Making a mountain out of a Moleskine?

A midnight post on a Friday night-- what an exciting social life I lead!  Not that it matters to me in the least, of course.  There are choices of all sorts to be made in life, and a quiet Friday night at the apartment suits me very well this week.

Today's post comes to you courtesy of a quick trip I made to Barnes & Noble the other day.  For the past few weeks, I've been having trouble sleeping, and often find myself at some unmentionable hour of the night (morning?), sheets pushed aside, staring out my window at the silent scenery, taking in the night sky and nearby trees, wondering about the secrets that they and I keep but never speak.  Look, there it is, the whole reason for my trip to B&N: my apparent need to wax lyrical at bizarre hours when I should be sleeping, but my restless mind has taken over instead.  And in order to wax said lyrical properly, to spill out my purple prose without the shame of having to subject another human ear to the insanity within my mind, I need somewhere to write it.

I have my poetry journal, of course, which is my main go-to whenever my thoughts are too much and I don't understand even myself.  Then, I allow for the greatest gift that writing has ever helped me to experience, where I turn my mind off and uncap my pen, and suddenly, words and thoughts and feelings I didn't even know I was having appear on the page, in rhythm and rhyme, and the poem moves faster than I can even begin to conjure up words to match it, but I don't have to worry about that, because it writes itself, and I'm relieved of my worries.  But that only happens occasionally.  When I have to force poems out, it's not nearly as much fun, and the poetry is never as good, and my nighttime musings call mostly for prose.

I have my dear OGTAD, always at hand, always at my nightstand, for me to comment on the good things that happened during the day before I try to convince my restless mind to sleep (and inevitably wake up needing somewhere to write).  As OGTAD is for what happened during the day, it is of little use to someone needing a place to store the stream of consciousness produced by the night.

I used to keep a journal, a regular journal, but it was filled with so much negativity and pages upon pages of me beating so many dead horses with so many sticks (hence the birth of OGTAD), it just doesn't seem like the appropriate place for a new way of writing-- not journaling, but writing.

So after a few nights of writing on scraps of paper found around my room, or worse, of thinking the thoughts but letting them slip away from me, somehow escaping out my closed window and floating off into the night, never to be thought of again, never captured on paper, I went to B&N.  I bought 3 Moleskine notebooks.  I've never used Moleskine before, but they intrigue me because they are so plain. In my youth (how pretentious of me, referring to my youth though I am but 21 pitiful years old, and yet there seems to be no other word to describe myself before my current journey), I always searched for the "perfect" journal, the prettiest, the one with the magnetic snap, the one with the fanciest cover, the one with the beadings, etc., etc.  A particular journal that comes to mind was that of red leather, a comforting smell, but soon filled with negativity, just like all the others.  These Moleskine notebooks drew me in because they were not journals, they were not decorated, they were not... desperate.

And there is enough subject matter on this topic for an entirely separate post, but to condense it-- I'm tired of journaling.  This blog is journal enough for me, but far too public for every private thought, and certainly too available for my midnight musings.  While I enjoy this type of writing, I know in my heart of hearts, and have known since a very young age, that I have a story to tell-- a book to write, if I may.  It frustrates me to not know what this story is or how to tell it yet, and I know I have a whole life ahead of me to figure it out, but I realized something the other day.

The perfect idea and everything that goes with it is not going to walk up to me and introduce itself.  Should I be so lucky to have that happen, consider this entry an ironic "Murphy's law" sort of post, but to be that lucky!  I almost laugh at how many years I spent with this idea in the back of my mind, that it will just "come to me", in so many words.  I have to keep writing.  I have to write, write, write.  Journaling is fine and dandy, but it's not the kind of writing I want to do.  I want to discover more of my own personal style, my own voice, play more with words for my own sake, and write it all down.  I want to capture the things that I think at night and figure out what I meant by them in the morning, for the morning always sheds a different light on things that we thought we understood by the light of the moon.  I'm so inspired by the styles of Laurie Halse Anderson and, as I read The Book Thief, Markus Zusak-- so very inspired, so very afraid to be siphoning off their words and ways when I have my own to pour out.  I just need to figure out what that exactly is, and I must write in order to do it.

So, three Moleskine notebooks.  Is this too much to hope for, to fill these books by the end of... the semester?  The year?  This entry in itself is far longer than I was expecting, but I am quite wordy, when I  go back and reread my things.  I have no set guidelines for these notebooks except to write.  I wonder if I have put these notebooks on a pedestal, perhaps seated myself along there with them, and feel quite silly about it all.  But when it comes down to the very core of my own being, I find words there that want to be brought to life, and it's time that I stopped hoping they'll find their way out on their own, and start writing them somewhere so that they can live.

Love for Valentine's Day

We're two days away from one of what I personally think is the most controversial days of the year-- Valentine's Day.  I've heard many different versions (many Christian related) as to the origins of Valentine's Day, including the idea that V-Day (forgive my shorthand) originally started with no relevance to the romantic love now associated with it.  And we've all heard countless times how guys are supposed to hate V-Day, how tricky it can be to get "just the right gift," what a dangerous day it can be for couples early in their relationship, etc.  We've all heard the laments of the "forever alone" people not celebrating the day with anyone.  We've heard the long-married couples declaring that they don't need to give each other a gift to "prove their love on a certain day."  And so on.

People will be all over facebook on V-Day, with pictures of what their significant other got them (...because it's a competition?) and those not in a relationship declaring how much they hate this stupid day, and others proudly saying that they love their SO all the time, not just today.

Given what I've heard in the meager 21 years of my life, there's not a lot of love for Valentine's Day.

However.

I adore Valentine's Day.

I just try to look at it in a different way.  Like many people have commented, the typical day has become far too commercialized for my taste, with way too much pressure to get things "right."  But that's not why I like it.  As far as the three V-Days that I've celebrated with my boyfriend, they haven't exactly been perfect.  We've tried really hard to make them awesome, but after last year resulted in an argument that was more my fault than anything, I came to the conclusion that I suck at V-Day.  I really do.  That's when I realized I was approaching it from entirely the wrong angle and needed to regroup my thoughts about it and try a different technique when celebrating.

I don't think V-Day needs to be about the jewelry or the craziness anymore, in a sense.  I don't think it's necessary to have those elements for the perfect V-Day.  BUT!  If that's how you choose to celebrate it, then I think it's fine.  I really appreciate V-Day as the thought of a day that we set aside to show our appreciation for those in our lives that we love and cherish.  I've heard my parents say over the years that they don't need to be told by a day on the calendar that they need to show how much they love each other, but I kind of like the idea.

Every one of us has a day that we use to celebrate our own natural instincts telling us to swim out of our mothers' birth canals... and we get presents for it year after year.  We have days that we dedicate to only our mothers, to only our fathers, to celebrate that the earth made an entire journey around the sun without blowing up, to celebrate all sorts of things that we don't question nearly as much as we do the day that we're supposed to show love for each other, February 14th.  Of course, it's been over-commercialized and over-dramafied (new word!) and so on and so forth, but what hasn't?

I think it's great if couples want to give each other a gift to celebrate their love.  And it doesn't have to be just couples.  It can be friends, family members, the pizza guy-- anyone.  Show someone some appreciation.  I believe that this SHOULD be going on every day of the year, but that would be exhausting.  So why not use V-Day as a special day for that?

I love roses any day of the year, but I always ask for some for V-Day.  They're beautiful, I'm not allergic to them, and when my boyfriend brings them to me, I'm filled with joy at receiving something special from him.  If you're truly anti V-Day, what makes this different than receiving something on any other day of the year?

I'm actually surprised at myself, that I'm going to post this.  My skills at rhetoric are quite rusty, and re-reading this, I'm guessing that not a lot of people will agree with me.  I've left quite a few holes in my own argument and don't have the necessary tactics to bring my thoughts from my head to my words at this moment, for which I apologize.  I'm surprised that I'm not going to delete this in fear of going against what the majority of people, of my friends, think.  But I often forget that my opinion is just as valuable as everyone else's, and that I shouldn't have to be afraid of accidentally thinking something else (gasp!).

I just don't think that it's too bad of an idea to have a day where we acknowledge how much we appreciate the people in our lives, everyone, all at once, a whole ton of love.  In a perfect world, we shouldn't necessarily NEED a day for this, but this world isn't perfect.  I really like the most basic concept of Valentine's Day: love.

Half a Year of OGTAD

I seriously cannot think of a more eloquent title for this post, amusingly enough.  OGTAD is just such an awkward acronym, but it's funny to me.  I digress--

Today marks exactly six months since my friend Jessica and I took on the task of recording one good thing about each day in our Good Things-specified journals for a year.  I can't speak for Jessica, but I can wholeheartedly say that for myself, just these past six months have truly changed how I look at my days.

The rules are fairly straightforward.  At the end of each day, I take out my One Good Thing a Day journal and document one good thing about that day (repetitive writing, I know).  The entries are usually about a short paragraph each, two to a page, a full page if it's been a particularly important or special day that requires more of an explanation.  I am NOT allowed to discuss any bad things that happened during my day.  The closest I allow myself to mention any negativity comes in the form of, "Today was not the best/not what I expected/something similar, BUT...." and then I focus only on something good.

Looking back at the entries, one would think that I've had nothing but six months full of beautiful, glorious days of ultimate perfection.  Naturally, this is not the case.  I still have bad days.  I still remember the negativities and mistakes and mess ups and failures.  In fact, yesterday was a pretty sucky day in and of itself, and I'm not up to my usual standard of cheeriness today, either.  But this is where OGTAD makes such a difference for me.

I'm a big fan of journaling (...hence this blog), but when I go back and reread old journal entries, they're usually miserable.  I whine and beat dead horses with multiple sticks and can't seem to get over the bad things that happen during the week, with an occasional happy entry here and there.  Rereading my old journals means entering a world where it seems I was nothing but upset.  And that's not true.  Doing OGTAD means that when I look back at those entries, I only remember the good things about the days, and there is always something good to remember about each day.  Sometimes it's simple and stupid-- I had a really good sandwich at lunch, someone complimented me on my shoes, I had a rare good hair day-- but remembering a compliment on my shoes is far better than remembering that I failed a quiz or something that day.  If I'm going to remember anything about what I do, I'd so much rather remember the good over the bad.

This exercise is helping me learn to change, which is the ultimate goal for me.  In the beginning of OGTAD, it took a while for me to learn not to harp on the bad things.  Setting the rule for myself that I wasn't even allowed to mention any specific bad things that happened was difficult for me, so much more difficult than I would have imagined.  Of the optimist/pessimist viewing of life, I like to consider myself a realist that encourages others towards optimism but never quite gets there for my own point of view.  OGTAD is teaching me to not really be an optimist so much as to learn to recognize the positive blessings in my life, embrace them, be grateful, and look at the world through this new set of eyes.