Hello world.

Happy Sunday. ♥️

I was feeling oddly disconnected the other day, unable to write or feel clearly, when I saw my journal sitting on my desk. I ran my hands over its smooth leather cover and opened it up, feeling relief and necessity wash over me.

RECONNECTING

Why?   

Because I realized that while journaling used to be the only form of writing that I knew, it has since become an indulgence.

As a kid I would sit under the trees with pen and paper for hours, writing anything and everything that came to mind. But now, a decade or so later, most of my writing is done for either university or this blog, meaning, it’s invariably filtered.

I don’t think that I realized the strain that that can put on creativity until I opened my journal that night and felt full freedom. Here was a space where I could say anything and everything once more, without having to censor it or worry if I was repeating things I have already written about or if that sentence makes me sound crazy. I could just be crazy.

I wrote for the better part of an hour, staining page after page with unbridled honesty and crystal clear emotion. It felt like coming up for air after being held under the waves by unrelenting deadlines and assignments.

I love the professional side of writing, the academic, publishable side, but I can sometimes forget how much my mind craves to simply play. It’s how I fell in love with writing in the first place, spending hours in the fertile land of unbridled exploration. Connecting to your soul and whatnot.

So what did I write?

Well, since I can never seem to stop myself from sharing the pages of my journals with you, you might as well have these too.

UNFILTERED JOURNAL PAGES

Here is what broke my writer’s block this week:

To be completely honest, my life feels little more than strange right now. It’s one of those periods in time where you know that things will never be just the same. With each day that passes, I can feel myself moving further away from the familiar and closer towards something in the distance that I can’t quite make out the details of yet. 

I could be moving to New York in just a couple of months—I mean, I will be, but alongside all of the love and excitement, there is fear and anger too. Fear that I won’t be able to make it, and anger that this world makes it feel so impossible to even try.

I’ve applied to at least twenty different publishing houses and magazines, yet I am not sure my application will even be seen. It reminds me of the uphill battle that applying to college felt like, where the system has become so corrupt and competitive that my overwhelmingly immense amounts of hard work and achievements feel almost meaningless.

Not to say that they actually are meaningless.

When you put all of the numbers and letters aside, the ones that we use to define so much of who we tell ourselves that we are, the 4.0, the test scores, the salary, I know that I have passion and grit and a curious mind.

Even if these are the things nearly kill me sometimes, I have this sort of faith that because of them, something is going to fall into place.

Yet, the applications still just feel like shouting into a void.

So I’m applying to jobs, writing constantly, going to classes, typing up essays, reading, looking at apartments and neighborhoods, and trying, at the very same time, to slowly enjoy and notice what these last few weeks of college feel like. 

HALLWAYS THOUGHTS

What do they feel like? 

Beautiful. So beautiful that sometimes I stop in the stairwell for a moment just to notice them, to try and swim through that warm light for one moment longer before it disappears. 

It happens like this.

I’m walking through the dimly lit hallway, and the door is right there at the end of it.

I can see it. I can feel myself only moving closer towards, and with every step, all I can think about is what the ceiling looks like and has it always looked like that? And what about the bulletin board, was that always there? And these people swirling around me, do I know any of them? Do any of them know me?

And the floors, oh my god, the floors, but then you’re at the door. You’re pushing it open, crossing the threshold, abandoning one world for the sake of another, and suddenly you are outside.

You’re out in the world and it is so brilliant and new that you can’t believe that you were staring at the dingy linoleum floors of that other world just a moment ago, afraid to leave. You’re not even thinking about them anymore.

All to say, I know that there are brilliant things waiting on the other side of that door. But I’m still just walking through dimly lit hallways, watching the ceiling tiles fly over my head like cars on a highway, getting motion sickness from the speed of time. I’m still just sitting in classrooms, staring out of the windows, tapping my pen against my notebook like some movie protagonist, realizing that this is the end of something. 

And just the beginning of another.

BEING A CREATIVE

I closed my journal and felt such clarity and relief after writing this that all was suddenly right in the world again. I could breathe again. I felt like myself again.

I don’t know how else to describe the crippling, exhilarating reality of being a creative other than that, other than your satisfaction with life being entirely dependent on whether or not you have adequately expressed the essence of your soul lately.

No pressure.

Love, m.

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