just some things

Occasionally, I go through periods of time where writing anything seems very difficult. These periods are usually characterized by a heightened state of delight in everything I do and a crazy-fast sense of time floating past me.

That is exactly what is happening now.

Whilst it happens (and whilst I enjoy it), here are a few things on my mind. I will talk about them in greater detail either through written words of the future or through whiskey pours of the future.

1. I am six pages into the latest Chuck Klosterman book, Eating the Dinosaur, and he has already articulated exactly what it is I find so compelling about interviewing strangers. Say what you will about Klosterman, and hate him because you're supposed to hate him and because he's just too snarky for you or something, but I continue to find his essays more spot-on and compelling than most things.

2. Speaking of compelling and reading books and finishing things, I finally finished Anna Karenina, fueled mostly by a certain Christiana's ridicule. I have a serious and somewhat hilarious aversion to weak female characters (it's a bad idea to ask me how I feel about Emma Bovary or the female antagonists of Hold Steady songs), so it comes as little surprise that I occasionally have trouble engaging with Anna as a character. However, my struggles with this all came to a screeching and irrelevant halt when I reached the passage where Levin decides he's going to mow the fields alongside the peasant workers.

The written word is powerful, and when it works correctly, it makes you want to throw it aside and devote yourself to sweat and labor.

3. I know what I guess amounts to a lot of people. I spend most of my days being amazed at how smart and how fun and how funny and how productive they are. This seems very simple and very stupid but it never ceases.

4. Two days before the onset of my twenty-ninth year, I would like to announce that I believe all previous versions of myself would be really very happy with how I turned out. With the possible exception of me at age four, who would be really upset that I never figured out how to be a professional mountain climber.

To her, I say "there's still time!"

i've got something to prove

I believe everyone has that one person in their life who heavily inspires them to keep pushing forward. This person isn't always a daily presence, and in my case, has only come into my life a handful of times. But the impression left runs deep.

No matter where I live or what I do, in the back of my mind I need to do these things to the greatest capacity. I'm the first to admit that I haven't necessarily been so successful with this in the past. I've been able to explore many paths and imagine where they could take me, but have then decided for one reason or another I didn't want to be where they would ultimately end.

You know those people who get stuck in one town doing one thing for their entire life? They get sucked into a rut and no matter how much they dream of getting out, they simply can't. I seem to have the opposite problem. I can't stand still for longer than a year. I attribute this to the idealistic views I've always held. Everything that I do needs to have some kind of meaning. I'm not capable of powering forward for something that lacks a soul. If it's not exactly how I believe it should be, and if there's no chance of a positive change, I don't want anything to do with it. Naive? Yes. But I can't help it. Maybe this makes me just as bad as the person in the rut. There will always be the one thing that prevents us from crossing the line that so desperately needs to be crossed.

Through all the trial and error, somewhere in my mind I know that I've got something to prove to that person; to my ultimate inspiration. Whether or not I still exist to them doesn't really matter. It's what they have come to symbolize to me. It's knowing that one day I will get to a point where, if life brings them back my way, I can walk up to them and confidently tell them what I've done and what I'm continuing to do; with no regrets. It's using them as that push to keep moving forward when maybe I'm too tired to push on my own. And I think I've finally found that something to believe in. It's a starting place, at the least; another beginning.

And we all know how good I am at beginnings.