Glorified what?

I’m not trying to be melodramatic here. But last night I was thinking about my upcoming bucket list posts that would have patted me on the back for running a 5K (something most adults have done) and taking the GRE (something an overwhelming amount of people have done.) These things don’t make me special. They also aren’t interesting to read about unless you are my stalker.

Personal blogs like mine are egocentric and self-gratifying. It’s like microphone hogs—we like hearing our own voice projected over a large expanse of space. Before the list, my blog was about common interests, not silly diatribes, and I’d like to return to that.

Writing from personal experience is normal. I’m not scratching it completely off! You’re simply sharing a thought-process others could have had or could at least relate to. In many circumstances this makes sense: travel, school, wedding, etc.

I’m tired of hearing my own voice. So I’m deleting this blog. And even this will seem self-glorifying. It’s not meant to be. As a writer, I would much rather write about other people and their experiences. I’m quitting the personal blogosphere, a distracting mess of me, in order to look beyond myself more often and to tell other people’s stories. Where will I start? With the most diverse and talented group I’ve ever come across… My friends.

Therefore my dears, don’t lose heart! Come the end of October the new outlook begins.

Bucket List #10

I decided I would recount some “year of 23″ goodies. There are quite a few things that happened during the past year that make turning 24 a-okay, in fact.

1. Wore the grossest Halloween costume I’ve ever dared to wear while 23—Britney Spears.

2. Worked two jobs while interning at a non-profit and writing an online column, for a while, all with the great intent of finding the right fit.

3. Survived the winter and celebrated New Year’s Eve downtown, likewise a survival task.

4. Managed to raise enough money to travel to Uganda for two months and live with a family there.

5. Got a new tattoo.

6. Moved out of New York and to The Outer Banks in only my car, selling all my furniture in one week.

7. Convinced a restaurant to hire me as a bartender with no real prior experience.

8. Learned to surf and have the scars to prove it.

9. Lived with 27 different people total.

10. Read 10 months worth of the Bible (2 to go!)

Bucket List #9

I’ve become absolutely obsessed with graphic and typeface design again. I took two minor courses in college, and wasn’t that great at it, and yet adored it. I did get a taste of what book making would be like though. Our biggets project was a story about a chair that we turned into a book of our own design. Mine was a pocket book made out of cardboard with each page pushed in kind of like a clock-in machine at an old warehouse. Thus, one of my goals once I’m back in the city is to enroll at The Center for Book Arts to learn about designing books. If you doubt me, I once had a stamp collection and a paper doll collection that I cherished (and stored away in my parent’s attic.) Some people may find this nerdy and others enthralling. Feel as you may. I literally google “typeface” and “graphic design” images on a weekly basis. You should try it some time. It’s like candy.

Sooooooo do what you love right? Lesson learned.

Bucket List #8

Deciding what my life will be for the next whatever and getting out of limbo land. I am moving back to New York City, starting with a house sitting stint and then in to Harlem again. I used to be decisive, but that has changed. My confidence rests in the Lord’s direction and strength, making all of my self-focused, accomplishment-driven goals fall away. I’m excited to love on people, jump into new opportunities, and get even more wrapped up in books all with the hope of starting my own store one day. Loving people loving books.

I look back on this time and realize I am blessed. Not many people get the time I’ve had to sit, ponder, be. But I’m back on my feet and ready to go. Book making, book writing, book selling, book reading with a splash of sustainability and coffee I think. Yep, sounds great.

(Plans subject to change due to whims and/or GRE scores. At least I’m consistent.)

Bucket List: #7

I started reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson which I found at a thrift store in South Carolina. I’ve earmarked so many pages that I had to blog about the parts I love. The writing is wonderfully calming. Being a rather intensely energetic person, I need calming things in my life. So today’s bucket list item is complex: thinking like someone who is dying, being calmed by the voice of a fictional character, getting halfway through a book in a day, letting a fictional book change the way I pray.

Here are the quotes, often whole paragraphs (hehe), I really liked:

Well, see and see but do not perceive, hear and hear but do not understand, as the Lord says. I can’t claim to understand that saying, as many times as I’ve heard it, and even preached on it. It simply states a deeply mysterious fact. You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it…

My point in mentioning this is only to say that people who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry, and they will see anger in what you do, even if you’re just quietly going about your life of your own choosing. They make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be severe distraction and a waste of time.

For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn’t writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone. I feel I am with you now…

In the old days I could walk down every single street, past every house, in about an hour. I’d try to remember the people who lived in each one, and whatever I knew about them… And I’d imagine peace they didn’t expect and couldn’t account for descending on their illness or their quarreling or their dreams.

The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light… Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something. It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. Or marriage within friendship and love.

Transgression. That is legalism. There is never just one transgression. There is a wound in the flesh of human life that scars when it heals and often enough seems never to heal at all. Avoid transgression. How’s that for advice.

Pulitzer Prize Winner. She looks wise.

Bucket List: #6

Just to be honest, this whole bucket list thing may become just as old and boring to me as it does to anyone reading it. So. On a whim I may skip days. Don’t worry that I’ve actually kicked it if that happens. Ha.

The sixth day of this challenge included me visiting a new church and liking it. Grabbing a grown woman by the forearm in a gesture of kindness and greeting when the hand should have been grabbed instead. Finishing a book I started a few weeks ago (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), which I did not know anything about and I liked, but thank goodness not left as depressed as the character at its finish. That is of course because I haven’t gone through something so terribly traumatic and heartbreaking. Crying with my sister about life, loss, love while emptying the dishwasher. Ending the night with a whiskey drink of some sort. Yes.

Bucket List: #5

A tad miscellaneous today. I did (thank you for the suggestion, Val) tell a girl she was beautiful. Her friends were all hanging around her stoop in downtown Baltimore. I walked by and she said it first.
“Excuse me. You’re pretty.”
“Thanks.” Pause. “So are you.”
Then they helped me find the street where my car was parked. It was simple, but a charming exchange. Very human.

I also used something very expensive that I will probably never own… my bro’s Mercedes. Talk about nerve-wracking to drive! This guy sitting next to me at the light glanced over, then did a double take and smiled. Then he saw my nieces in the backseat and probably assumed I was the mom. His face dropped and the light turned green. Ha. Oh well.

Lastly, I was tired enough to fall asleep in my niece’s bed at 9 p.m. That’s a feat.

Bucket List: #4

One day freshman year of college I was breezing through the hall of the dorm to class, but stopped at a door. That day goes down in history because that day I met my best friend of all time… Danielle. We didn’t really “start” a friendship, but it happened to us.

Funny thing about us is we maybe talk every 6 months. When we do, it’s epic and goes on forever. We have a way of creating this little world around us. Today’s bucket list was seeing her for the first time in a year and a half. Spending valuable time with a friend I love so much? Definitely a great way to go out with a bang.

If you want to see a slide show of our friendship, go backwards in my pictures on Facebook. She is in the very first one ever uploaded. (remember when Facebook was new and fun?)

Bucket List: #3

You are NOT going to believe this. It’s out with the old (and I mean, 10+ years in the making) and in with the new today.

I cut my hair off. SHORT. This is the before just in case you haven’t seen me in a while.

I sat down. Got an amazing oil treatment, for free. Walked to the chair. She put my hair in a loose ponytail and chop, chop, chop.

What they cut off!

And now… the reveal. I LOVE IT!


Wooo hoooo to a 24 year old haircut.

Bucket List: #2

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet

Second attempt to blow out 23: pretend all day. I was a maid (slightly lowly but we cleaned a castle), a chef, a traveler to Mexico alongside Dora, a tightrope walker, mommy pony, and now Prince Louie. There was a scary witch who kept stealing stuff in every pretend… Funny how kids learn early on about conflict in stories. I love imagination and days when the weather is perfect for playing.