomfort and fear in their music does not eclipse the possibility for poetic expression and wholeness. I guess what I mean is, not everything that talks about sadness is here to make us sad. It can be comforting too.

My most vivid memory of last summer is this: sitting on a train in Germany, insanely jetlagged, watching the forests and countryside roll by, listening to the album Boxer on endless repeat. I love everything they do, but this album has always been my favorite. It has a more acoustic sound than their most recent album, High Violet, and Matt Berninger’s deep voice resonates fantastically. It is slow, quiet music, but at the same time tense and high strung—perfect music for being far from home. It is hard me to describe what about Boxer appeals to me so deeply. I’ve never tried since I’ve always enjoyed my music tastes without question. Boxer makes sense to me. I guess it is equal parts appreciation of their art and relief at seeing a group of people who are not always comfortable and satisfied being terribly human for a living.

I spent more time than I should have staying up late and going for walks that summer, and I was never without my ipod. Sometimes I wasn’t in the mood for it, but mostly The National was exactly what I needed, so I was happy surprised to stumble on their familiar music in that moment of latenight solitude. The television sang, on low volume, "it takes an ocean not to break" over and over again, panning across a rapt audience.