Something about the past week - or really, the past two or three days - has shaken me up. I can't really pinpoint it and it may very well be another one of my short-lived, romantic, cooped up, restless 'I want a change and I want it NOW' chains of thought, but maybe it's not.
It all started with our trip to Portland. Yes, it was stressful. Yes, it was peppered with conflict, arguments, and difficult conversations born out of crystal clear differences between us but also the nagging truth that there is more of my mother (and her mother, and probably her mother's mother) in me than I'd previously thought. But it also changed me, in a way that New York City hadn't touched me in my doe-eyed youth and that any other experiences with young love hadn't rocked me in its depth and solidity. For the first time I saw inklings of life that the core of my gut yearns for, has longed for so fiercely yet so indescribably that I never realized it until it was plainly before my eyes. I saw possibility, more plainly and literally than I ever have, even in all of my twenty-something-year-old soul-searching, pontificating, and hypothesizing.
Then a series of occurrences that seemed so commonplace that I didn't stop to consider their magnitude, so simple and somewhat silly that even listing some of them seems trivial.
A dinnertime comment from my mother that I shouldn't let my writing and eye for design go to waste.
An ensuing argument about how misunderstood I am, fueled by my clandestine insecurities that she may be right.
A campy television show I happened upon by accident wherein a fashion designer helps a candy store owner transform her shop to save it from failure.
A candid conversation with my quiet, secretive father about my future and the lengths he's willing to extend to help me.
A glance at the calendar waking me up to the reality that despite all the change that's happened so far this year, the biggest change is yet to come, and it is coming soon.
Several nights of insomnia during which my mind churned nonstop with questions about who I am, what I'm doing, how far I've come, how far there is yet to go.
Reading a stranger's chronicle of a course of events when she was my age that altered her lifestyle, visions of herself, and her future altogether, and finding her sentiments so eerily echoing my own.
I've been blogging quite consistently for seven years. Somewhere in my archives I have entries that I wrote my sophomore year in college. Even as I bemoan my lack of 'finished' writing since college, I have been writing. My words have reached wider audiences in the past, for sure, but I do have an audience now and I know I have the ability to move with those words.
I have stories to tell. I am quite sure that everyone does, and that some are more poignant, earth-shattering, and inspirational than mine. But my stories are mine and I know I can tell them in a way that brings out their poignancy and affects people, just as the above-mentioned stranger's story affects me. They've just been sitting in my brain for years, sometimes hinted at in shorter bursts of pieces either on my blog or in my 'zines, but never formulated or chronicled in a way that tells a complete story.
I love having a blog. Writing every day so far this year has brought me back to what it is to move my mind constantly, even if it's to talk about something as trifling as a date's resemblace to a dorky public figure. Yet in the past few days I've felt that I want to give more. I want my life to be more than the perfunctory details of forward movement and I want it to be more than waiting for the next thing to happen.
No details yet as I'd like to write a few things down and plan things out and decide what the best course of action and execution is. But I wanted to state my intention for something new.
