writing

November 21, 2014

My Cheeks are Burning

I said it a prior post, but for some reason since my trip from London (listen to me, “since” it’s been 4 days) I’ve felt very different.  I don’t know what it is, but I want my life to be different.  I in particular want to be someone else.

When I sit down to define exactly what that is I come up with only a couple items.  For one, I want to be thinner.  Although, the way I’ve been eating the past few days you wouldn’t know that.  I don’t understand the root of my sudden ravenousness, but regardless it needs to stop.  The second is, I want to be published.  This one in particular isn’t as cut and dry.  It takes preparation and planning.  It takes fucking dedication, which as of late hasn’t really been me.  I will find every excuse in the book not to sit down and write.  My reasons get worse when I read my novel and see how much work it needs.  But, even as I say that I don’t even know if that’s a true statement.  For all I know I am building it up in my head to be worse than it is, thus giving me a reason not to do it.  “There is just so much to do.”

I recently purchased Amy Poehler’s novel “Yes Please” in audiobook and have been listening to it.  Just in the preface her words spoke to me like none others I have ever read or heard before.  She talked about how difficult writing is and equated the process to pregnancy.  Her words were much more eloquent whereas mine are not.

I need to stop making excuses.  The only way the thing is going to get done is if I do it.  I just need to write a little bit everyday and before I know it, it’ll be finished.

I want to be a different person.  I want to change everything about me.  I want to burst into flame and arise from the ashes anew.  I can feel my cheeks flushing.

November 4, 2014

Cemetery Birthday Bash

This is the last birthday of my twenties. In just one more year and it’s all down hill. To get the ball rolling the common theme of this years trip to London has bee death and the after life. For instance I went on a ghost walking tour of London and that was exciting and today I went tromping through a grave yard in the pitch of night, but let me explain.

The man I claim for my want and desire to be a writer is C. S. Lewis. After I read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” in the third grade I’ve wanted to be an author. Since then I’ve read all of the Chronicles of Narnia and some of his religious studies but… Those are not my cup of tea considering I’m an atheist. (Haven’t always been.) Regardless of my dogmatic views I value the man more than anything. So for my birthday I wanted to take a day trip to Oxford. It’s where Lewis studied, taught, and lived. We went on a bus tour which was lovely up until it began to rain. To escape the wet weather I forced my husband into the shelter of Blackwells book shop where I bought a journal he swears will sit unused and two autobiographies I can’t get in the states. I had intended to buy another copy of “the lion…” But my husband asked “how many copies would that make?” “4.” Yes that’s excessive but it was purchased in Oxford! Whatever.

Finally I ate dinner at the pub he, Tolkien, and others of the Inklings met every Tuesday to discuss their literary works. And serendipitously it just so happens to be Tuesday. And to top it a off, the table I chose at random was 12, which holds no significant meaning to Lewis as it does to me. (It’s my lucky number.) After our meal I was ready to go. It was getting dark and my plan to visit his grave seemed like a pipe dream. So, I accepted the pub visit to be it, but my husband attempting to make my birthday special offered to walk to the cemetery where he had been buried. I warned him that it would be a long trip but he assured me that it’d be fine.

Before we had gotten even a quarter of the way there it was night, since it gets dark at 4:30 in the United Kingdom. Fun. And hoofing it at our quickest speed wasn’t cutting it so luckily we caught a cabby and he took us to the Holy Trinity churchyard. He dropped us off and backed out the long single lane drive.

Using the light of my phone we searched the cemetery reading every headstone. After going to every single market it wound up being the final one. Isn’t that typical? I said a few silent words thanking the man for giving me a dream and held back the tears. There’s nothing more than my husband loves than to see me cry. He’s a freak. (Says the guy who wanted to spend his birthday in a cemetery searching for the grave of a man he never met.)

At the end of it we are both exhausted, but it was fantastic and a trip I won’t soon forget.

October 20, 2014

Unusually Complimentary

There has been a strange tide of events these past few days, my husband has shown interest in my want to be a published writer. I know! I am just as shocked as you.  Don’t get me wrong, he is … “supportive” to a degree.  He’s just a realist when it comes to dreams.  If he cannot see a hard path, he is not taking it.  Does that make sense?  Well, anyway, since I told him my plans to document our trip to London on the cheap and possibly write a book he is on-board.  He even called me on Friday and started pouring compliments over me; my body was in shock.  It is not accustomed to such gushing, but I’m not one to turn it down.

My husband told me that he thinks I would make a good travel writer because I can tell a story and I am humorous.  Which, that sentence in itself shows my humor, because the man has never thought that I’m out-right funny prior to last Friday or at least expressed any similar sentiment in our 11 years together.  It has not been until the past few years, hanging around our friends, that he sees I can be a downright riot.  If he and I are talking I can’t crack a joke and make him laugh.  He only finds me entertaining when I say or do something stupid and he can point it out.  And like the true attention whore that I am, I play right into it, developing a whole “persona” to go along with my flustered awareness.  We just have different styles of humor with only a portion of overlap.  The most ridiculous scenarios easily amuse me.  To be a little more precise: give me a cat video any day and I will laugh so hard I will cry.  He will not.

I don’t mean to discourage him or his compliments in any way. He is an amazing man and honest.  That’s why I always go to him for an opinion.  He will not sugar coat it.  If I wasn’t good in a play or in what I’m writing he will tell me.  Which is a double edged sword, for him and me.  The fact of the matter is that if he says I’m good at something he truly means it, and with that I am energized.  So,  during our trip I’m going to be extra-observant and take copious notes, and when I get back I can write a book proposal.

April 29, 2014

My mental hampsters have been hitting the pipe

I want to write but I don’t know what about.  I have the beginnings of some thoughts but nothing that could or would warrant an entire blog entry.  Maybe a tweet, a pathetic tweet, but something that doesn’t require any further explanation.  I’m curious if it has to do with the run I went on this evening.

My husband and I have been doing weight watchers for a year and half.  The first year we made good progress.  We were more active then and really took into consideration what we ate.  But then our trip to London rolled around and that’s when it all started to go down hill.  I think after London, thanksgiving, and Christmas I ended up gaining back 20 lbs of the 30 I had lost.  It was soul crushing.  I suppose one could say that it’s not really that I gained the weight back but how I handled it.  Both my husband and I got right back on the program. 

He’s obsessed with numbers.  He wants large numbers and massive amounts of progress.  Basically he’s impatient.  He wants the results now, not a year or so down the line.  He has a way of discounting any milestones he makes.  For instance, tonight he lost 5 lbs in one week.  That’s amazing.  But instead of just accepting it and his accomplishment he has to pick it apart and figure out what’s wrong with him.  Just take the damn thing, Charles. Jesus.  The man is frustrating.

It should be noted that he is now the weight I was when we started.  And by started I mean the year and a half ago.  Not when we actively restarted.  Since that time I have successfully lost the 11 I had regained.  Much like my husband I’m not really happy with my progress as of late, but that’s not the programs fault.  Every miniscule weight loss or pound gained is my own doing.  I just haven’t been working it as hard as I could and should have. To put it plainly i’m fucking lazy.

Knowing that my husband is only 26 lbs away from me has lit a fire under my ass.  Well… sort of.  It’s a weird thing to have in my mind but I feel that it’s mandatory for me to weigh less than him.  He’s never stated that’s what he wants but that’s just how I feel.  I think it has to do with my self esteem issues.  I think that if he weighs less than me he’ll find someone and ditch me, because I weigh more than him.  It’s a silly thing to think, especially since we’re married, but it’s a fear none-the-less.

I believe part of his big numbers from this weeks weigh in is due in part to his not touching his allocated 49 weekly points AND going for a a jog two nights last week. I know that doesn’t seem like very much, but when you take into consideration that he and I tend to live a very, VERY, sedentary life it becomes more of an accomplishment.  Also, I’m very proud of him for doing it without me.  (I was playing D&D with my friends, so I have an excuse.  Don’t judge.)

Envious of his accomplishments I downloaded the same app he used last week.  It’s called C25K or couch to 5k. Basically it’s a program laid out that gets someone, who tends to sit mostly on the couch, to have the ability to run a 5k in 30 days or some amount of time. (I’m not selling the damn thing.) And If my husband can do all rounds of running then I sure as shit can. So tonight I went for a run and I think that’s why I feel so inclined to write.  I’m just too pumped. Well, that and I was listening to the Erin Brockovich soundtrack by Thomas Newman.  I don’t know what it is about his music…

I hope that this week I can stick to the program.  I too had had the intentions of not dipping into my weeklies but I tossed that baby out with the bathwater.  It just wasn’t going to work.  Even more so due to the fact that I have a tendency of eating my emotions away.  And for the third attempt with mood stabilizers I have come to the same result, I’m an emotional nut case.

Goodnight.