Settling

When I moved into my new place last week, I was coming down with a head cold. In fact, as I sit here writing this, I'm still fighting it off, surrounded by blankets, electrolytes, and tissues that claim to be "angel soft" yet leave my nose the brightest blazing red. It's fair to say these last few days have been difficult for me to navigate (adjusting to the newness of everything, trying to feel comfortable being sick in a place that doesn't quite feel like home yet, the anxiety of everything). But I'm doing it. Even when it is difficult, and when I'm at my low, I'm doing it. Take that, anxiety!

Slowly but surely, I'm settling in. I'm almost finished unpacking, just three boxes of books left to shelve and a million tiny things to organize. (This would have been done by now if I were able to go 10 minutes without needing to sit and blow my nose.) I can already tell I'm going to be really, really great friends with my four new roommates--all of whom, before I moved in, were strangers to me. And, as expected, I love living in downtown Annapolis.

I celebrated New Year's in my new place this year, and on reflecting of the craziness that was 2016, I entered 2017 with not quite a resolution, but more an intention: In all things, be passionate. It's my goal this year to do every thing that I do as well, and as thoroughly, as I can. I want to commit. I want to learn and grow and challenge myself unlike I had in years' past. I want to pay attention to and appreciate the small things. To start, I've tried to take notice of moments or details I find beautiful and interesting in where I'm living.

• I can hear church bells from every room.
• The sun coming through my window at 11:30AM is the softest and most serene lighting.
• Cars driving down the street in the rain sound like a restless tide, if you are just sleepy enough.
• Wrapping yourself up in 10 blankets is much more fun than adjusting the thermostat up a few degrees.

There's still a lot for me to get used to, living in this new place with new people. But I'm excited for the change it's bringing. And in other news: the semester starts tomorrow, so I'll be going back to school for the first time since getting my undergraduate degree. I can't wait (and also I'm very nervous).

   

Mid-Move

I have a love/hate relationship with moving. The beginning of it is always the worst: looking at everything I have to do; the mountain of things I need to sort through; the boxes I have to put together, fill, and then literally move. It's a mini-nightmare of mine. The upside of it all is that, by going through all of my things, I start to downsize. Each time I move (which has been a lot recently), I take boxes and bags of things to donate. I declutter, if only for a little bit. I clean house and get organized again. And really, there's nothing more I love than reorganizing all of my things.

The end result is always wonderful. It's the process I loathe. As a kid, I would want to move rooms every other month. Not because I suddenly didn't like my room, but because I could picture how I would arrange my furniture in the other room, and how I would organize it, and therefore have a beautifully organized space that would make everything in my life go so much smoother. As an adult, the mentality is similar, but the practicalities of actually moving homes instead of just rooms (e.g., forwarding mail, transferring services like rental insurance and cable, etc) are annoying. So I focus on the good and remember that each box I pack to take to my new home will be filled with only the things I really, really want. It's time to clean house, get organized, and donate what I don't need. What better way to start the New Year?

Where to next?

I've been sitting on this post for a few weeks now. It's the reasons I've been silent over here for a while. Okay, one of many reason. (The other reasons are I'm about to move -- yes, again -- and I have to find time to pack when I'm not dealing with the holiday rush of working in retail. So you see, I'm lucky to have survived Black Friday, and I am very sleepy almost always.)

Let's start here: Change is happening. Big, major changes in literally every aspect of my life. As previously mentioned, I'm moving. I'll be living with four roommates downtown, and I'm so excited to get to know them and explore the city more. And now the big one... In a little over a month, I'm leaving my full-time management position job in retail to go back to school for something that has been dancing in the back of my mind for six years.

I'm studying to become a paralegal.

This has been a long time coming. It's funny, the other day Facebook reminded me (with that little "On this day X years ago" feature) that when I started my freshman year of college, right out of the gate I was thinking about changing my major law studies so I could become a paralegal after graduation. When I was younger, my dad used to always say that if I didn't do something in law, he wasted a lot of time waging arguments with me. In fact, I remember playing lawyer as a kid -- I used my parents' old (dead) cell phone and would pace around in our basement, pretending to be debating the terms of this or that while in a bathrobe carrying a toy dog Beanie Baby. Because that's what I thought lawyers did: wear robes, carry dogs, and have fancy black cell phones they could click closed in annoyance when things didn't go their way.

Judith Beheading Holofernes

Today I have a day off from work, and I'm forcing myself to be productive and put this time toward my writing. (And reading. And catching up on my DVR list and finally watching more of Stranger Things). It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to start writing again. I sunk back into my old routine of turning on the soundtrack to my WIP, which for this particular work in progress is the score to Kill Your Darlings -- nice and dark and moody -- lighting a candle, and setting everything else on silent and do not disturb.

I find I'm writing less with each session, but the content I'm producing is better. The quantity is decreasing, but the quality is more than making up for it. It's weird to not be writing as much, as fast, as I used to. I'm adjusting to the new pace of my voice, and I think the reason I'm going slower with this one is because I'm putting more consideration into the first draft. Not that I haven't put a lot of time and effort into my other drafts; I guess it's just that this one demands more of my thought and attention. It's pickier than other stories I've written. That's half the fun, this newness of relearning how I write. The challenge of sussing out the proper mood of the story.

Anyway, this afternoon, I finally begun Chapter 4. And because I'm big on accountability, I want to share another, longer excerpt with you. This one really demonstrates the role art will have in the novel. I mentioned before how much I loved studying art history when I was in college, and now I get to put all that knowledge to work! And who knows, maybe someone will find all this art history stuff as exciting as I do and do some research of their own. Or not. Whatever floats your boat. (But I think it's cool, so, you know, do whatever I'm just saaaaayyyyyiiiinnnng it could be fun. I think it is, at least.)

TMoD -- which has a full title and is not just some vague and meaningless acronym I'm using, I promise -- is going to be about many things: murder, love, art, crime. Here's a slice of it, in the early stages of setting the scene for the Big Events that will happen throughout the story.

The painting the two characters discuss, for reference, is "Judith Beheading Holofernes," and it's a favorite of mine from the Baroque movement. Take a look at it while you read the excerpt.

That would be enough

This week, I've been taking stock of my life, inventorying the things I have, the things I want, the things I need. I'm finding that there are a lot of "haves" and a lot of "wants," with very few "needs" between the two.

A few months back, I wrote all about simplifying things. I got about halfway through that simplification before I got distracted (as I often do in my busy days) and left the job unfinished. As such, I'm still finding that I'm stuck in a lot of mess and mayhem. Being surrounded by things and having things happen to or around me makes me feel very passive, and it's making me anxious. Which is why I've taken active control of things again so I can steer everything back on path.

Part of this inventorying has me literally getting rid of a lot. I'm packing up the clothes I don't wear for donation. I'm taking out the trash and reorganizing what I have and love. Remember, I have multiple existential crises a week about what I'm doing with my life. So, naturally, as I'm sorting through the physical junk in my life, I'm looking at the mental junk too. Metaphorically, I'm doing the same. I'm letting go of events and emotions and the past -- things that have done nothing to help me but only put a hindrance on happiness.

This purge has lifted an invisible weight I didn't realize I'd been carrying for so long. Sorting through things has me realizing the obvious connections between what I want and need that I never noticed before. I want to be happy -- I need to create. I want to have a comfy home -- I need stability. I want to learn and grow and love and live and do a thousand things. I'm tired of letting life flit by without grabbing on, so I'm grabbing on. How do I do that, after so much time?

I just start. I say 'yes' to things again. I work on restoring my energy. I move forward looking for a small, more affordable place I can live and create. I hold my friends and family closer. For me, that would be enough. I don't need a lot of money; I don't need any fame. I need an outlet, and I need to get back to focusing on myself and what I love to do most. The reason I haven't felt right lately is because I let go of writing and creating for so long because I had other responsibilities. I don't want to let it slip anymore, because the longer I leave it, the more off I feel.

I'm finding middle ground in life, and creative ways to make everything work for me. I'm sussing it all out, still, and really the reason this short post sounds so rambling is because I'm not finished untangling everything.

Right now, it feels like a lot of my life is about to happen. There are moments waiting for me in the wings, about to enter. They're just waiting for their cue, and in a few breaths I'll be delivering that fateful line. I can't really, rationally explain the feeling. But just you wait. Someday soon, something great is going to happen.