Hello. Contrary to popular belief, I am, in fact, alive. Once upon a time, I blogged about women and the priesthood and my blog imploded, as did school, as did my personal life, as did my opinions on dating (again), as did life in general. So I stopped blogging.
But I'm back! And I have so much to talk about that I don't even know what to say.
To start with, I guess, I spent two hours in the Special Collections department of the library today and yesterday. It's crazy down there! I went in to look for stuff on the Bear River Massacre and they brought out six boxes. Thus far, I've only gotten through one and one half, and that's in four hours. I've just been devouring that stuff. My education, weirdly enough, has never quite been as important to me as it is now that I'm graduating. I already have plans to chill out in the library and just read stuff for fun this summer (I'm talking about YOU, Mormon Doctrine). Learning's amazing! It really is.
Two nights ago, I broke into the library in my home ward building. I found all of this stuff about an old train station that used to be out here and how it got split in half, each half being taken to a different town in the valley. I mean, WHAT IN THE FRUIT. My hometown is so cool!
Problem is, I've got more writing material than I have the capacity to hold at one time right now. I was going to blog about Ordain Women or introversion or abortion or something for you guys this week, but again, I just have too much to say, most of it more personal.
Like Saturday. Saturday, I got up and read a poem at a poetry reading shindig in front of all of these strangers who mainly talked over me and acted like I wasn't there sharing part of my soul with them. No biggie. It was terrifying, though. I don't do stuff like that. Like, at all. But it was so liberating! And tonight I went to a poetry slam that almost killed me, it was so breathtakingly good.
Guys, I'm in love with my major. I'm in love with English and words, the way they come off of a person's tongue in such a way that you can almost feel them echo through your bones and wring out all of the crap weighing on your heart. I'm in love with the way a poem can crawl into you and hammer goosebumps out of your skin. I love what I do. I love what an English degree allows me to experience and feel and fall in love with. This is the first time I've ever appreciated it, and it's glorious and I'm sad that I didn't do more with my college experience than what I have done.
I guess you could say my degree and I are getting pretty serious. Serious enough to distract me from those nights this past month when I've doubted myself and my purpose and this unclear direction I'm heading in.
A few weeks ago, I decided that I need to be honest and to seriously evaluate how I'm living honestly. A lot of times, I just hide who I am and what I think behind a facade of apathy or stoicism or disinterest. That's dishonesty, and not only is it dishonesty, but it's been the driving force behind my struggles with relating to people and dating. I use disinterest as protection, and it's wrong. And as a writer, I have to be honest. Writing doesn't allow me much space to be dishonest.
That being said, with this new love and this new mantra for life, I want to admit to my dreams, dreams that I abandoned as a teenager because I felt like everyone thought I was stupid for having them.
I want to be a writer. A plum broke, living in a van, going from day to day writer. I want to write for a living. I want to write books and write about places and people and emotions and society. I want to create things on my own outside of an office and outside of the confines of customer service. I want to graduate with what people tell me day after day is a worthless degree that means nothing and prove to them that they are wrong and that the world needs to reclaim its beautiful words instead of forcing them beneath waves of manual labor, math, science, apathy and ignorance. I want to prove to the world that it needs words.
I may not have a job after graduating, but I have a dream, and for now, that's enough.
Labels: life, writing