Annoying Teenagers

From unsplash, By Danka Peter

I know I've only worked at a high school full time for five months, so I'm no authority on teens, but recently I've noticed something about high school students I don't like. It could be I'd forgotten this or was too young to recognize it before but teenagers are annoying. Ignorant machines made in a factory somewhere with the specific purpose of making noises, sounds, movements, and displaying behaviors that grate on my patience.

I guess this is God's way of preparing me for children or perhaps payback for putting my parents through this for most of a decade, teaching teens is one of the most fun but most irritating jobs I've ever had. If I had to pick any age children to work with, I wouldn't change my mind for the world. As cute as the elementary kids are, they are too little for me. It is those students who are on the verge of being adults, who are standing on the edge of possibility and shouting into its face to "Remember me!" These are the people who light up the most when you help clear the fog in their heads about which way to tackle the mountain before them.

They may get on my nerves, and I am sure I get on theirs, but I wouldn't trade those arrogant naive fearless children for anything. They remind me that this part of me is still alive and is worthy of my attention, even if only every other month.

Two thousand thirteen

I first started to compose this post while I was in the shower. And like all my post that I start else where, only half of it remains now that I am able to type it out. It's very near the end of 2013, a year that seemed for the first time in a long time to take its full chronology to pass. Maybe it's my romance with nostalgia or all the Best Of post I've been reading on Buzzfeed, but this year seemed especially full. I wouldn't cheapen it by trying to say nothing important happened this year. I changed careers, became  certified teacher (in two content areas), say goodbye to some very good friends, said hello to others. I fulfilled a life long ambition to travel the world and returned home not so much whole as overwhelmed, full and more determined to achieve those "Before I turn 35" goals I wrote down so long ago.

I grew spiritually, something I don't talk a lot about because I want it to be evident not by my words but by my actions. I lead a small group at my church and out of all the teachery things I do, I think this one has never made me more happy and closer to God. Every time we meet, I am glad and excited I woke up and came to small group. Something else I fully embraced this year was drinking. I wouldn't have called myself a drinker before this year. Someone who enjoyed a drink every know and again, or did actually drink, yes, but not a drinker per se. I accepted that part of me and what I thought I would feel (shame, disappointment) wasn't actually what I felt. Relief was the first, strongest emotion, followed by happiness and boldness. I was glad to identify as one of those people who frequents a bar enough to know the staff by name and have a "regular" drink. I felt a settling deep inside me like my foundation, the very core of who I am, was being set. It felt great and only helped to make me feel like I am becoming who I should be.

I've never been a person who wanted a do-over in life. Mostly because I believe in learning from life and moving on but also because I don't like to live in the past. Looking back too much can stop you from living your future or even more dangerous, not living in the present. If I had the opportunity to life this year over again, I don't think I would change any decisions I made. I might have stayed in London an extra day, I might have taken that extra road trip to Austin or Oklahoma, but for the most part I would have lived life the same.

I thank God for giving me such an amazing year. It was fantastic and you know what? So was I.  

Very Early Morning To You

After having a very nice lunch with my friend Pearlie, recording a new episode of Gramblings with Mattie & Lewis, and creating a metric ton of inside jokes at Karla's going away shindig, I came home to edit audio and get a nights rest. It is currently 4:24 AM and I have yet to be asleep or really be tired. I'm unsure if  it is the excitement of starting a new job tomorrow, the joy and sorrow of being creative again and bidding farewell to a friend, or just the allure of the internet to keep me from my bed. Here I am writing, what I am sure is nonsense, at half past four in the morning.

Why am I writing? Mostly because I haven't in months. I could say I have been busy, which would be an honest excuse, but mostly because I didn't feel like expressing my feelings from this side of a keyboard. For the first time in a number of years, I didn't have to write a paper or critique or lesson plan or anything. And so I didn't. I traveled, read books, watch TV, saw movies. Talked with people, face to face. I met people from other countries. I ate food I've never had. I shared insights and gained knowledge and lived.

I wouldn't say I wasn't living life before this summer. It was a different type of living, the kind that wears you down, breaks you of your weaknesses and makes you strong because you refuse to give in or give up. For the past two months, I've been living the type of life that fills ever cell of your body with a radiance so bright and full, it won't stay inside you. People notice it on your face, in your speech, in your walk. I've loved every moment of it and hope the rest of this year and the next are very much like it.

I went to the UK in the past two months, you can read about that here.

Won't do for myself

I feel like I never write any more. My thoughts are cluttered in one small space in my head, fading away to nothingness because I don't give them a voice. My musings, atrophied and weak, stop demanding my attention after awhile and the writing I want to do never happens.

I do write, everyday usually. These words are academic and sterile, explaining the learning process or how to teach children a better way to remember vocabulary words. These words have perpetual shotgun in my brain, always feed first, always written down. They aren't inspiring or beautiful or even pretty but they are what my words are sacrificed for.

Of Gingers & Restlessness

My sleep was fairly restless last night. I wasn't particularly tired but as morning comes and so does work, night is for sleeping. So I laid down and dreamt about a man I've never met. Honestly, will never meet if truth be told. I was on a trip to England, a study abroad trip. I was in a pub by myself having a drink. I saw him walk in, a tall thin man with brilliantly red hair and so much arrogance I swear I could smell it on him. I caught his gaze as he strolled pass my table. He winked at me. I ignored him. I was in a fowl mood and sulking, about what I can't remember.

I finished my drink and stood to leave. As I turned, I found him standing in my way, his hands in his coat pockets. I found this odd, an Englishman who didn't take off his coat when he came in a building. I excused my way around him, he called out something about needing the code to my door. I didn't know what he was talking about so I kept walking. He followed me out. For some reason this didn't affect the way I thought it would. I wasn't afraid of him so much as I irritated by him. I didn't want to be bothered.

He chatted at me as I walked. Sometime I would look at him and that was all the encouragement he needed. He would talk more, make sly comments about 'Us' like we were an item. As if somehow I'd forgotten we were a couple. Thought I wasn't afraid of this man, I knew better then to walk to my place so I just walked around well lit areas hoping he wouldn't notice I wasn't going in any particular direction. After walking for an hour, he finally asked when we could stop walking and actually go to my flat. I noticed in all his chatting he's not English but Scottish.

The dream then cuts to a rather compromising scene of the two of us together, our limbs intertwined, our skin in sharp contrast against one another. The dream then cuts again, to a tan girl, her face freckled, her hair a wild nest of red curls. This girl is obviously our daughter, her face very similar to mine, her eyes and height belonging to her father. She stands on a hill looking into the distance. What she is looking at I do not know nor can I see it.

This is the entirety of my dream, it's ending sharp and sudden. Perhaps this is how all dreams are supposed to end. It's finale a rushing crash of consciousness.

Just the wrong side of comfortable

Last night I had an adventure. Who has adventures on a Monday night you ask. Me, that's who. It was not the kind I prefer, like how an unplanned happy hour with friends after work rolls into VIP backstage passes at an exclusive concert that then ends in a sunrise breakfast at the singer's penthouse suite. This adventure was born of tragedy and familial duty.

My uncle is in a hospital with a tight, one handed grasp on life. He's very, very slowly recovering from a fire that about a week ago claimed all of his and his late mother's belongings. My mother, the ever faithful sister and daughter, drove to Little Rock to see about him, sign any papers that need signing, and just be there for her one and only brother. My dad rode with her to Little Rock at the end of last week. They rented a car to do this. That would prove problematic when my dad came home Sunday night on the Greyhound and the rental car needing to be back by Tuesday afternoon. And this is how my Monday evening became an adventurous one.

My mom called and asked me to pick up her prescriptions because my dad was going to meet her in Texarkana to trade cars. I told her I would pick them up. She then asked for some other things, clothes, facial cream, etc. I could tell she wasn't really paying attention, she kept repeating things and her voice sounded distant like she was trying to remember how to live everyday life. It made my heart sink and the anxiety I've been stuffing down since last week rise up and threaten to steal my voice. I knew I couldn't let it do that, for her sake. I knew if I lost it, she might too. I took a deep breath and reassured her I would get everything she needed.

Ninety minutes later, my dad and I, clothes and meds in tow, on an otherwise ordinary Monday night, headed out into the darkness to have an adventure. I drove first, as I was already awake but my day was wearing on me and I knew if I slept I wouldn't want to drive later. The drive there was pretty good. My mom's car is new, like less then six months new and fully loaded. As my dad slept, I let the 80s on 8 XM station take me to my childhood over and over again with songs I, surprisingly, remembered most of the words to. Sleep hit me pretty hard about thirty miles from State Line Ave, our exit that would take us to the agreed upon meeting place, and I started to dance to the music to stay awake. I also started to think about all of the road trips I'd taken over the years.

My dad started to wake and I remarked to him how it always seemed to be me and him in cars on trips. He drove me to my college orientation at Texas Tech way back when I was freshman in college. The two of us drove to Chicago to christen my brand new subcompact car when I was in film school. We talked about that car, the Silver Bullet, and how I put all but 300 of the 154,000 miles it lived to gain. We also talked about it's tragic death, by broken timing belt, and how if I'd gotten it changed at 150,000 miles like I was supposed to I would probably still be driving it. We talk about the road trip vacation we took to Virginia to visit my kamp friends, and the drive home from Cleveland one summer after a family reunion, and the many, many trips to my Grandmother's house my mom and I took the year before she passed away.  I thought a lot about the time we have spent in cars and on the road and how I never once regretted a single minute of it.

We did start a little late and had to stop for food so we were pressed for time but my mom's new car is a turbo, and I was driving so w e made to Texarkana with  minutes  to spare . My mom got lost getting to the redevue, which irritated my dad but I understood. I knew she was not thinking straight, she's a worrier, like her mother. We exchanged hugs and made sure all the stuff I'd brought was what she need. My cousin, my uncle's only daughter rode with my mom so she and I chatted about brothers and Georges in our family. My grandfather's name was George, my uncle's name is George, her brother's name is George, and my brother's name is George. They are all interesting characters and have done a thing or three that has made us frustrated with them. My parents chatted about work, medical bills, and wether or not to seek cautionary legal advice.

We said our reluctant goodbyes, got in each other's car and started back to our destinations. My mom and cousin immediately started to Little Rock. I curled up in the front seat and nodded off. My dad took fifteen minutes to figure out the car, what all the button did, how to work the radio, how to pair the phone to the car for hands free calls, and how to charge his phone before starting back home.

I spent the next three hours semi-conscience, Nancy Wilson, Whitney Houston, and Patti Labelle lulling me back  to sleep after each bump in the road nudged me far enough away from sleep for me to be aware that the car we rode in was just on the wrong side of comfortable. One bump woke me to a phone call my parents were having about my uncle and how because all his papers had been destroyed, it was hard to know who to call for what and what bills needed to be paid. Another jarring brought me to a parking lot and my dad hurriedly exiting the car, muttering something about a bathroom. I noticed the tightening and dull ache in my back and decided I would probably never buy this car given the choice.

Soon enough after an interesting stop to fill up on gas, in which my dad pressed all the buttons and pulled all the levers in the car to try to open the gas flap, I felt the familiar backing into our driveway that meant we had make it. Though it didn't end with an introduction to a celebrity I've been wanting to meet since childhood, our adventure ended without event. I crawled into bed hoping the next three hours would feel like eight.

There is a 5-hour energy staring me down on my desk, wondering why I have not taken it yet.

My brain is wondering why I didn't buy two when I had the chance.

I wanted to love him

He wasn't much to look at. At least I told myself that the first time he walked away from me wearing that grin.  Just a brown skinned tallish man of almost forty who needed a haircut. He was too thin like he was used to not eating. Which wasn't true. I later found out he ate a great deal but never the kinds of foods I imagined an almost forty skinny man would eat.

His name is Charlies and the first time we met, he said I stole his heart. It was at a grocery store one late Thursday evening. I had gone to see a movie after work and then to drinks with some friends. The movie was forgettable, the drinks not so much. It was summer and every night during summer is a reason to sit on a random patio and chase a few beers with stories of 'that one time we' and 'remember when's. Our laughter spilled over the worn wooden boards of the patio and on to the street, passers by finding themselves smiling as they walked on. I would have stayed on that patio until the bar closed but I promised a friend I would make her cookies. I said good bye three times before I actually left, the joy of the evening evident in the smile that wouldn't leave my face.

Though I was sleepy, I wasn't in a hurry to find my bed so I drove to the all night market in the nice part of town and strolled down the isles. I thought of summer barbecues long past as I absently dropped items into my basket. I remembered wanting to make fried pickles and wandered to the isle which held the neatly stacked jars. It was in this isle that I first spotted him.

He was reading an ingredient label so intently he didn't notice I said excuse me. I wanted the customary few moments before again saying, this time with feeling, "Excuse me." He jumped a little and looked at me puzzled, like he'd forgotten where he was. I reached for a jar of pickles on the shelf in front of him and smiled slightly. He returned the smile and apologized for being in my way. I shook my head and said, " You have nothing to apologize for. That label must be very well written."

He laughed and said something about how it could use an editor. I smiled and turned to go. "Do you like that brand best?" I heard him call out. I turned and now he a jar in each hand, a look of sincerity on his face. His light blue button down shirt had wilted in the heat, the crispness of the starch gone. His pants were in better shape, still creased but out of place atop of rubber flip flops. He closed the small gap between us and as I spoke, I could smell leather and old spice.

"I like this brand just fine. It's perfectly average." A small grin grew on his face at my answer. He relaxed a little and I noticed that the frame around his green eyes were bent.

"I guess if you are buying pickles from this place, you can't expect more than average," his reply tinged with disappointment. He placed both the jars back on the shelf and turned back to me. "What are you going to make with those average pickles anyway?" I started to walk toward the front of the store and he followed.

"I'm going to make fried pickles. It's the best way to transform anything average into fantastic," I said noticing how comfortable I was talking to this stranger.

"You are a wise woman," he replied and I thanked him. We talked all the way to the cash register and after I checked out, he offered to walk me to my car. I told him I couldn't let him do that, I would make it too easy for this van of kidnappers to spot me. He laughed and said he only kidnaps people on weekends. Our conversation ebbed and flowed as walked to my car. I was vaguely aware of time passing but wasn't sure in which direction.

After minutes or hours or days of talking in the almost vacant parking lot, he asked if we could maybe talk again in a different setting, some place that had already prepared food. I replied I would enjoy talking in a quiet booth in a dimly lit restaurant where live jazz peppered the air. He asked if Jane Austin was a friend of mine, an old one I answered.

I give him my number and he left me with a happy smile and promises of frequent calls to reassure himself that I was not a figment of his imagination.

I wanted to love him.

The true cost of Bags Flying Free

Every year for the Fourth of July, I go to Chicago to visit family. Also around this time is my cousin's neighborhood famous birthday party. Celebrated with ridiculous amounts of food, friends and fun this is an event I greatly anticipate attending. I mean who wouldn't like a party with tons of home cooked food and a corner fireworks show that could at many moment light someone on fire?

This year, the weekend prior to the Fourth was also my family's reunion in Minneapolis. This was the first time in decades I had been to this family's (my father's mother's side of the family) reunion and my first trip to Minnesota. I'd planned to fly into Chicago the day before the reunion and drive to Minneapolis for the weekend. This solved the problems of a) having a car, as we would rent it in Chicago and have it for the length of our trip and b) being able to afford to fly to Minneapolis (as the air fare was twice the cost of flying into Chicago).  But everyone knows about best laid plans – rarely do they usually don't go according to, well, plan.

The night I left Dallas, June 29th, there was a freak thunderstorm in Chicago and it knocked out the power at both airports, Midway and O'Hare. My plane was diverted to quite possibly the worse airport it could have been diverted to, Nashville, TN. What's wrong with Nashville, you ask? It's an airport in a small market. All the flights out of the city were already sold out before I was stranded there. So me and 300 other people were trying to get to Chicago on eight flights already sold out.

Remember my great plan to drive to Minneapolis from Chicago? Now, not happening. I'm not used to being stuck anywhere without a backup plan, blame girl scouts or too many crime shows but being prepared is important to me. This was the first time is years I had a problem I didn't have a solution to. I felt helpless and forgotten and the airline I was flying, Southwest, did little to help me feel otherwise. Here's the letter I composed to sent to their Customer Service department. I tried to find an email address associated with an actual human being who would read it in a timely matter and respond but apparently company email addresses are a trade secret at Southwest Airlines.

So here, for the internet to read, is my letter of disappointment. I won't say I'll never fly Southwest again but I can tell you my bags flying "free" will no longer be a reason I go to them first.

Dear Teresa Laraba, SVP of Customer Service, 

As the Senior Vice President of customer service and a person who is very proud to work for a company known the world over for its customer service, I would like to inform you of the trip I took Thursday June 29th.

I left Dallas at 8:30 pm on my way to Chicago, IL. I am sure you are aware of the Wright Amendment preventing Southwest from flying directly out of Love Field into Chicago's Midway airport. This meant my plane into Chicago had to come from Houston's Hobby airport. My flight left Houston around 10pm and once it was in the air, a severe thunderstorm in Downtown Chicago causes Midway (and O'Hare) airports to shutdown. This caused all incoming flights to this airport to be diverted. The flight I was on was diverted to Nashville, TN. Before the plane was unloaded, we were told that all the flights for the next day were already sold out and that the line we needed to stand in to talk to a Southwest representative  already had 300 people in it.

After waiting in this line for two hours, I was told by the gate agent the only way I could fly out of the airport was to fly standby and I was not guaranteed a seat on a flight to Chicago until Saturday evening. I was also told I could not stay in the terminal over night as the airport was closing. I asked where I was supposed to go for the night, and the gate agent shrugged her shoulders. By this time it was 3:30 in the morning. I was tired, as I had worked all day, and extremely frustrated to be in a city where I knew no one, had no way of leaving and was apparently going to be until Saturday night.

Because I had no place to sleep that night, I stayed up and waited in the ticket counter line so I could speak to someone as soon as the counter opened. I should mentions one of the reasons I chose to fly instead of drive from Dallas to Chicago was because of time. I needed to be in Chicago before 8:00 am Friday, June 30th but had to be at work on Thursday, June 29th. If my schedule was not time sensitive, I would have driven to my destination. Now, because my flight had been diverted, do to an event no one could have prevented or predicted, I missed my deadline. 

When the counter opened at 4:30am I spoke with an associate and asked her if she could put me on standby to any flight going to Minneapolis, MN. She refused to do this, and told me Southwest is only contractually obligated to get me to Chicago. I told her I needed to be in Chicago June 30th by 8:00am and since that was an impossibility because of the storm, now what I needed was to be in Minneapolis as soon as possible. She told me the reason I missed my window was not the fault of Southwest and that Southwest only had to get me to Chicago, the earliest time available was a 9:55pm flight Friday, June 30th, evening and there was a possibility that I might get a seat on that flight.  

I told the associate I was aware of the fact that no one asked for the storm nor was I blaming or trying to hold Southwest at fault for this event but want I needed as a customer was to be in Minneapolis, not Chicago, tonight. She told me I didn't understand, that Southwest wasn't responsible for getting me to anyplace but Chicago. I asked her if she would please speak to a manager about this issue as I was told something different by the gate agent the evening before. She did ask her manager and once again told me I didn't understand, that Southwest was only obligated to get me to Chicago. 

This was when I walked away from the ticket counter as the associate didn't seem to understand my needs as a customer. It was 5:00am Friday morning at the time and I had been up for twenty four hours, I had been stranded in an airport that I was incapable of leaving for probably two days, I was offered no hotel or rest area to stay in until I could arrange for alternative travel and most disappointingly, my problem was not seen as important enough for someone to help me find another solution to my problem. Thought the storm inconvenienced a large number of people, all I wanted was some service and to know I mattered as a customer. This Is not how I felt at any point in time that I was stranded at the Nashville airport.

In order to get to my destination, I had to find alternative means (renting a car and driving) which caused me to incur an additional cost of $202. This made me rethink my decision to fly with Southwest knowing that if I had taken American Airlines, Delta, or United, not only would I have had been put in a hotel over night, I would have had a seat on another plane, what another airline if necessary, the next day. I am also aware that this type of customer service would have given to me at no additional cost.

After the poor handling of this situation, I can not say that Southwest will be an airline I do business with for quite sometime. You have lost my trust as a company that can fulfill its promises on service agreements. I know this was an event no one expected but the handling of this situation was extremely disappointing and frankly not worth the $60 in additional baggage fees I "saved" by flying SW.

Sorely disappointed,

Sydnie Montgomery

Dreaming A little Dream

*Sorry I didn't edit it before. I was in a rush but that isn't really an excuse. Here, version two. I think it's a bit better. Also, I must tell you about my night watching the hipster and the homeless in the social tango of friday nights in Dallas.

The fire red sky peeks through my blinds, teasing me awake. My eyes, forever obedient to the light and not my brain slowly open to a dimly lit room filled with grey shapes tinted in faded greens and blues. I turn to glance at my clock, worried I'd over slept and it's green eyes whisper, "It's three oh eight, sleep child, sleep." My rushing heart calms and I turn back to the soft mountain of pillows that makes up my headboard.

I wonder if the special ops people in my dream got out of the building before the missiles blew up the floors we were on. As I slip back into oblivion, the panic I felt in the dream becomes thick and oppressive. I feel a need to rush but I'm not sure what I should be rushing to. I see people in front of me surrounded by mountains of broken armor and debris. They are talking but it's hard to make out what the subject is. They don't seem to notice me. This makes me wonder if I have some kind of optical camo or if I'm just not worthy of their attention. I notice how this is the case in most of my dreams. They madly kick and rake the piles with their hands looking for something. I walk past them and one of them mumbles something about survivors and loose ends. I make my way out of the room, which is so large the scale frightens me. It would appear the room was full of people before it was full of unwanted remains.

I walk down a flight of stairs wide enough to drive a vehicle down and find a team of people who are familiar to me. They seem to know me more than I know them. They ask if I am okay, I assure them I am fine, one man in particular seems concerned with my well being. He is rather striking with intese grey eyes and a chin that last saw a razor a few days ago. He looks tired and holds my gaze longer than what's comfortable. No one says anything for a heartbeat before he suddenly starts barking orders to the small team. Team is almost a stretch as there are only five of us. I have a feeling that recently our team was much larger. The three other people rush to obey and I am left with the man with the commanding eyes. He says nothing to me but we look at one another, our eyes unable to look away from each other. Nostalgia rises in my chest as he steps closer and I know I meant something to this man. I look at his face and his eyes are red around the edges, recent tears hiding in his crow's feet. I open my mouth to say something but one of the team returns. They are talking but I can't understand what they are saying. Someone is playing the piano. The rest of the team returns quickly as the music gets louder. I start to feel like someone is pulling me from another dimension. At least, I imagine this is what it feels like to be pulled from another dimension.

The room starts to fade from around me. The team doesn't seem worried and neither do I. The music is getting louder as the room vanishes and again my eyes slowly open to a loud rumble from the other side of the window. The melancholy piano beckons me to awake and I reach for my third hand, alarm clock and general life device, my phone. I silence it into letting me dream for fifteen more minutes and caress the softest of my pillows as I reach for oblivion again. The storm clouds outside lull me to a dreamless sleep.

I miss the man with the intense eyes. I wonder of he misses me.

This Unexpected Life of Mine

FoRReals has been deemed Masters. 

I recently found out my crush from high school is having his second child. At first I was sadden by this news, thinking that instead of his beautiful wife in his Facebook pictures, I could be there holding a beautiful little brown one year old girl with blue eyes and impossibly curly black hair. I started to think about how all my teenage life plans had me married with children by now. I started to feel like I'd failed myself, that I some how let myself down because I hadn't fulfilled those plans.

But then I started to think about were I am in my life. Granted, I've accomplished very little in the way of my life plans but let's face it, plans you make in high school, outside of general ideas of education and seeking a passion, are silly and should be abandoned as soon as humanly possible. I remembered the accomplishments I had completed so far in life and how great those things are. I mean, I just earned a master's degree for crying out loud and I was feeling like a failure for not achieving more in my life. That's me and Mattie above, by the way, right after graduation. It was bitter sweet that day. I'll write about graduation at a later date, back to high school life plans.

I think it's time I went a little bit easier on myself and instead of making plans, start listing goals. Goals are so much easier to achieve than plans because plans only exist to achieve goals. How I'd forgotten this, I don't know. I think I was focusing too much on the steps than the purpose of those steps.

So. Goals. This could be difficult in prioritizing which ones are most important but none the less, here are a few I want to reach before the end of the summer:

• Finish LBP videos
• Start a podcast. Or two.
• Write on my blog at least twice a week.
• Take more pictures.
• Start a board game club.

I should say this is a short list, edited down from the wish list I made two weeks ago. That list was impossibly long and not possible to complete in one season or four. I know this is a new beginning to something exciting. What that something is, well, we will have to discover together.

The fastest, longest two weeks ever

I had planned on posting more often. I didn't want to this to be a once a week blog but at this time it is looking like that will be the case. The last two weeks have been spend reading, writing and researching just about everything for my Capstone project. I read articles, journal entries, books, magazines, watched movies, TV shows, documentary series and YouTube channels. Research is tiring anyway and then I was sick too! I had a sinuses infection. Nothing major enough to go to the doctor for but I did stay home one day and sleep.

I subscribe to TheRumpus.net and everyday my inbox is given a taste of proper blogging. Stephen, the blog's creator and head writer, talks about life and all of it's beautiful dirty messiness and how wonderfully painful and great it can be. He writes about his childhood and adulthood and work, you know, life. He is fast becoming one of my favorite writers to read. Mostly because he sends me email I want to read but also be he inspires me to write more.

I have wanted to be a writer in the classic sense from the age of about two. My mom tells me when I was little, a toddler in a car seat, I would tell her stories from the back seat of the car. Often they were the bedtime stories from the night before that I retold with myself as the heroine. I don't remember this but it does sound like something I was likely to do at two or three. I do remember in kindergarten reading stories and rewriting them in my head so they were more interesting. I mean, Dick and Jane were not just walking for hours and hours, something had to be chasing them or attacking them. I do remember one time in the third grade I got in trouble for writing a paper that was too descriptive. The teacher told me what I wrote was fantastical and not likely to ever happen. I thought what is wrong with that?

I was not kind to my writing talent after graduating high school. Though I wrote my share of art history papers during undergrad and a few short scripts that my screenwriting teacher really liked, I did nothing to groom my talent. After earning my BFA, I was afraid to start writing. I was afraid that because I had waited so long to start writing again I would discover my talent found a home in someone else, that person more appreciative of it and not bond by fear to not use it. I am glad to say that over that past few weeks I've learned it liked me too much to leave but like an atriphed muscle I'm finding it hard to use well right away.

I know I'm supposed to be writing about how I spend my money but the money thing isn't the real reason I have this blog. The real motivation is it write. Neil Gaiman, who I love, says the best way to become a writer is to write. Write a lot. Just write and eventually you will be good enough to share that writing with someone else. Stephen from The Rumpus says that best way to keep a blog is to write everyday. I believe him as studies have shown consistence more than content is what wins on the net. Please read a blog more often when it publishes daily verses weekly. I'm probably months away from being a daily long form blogger but I do plan on getting there.

I read an article on the plane this morning about a guy who was hit by a car, it severing his C6 vertebrae. The doctor told him he would never walk again. He told him You didn't know me well, do you? The doctor shook his head at him and walked away saying he was delusional. Five years later this man became the first person to ever walk again unassisted after such a traumatic injury to his spinal column. He did it through old fashion hard work and having a very detailed plan of action. He said to write down three goals you have. Now rewrite them until you have the three you really want to accomplish. Once you have that, tell no one. Telling people these goals makes you a talker, not a doer. I realized after reading this article that I am a talker.

I tell people my ideas and goals and I speak words hoping they come true. I have very little faith these ideas will come true mostly because I don't know how to make them more than words but also because I don't have faith in myself to complete them. I used to believe the world was mine to conquer. I'm not sure when I started believing I was defeated but that stops today.

Feb twenty five is the day I become a doer again. I have to go now, I've goals to write.