Why I Quit Hashtagging My 100 Happy Days

Before I begin, I want to make it very clear that I don't have any issues with anyone else who does this challenge.  I think it's great.  I think it's got a good goal and is decreasing world suck.  Please, please don't take this blog as a criticism of the challenge.  I just want to explain why it wasn't a good challenge for me.  And it's not because I'm pregnant.  Which I'm not.

A brief run-down, gentle readers:

The #100happydays challenge is an online, pre-set goal for its participants.  Clicking the link will bring you to the challenge's website with a more detailed description of this quick oversight.  Basically, participants agree to take a picture of something that makes them happy every day for 100 days in a row.  They share each picture daily on the social media platform of their choosing, including the hashtag #100happydays (so the challenge creators can follow it) or a similar hashtag of their choosing.

I saw this challenge and jumped at it, all but foaming at the mouth.  You may remember (or not; I don't know how important remembering the banalities of my life is to you) that a couple of years ago, I made a similar challenge for myself, which I lovingly called OGTAD (One Good Thing a Day).  I wrote a short journal entry about something good pertaining to my day, every day, for an entire year.  I had started that challenge for myself because I was in a very unhappy place in my life and was looking for anything that would help me find some sort of light.

So when I saw a one hundred day picture challenge, I was excited.  100 days, compared to my previous 366?  Piece of cake.  A quick snapshot taken on my phone instead of a page of writing?  Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.  Sharing it on any of my SMS, to which I am already so disturbingly attached because I love oversharing?  Bring it on.  I immediately made myself an instagram account (a SMS I had previously been blatantly ignoring) and started hashtagging away.

By the end of the first week, I was kind of stressed out.  By the end of the second week, I was just plain unhappy.  So after Day 14, I quit.

I had complained to a couple of people about wanting-not-wanting to quit, because apparently, 71% of people quit because they "don't have enough time."  I did not want to be part of that statistic.  And I don't actually consider my failure, though I'd rather not call it that, to be included in that 71%, because it certainly wasn't for lack of time.

Here's a list of reasons why the #100happydays were making me unhappy.  But, to be fair to the challenge, these are MY OWN ISSUES and are definitely NOT issues with the challenge.  So for every point of mine about why the challenge didn't work for me, I'm including a counterpoint as to how I could have avoided it to continue on with the challenge more happily:

• Instagram:  Why did I choose to jump into a daily challenge by using a platform I had never experienced before?  That was probably my first mistake.  But I didn't want to be blasting these pictures on facebook, where I felt they might get annoying.  (I don't know why I thought a daily picture would be less annoying anywhere else.)  Do I actually think other people's daily pictures are annoying?  No.  I just have such a big issue of projecting on other people that I feel like ONLY my daily pictures would be considered annoying.  Narcissus, meet your reflection.
• I could have made my account private.  I could have submitted the photos to the website itself, and then no one would have had to see them.  I made a bad platform choice for myself, even though the challenge offers ways to avoid this.

• Hashtags:  I had never used a hashtag before, not even ironically, until my first picture on Day 1. It kind of made me feel uncomfortable.  Sometimes I tried to be funny, and sometimes I just tried to hashtag how I thought I was supposed to hashtag, but clearly, I'm slipping into a generational gap or something, because I just don't like them.  I feel silly, and the sillier I felt, the sillier I tried to make my hashtags, but I just feel weird about them.  I don't know.
• I only had to use the hashtag #100happydays.  I was not obligated to come up with any other hashtags besides that one.  I didn't have to use them at all, if I had just sent the pics in via email to the website.

• Tangibility: I felt like all the things that made me happy during the day had to be something tangible... otherwise, how could I take a picture of it?  If my favorite song came on the radio, how was I suppose to express that in picture?  Should I take a picture of my stereo... while I was driving?  Should I write down the lyrics and take a picture of them?  You see where I'm going.
• As noted above, there are clearly options of how to overcome the tangibility/intangibility issue.  I was probably just being lazy and bitter towards the challenge.

• Immediacy:  This was one of the most frustrating issues that I had.  I felt like I was constantly having to be on the lookout for something (tangible!) that I could hurriedly take a picture of in order to get that picture up and make my day count.  I'd be eating a piece of chocolate at noon and think, "Oh, my God, what if this is the happiest thing to happen to me all day?  I better take a picture."  Then, an hour or two later, I'd see a pretty flower and think, "Does this make me happier than the chocolate?  I better take a picture."  And so on.  Soon, my phone was full of stupid pictures of things that were kind of pointless, and I felt like I was cheating because I was saving up all these happy moments, making them competitive, instead of just picking one to post. 
• Immediacy, Part 2:  Let's use an actual example from my instagram: Michael and I went out to eat at the Blue Crab one night.  That made me happy, so I took a picture of the menu and posted it with my happy hashtag.  An hour later, as we were eating, the sun sank into a gorgeous sunset, which some of you may know can make me happier than just about anything.  I loooove sunsets.  But I had already posted my happy picture, so I got this feeling like I had wasted it.  And that is not the point of this challenge.
• I know it's called Instagram, but that doesn't mean I couldn't have taken part in the fascinating subculture of the latergram hashtagging.  The competitiveness I felt between storing up my happy moments or "wasting" one was a product of my own internal frustration.

So what does that all come down to?  I was stressed out, every day, trying to seek out happy moments instead of just letting them come to me.  I was hoarding them, or trying to make normal things seem extra happy, enough so that I could post them and feel like I could mark off the day.  

When I was journaling, I didn't worry about anything.  I would get to the end of my day, sit back, and reflect on everything that had happened.  I could write about one good thing that stuck out to me, or about multiple things.  I could write at my leisure, and no one else had to be annoyed or bothered by it. I didn't feel like I was sticking it in anyone's faces.

The challenge made me more miserable than happy, and ultimately, that was why I quit.  Does this mean it's a bad challenge?  Absolutely not.  It simply wasn't the structure that I personally need to identify my happiness.  I know how to do that for me, and it was my own fault that I tried to force myself into a box that I should have known wouldn't fit me.  Could I have struggled along with it for 100 days?  Of course.  But the goal is to be happier, and I am definitely happier without having to worry about hashtagging it.

Walking the Line Between "Yes" and "No"

Here's the problem that constantly wages war inside my head: I am, first and foremost, a people pleaser.  I am also very fearful.

So what does that mean, and why is that a problem for me?

As a people pleaser, I constantly feel the need to say "yes."  I want-slash-need people to like me, and I want-slash-need people to tell me that.  God forbid someone thinks poorly of me.  It's the kind of thing that keeps me up at night as I analyze every detail of every single thing I did for the entire day, picking out my worst moments and replaying them endlessly.  I think about things I did weeks, months, years ago and relive them all in agony.  I'm a perfectionist, I'm a people-pleaser... and I'm exhausted by it.  I want to do, say, and be the things that will make people like me, for whatever reason.  Whatever drives this need is still a mystery to me that I'm trying to solve, but whatever it may be, it's there.

On quite the opposite end of the spectrum, I'm kind of not awesome with interacting with people, which makes it all the harder at getting people to like me (or FEELING like they like me).  I fear change.  I hate being outside of my comfort zone, which is teeny-tiny to begin with.  I'm an introvert, have been my entire life, way before Buzzfeed and tumblr and social media in general felt the need to tell me all the ways I could identify this about myself.  It's almost like they're trying to make it a cool and desirable thing to be, so, score one for Erica?

But what this creates for me is this terrifying torture of being caught between "yes" and "no."  I desperately want to say yes, but I am constantly drawn towards saying no.  And whatever decision I finally decide upon always feels like the wrong one.  Yes, once I get through it, I usually tell myself I'm glad I picked whatever I did, and I learned whatever I was meant to learn, but honestly, it's an exhausting process.

I'm trying, really hard.  I'm trying to say yes more often to the things that frighten me, and I'm trying to say no more often to the things I know aren't in my best interests or worth my anxiety.  I really am trying.  Please forgive the shakiness in my voice and any hesitation I might have prior to giving you an answer that scares me.

This has been a pointless post by yours truly.

NaNoWriMo, Yer Breakin' My Heart: A Self-Indulgent Look at My 2013

In November, I was lamenting not "being able" to participate in NaNoWriMo, having had such an awesome experience last year.  I was unknowingly still subscribed to the weekly emails and still following NaNo groups on tumblr, so I kept getting blasted right in the feels with memories of how much fun it was and how much I wanted to do it again.  Naturally, this sent me on a nostalgic spiral, which made me reflect on the past year, which made me think of this ridiculous blog post title, which made me gigglesnort to myself, which made me want to write up a real reflection.  But I try to save my yearly reflections until after Christmas.

It's after Christmas now, and I'm kind of running out of time for a year-end reflection at the end of the year.

I could look back on a year filled with so many intense world-events and reflect on humanity as a whole... but I'm lazy and narcissistic.  So join me, if you will, on a selfish and self-entitled look back on my past year, in a post that has next to nothing to do with the stupid title.  Seriously, though, all of the next bullet points are about me and my life and my problems and my feelings, so put on your stalker cap if you wanna join me on this ride.

• In December of last year, I graduated from UL with a cumulative 4.0 GPA and a big girl job offer waiting at my feet.  Livin' the dream.

• Just a few short weeks later, in January, I confessed to the people nearest and dearest to me how unhappy I was at my job, and how what I had suspected for a couple of years was a reality: I had grown to dislike the field I graduated in and no longer wanted to work in advertising.  This was an agonizing realization to accept about myself.  There were a lot of things I had to come to peace with in order to make a decision and move forward.  I dealt with it the way I deal with most problems: a complete rejection of sleep and a lot of crying to myself.  I was miserable, confused, angsty, scared, and honestly, upset with myself for not following the beautiful, shiny path that I felt had been laid out for me.

• Very soon after coming to a decision about my job and how to move forward, Michael and I got engaged.  Became betrothed.  Sold my soul?  But really, I was ecstatic, which just doesn't seem like a strong enough word to describe how truly happy and ready I was.

• And then I officially quit my job.  

• I spent the next couple of months tackling the initial hurdles of wedding planning, as well as starting a job search, and then deciding to end that job search.  I also felt like I could actually feel everyone's image of me crumbling and deteriorating before their eyes.  But I'm excellent at projecting.  I just felt like I failed so many people, whether that was true or not, which is most likely my own sense of failure in and of myself.  People don't just graduate from college with their dream job and then leave it all behind for... nothing.  Or what wasn't nothing, but sure felt like it.

• I was also hard at work writing and editing the first draft of my "novel."  This is where the "nothing" comes into play.  How do you talk about doing something you love when you have so little to show for it?  "Hi, I'm Erica.  I quit my job to write a book that I'm just sure is going to be published.  No other aspiring author has ever had these hopes and dreams like mine before, so I just know I'm going to be the one who makes it!"  Right?  Right...?

• People assumed I was "taking the year off" or "resting" or otherwise just being lazy.  In reality, I was working from home at two different part-time jobs, attempting to write that novel, and planning a wedding.  But it still felt like my life was on hold.  I was also on Accutane, a medication for acne with the most insane side effects, which made the crazy cogs in my head turn even faster than usual.  It was a long, tough journey that finally ended in October.

• Between April and August, Michael and I house hunted so intensely, it was like we were actually trying to hunt something (except neither of us brought any guns or spears to open houses... though maybe we should have).  Finally, finally, FINALLY, by August, we (and by we, I mean Michael) purchased our new-to-us house.

• We spent the next several months renovating and buying a couple of pieces of furniture, but it wasn't until December that the house was in good enough shape for Michael to finally move in.  The house was in perfectly livable condition and was truly move-in ready when we bought it, but our renovations to really make it *our* house took a lot longer than we expected.

• Somewhere in that time, I turned 23, I think.  I'm not sure of my own age anymore.

• And there was still a wedding being planned!  And lots of ridiculous wedding-related issues to deal with to make sure everything was working out for everyone involved.

Towards the end of the year, I was so busy, I realized I hadn't touched my novel in a couple of months. Then the NaNoWriMo reminders and emails started their attack, and I felt so unconnected from the 2012 Erica.  However, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.  2013 Erica had (has) a lot more on her plate.  Writing remains just as important, but there are other things in the mix now.  

For all the negative bullet points, 2013 was actually great.  Every year is actually great.  We get 365 days full of greatness and sadness that all total up to a year, and as easy as it is to remember the tough parts (see aforementioned bullet points), there are still so many incredible things.  The thing is that the tiny good parts are so many and so small that they're more difficult to remember than the bigger, more noticeable damaging parts of the year.  But just the knowledge that there were so many good but small parts to the year, so many that I can't remember them all, assures me that 2013 was, in fact, a great year.

Thanks for reading all about my life, you stalker.  Now, go make some more little, fantastic moments to really wrap up* your year in style.

*I actually really struggle with the concept of the end of the year as being a "fresh start" because I strongly believe fresh starts can begin whenever and don't have to wait for the end of the year.  I do not like getting all reflect-y because the planet doesn't know that it's made a full revolution around the sun; there is no stop/start line in space to mark a year; it's all made up by us and is time even linear or is it really cyclical I DON'T KNOW OKAY there's just a lot of pressure to get reflect-y on this particular day and lo this post shows how I have succumbed.

Walking Home

Before I can truly begin this blog post, I need to remind everyone that I am a quote snob.  I'm a quote elitist.  I am very selective about the quotes I choose to admire, and I am very quick to rip apart a widely accepted or beloved quote.  I'm just cynical that way.

However, I'd also like to acknowledge that I am a big fan of collecting quotes on my Pinterest quote board (despite my shame in even having a Pinterest board).  The majority of the quotes I pin involve some sort of advice about finding or making peace, being kind, appreciating life, and the like.  I see my quote board as a sort of virtual sanctuary.  I relish these quotes; I bask in them and let the words settle gently in my being.  I am eternally searching for a way to be nicer, gentler, better.  I repeat these quotes to myself as an ongoing mantra; I have to remind myself to "always be kinder than you feel."  I wake up and tell myself to "start each day with a grateful heart."  I talk to someone out loud and think all the while, "Be humble; you could be wrong."  I'm not going to just get out of bed and suddenly, magically, become a better person.  I have to constantly remember to actively BE better.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, I can move on to the real point of this blog post.  Whilst whittling my precious life away by staring semi-catatonically at the dull glow of my computer screen and exercising only my scrolling fingers, I came across this quote on good old Pinterest:

"We're all just walking each other home."

-Ram Dass

I've never had such a strong reaction to something so simple.  I got chills.  My eyes immediately filled with tears.  Something just sort of-- clicked.

This is how I want to live my life.  I want to walk everyone home.

I don't know who Ram Dass is, and I don't know the context of this quote.  (I did a quick Google search but didn't actually click any links... because I'm a bad blogger who doesn't do her research beforehand and would easily fail out of journalism school.)  All I know is that those seven words mean everything to me.

Okay, so this blog post could get very religious, very fast (very QUICKLY, I know).  I could make the argument that "home" is the "kingdom of heaven."  There's an easy writing route to take, especially with a certain big event coming up in my life in just two months, in which I could rehash and reexplain the whole concept of marriage as being the singular goal of getting one's significant other to heaven.  Marriage should be two people walking each other home.  Y'all follow, right?

But I don't want to limit this just to married people.  This quote applies to everyone, every minute of every day.  We know that this life is a journey; we've heard endless metaphors about roads less traveled and choosing the right path and symbolic forks in symbolic roads and so on and so forth.  Emerson reminds us that life is a journey, not a destination.  And I feel like we've been so conditioned to swallow these sentiments, to enjoy ourselves on this ride, to not worry about where we're going, that we forget there is a destination.  Somewhere, there's a home.

Home.  What a beautiful word, with such a peaceful connotation.  No matter how messy or crazy (or under constructiony) your HOUSE is, somewhere is home for you.  And I like to think that after our life's journey is over, there is a home waiting for us.  ("But Erica, I don't believe in heaven or hell!"  "Erica, when you said this post COULD get religious, you were kind of implying that it WOULDN'T!"  Just hold on a second and hear me out, okay?)

This life is a long walk.  I don't care if you do or do not believe there's a home waiting for you at the end of it.  I hope you do, but if you don't, I think we can all agree on the long walk detail.  

So let's keep each other company.  Let's carry each other's books on this walk.  Let's hold hands and look both ways when we cross streets.  Let's warn someone if they don't see a pothole or a tree root.  Let's take the scenic route.  Let's run through neighbors' sprinklers on hot days.

Don't let anyone walk home alone.  Buddy system, you know?  Nod at strangers and give them a friendly greeting on this long walk home.  Push the crosswalk button for somebody and let them go ahead of you.  Look at the flowers in nearby gardens; study the grass pushing through the cracks in the sidewalk.  Walk.  Amble.  Stroll.  

Can you imagine a literal walk home where you see someone walking faster than you, or better than you, so you run as quickly as you can to catch up and push him or her down from behind?  Now this person crumpled at your feet, and you step over without looking down and continue on your long walk home.  Can you imagine a walk home where someone's walking too slowly, blocking your path, and instead of politely walking around him or her or excusing yourself, or even offering to walk with him or her and chat a little, you just shove this person out of the way?  I worry about the people I may have pushed down in my life.  I worry that I have shoved too many people because they were too slow for my pace.

Alright, have I tortured this poor metaphor enough?  Has it been properly extended?  I just had such a strong reaction to this quote that I wanted to share it.  And I can't share anything without extensively rambling about it.

Allow me to leave you with this last thought:  If I get the chance to walk home with you, I hope that I am good company.  I hope that I get to learn something from you on our walk, and I hope that I have something to offer.  I hope to make the walk as enjoyable as possible.  It would be an honor for me to walk with you.  

10 Things Wedding Planning is Teaching Me

1.  That feeling you're supposed to get when you try on the perfect wedding dress?  The one where you just know?  The rush of elation from having found your dress?  It's real.  From the mouth of the biggest I-don't-want-to-be-a-princess cynic... it's real.

2.  At the end of the day, you're still going to be marrying your best friend.  I get this.  But I want to make sure that all of my guests are having a great time, which is why I still allow myself to get stressed over details and things that "don't matter" to the wedding itself.  I'm the luckiest girl ever; I get to walk away from the evening with the greatest prize, despite what goes right or wrong for everyone else.  And that's why I want to make sure things go as right as possible for everyone else.  No one else is walking away with that prize, so I want them to at least have cool photo booth props and delicious cake.  You should not have to feel guilty about worrying over what music to play, but it's probably important to remember that all you really have to do is provide an open bar.  Most likely, the other details won't be noticed as much.  As my mom says, "No one's going to remember what kind of food you served or what the bridesmaids' dresses looked like."  But if it makes you feel productive to stress and worry over the details, then by all means, stress and worry over the details.

3.  It's not really the bride's day.  It's the parents of the bride's day, the grandparents of the bride's day, the people who have watched the bride grow up for years's day... and then maybe it's the bride's day.  But everyone will say it's the bride's day, so just take it, and let people believe what they want.

4.  If you're not a glitzy girl, it's okay to not be glitzy on your wedding day.  Don't let anyone tell you that you HAVE to be on this one big special day.  If you're not a glitzy girl, it's okay to actually be glitzy on your wedding day.  Don't let anyone tell you that you're not being "true to yourself" or that you don't look like you.  If you're not a glitzy girl, it's okay to be glitzy on any damn day of the year.  It's okay to be whatever you want whenever you want, as long as it makes you happy, and as long as you're not actually hurting anyone else in that good old pursuit of happiness.

5.  There is so much free stuff to be had in the wedding industry.  I've got tote bags, magazines, samples, and more.  You can keep it if you want.  Make a big old wedding box and stuff it all in there.  Organize it in a scrapbook.  But you don't have to keep it.  You can throw it away without even opening it and without feeling guilty.

6.  The groom (or whomever you are marrying) should really get some sort of say in *almost* every decision.  But if he says he really doesn't care, then let it go, and make the decision yourself.  He will voice his opinion when he has one, and it's up to you to actually listen to him.  It's easy to forget that this dude is actually a whopping 50% of the marriage thing.

7.  MARRIAGE and WEDDING are two distinct terms.  I don't think I should have to explain this any further.

8.  Be polite and respectful to your vendors; there is a very fine line in this particular industry between "boss" and "client."  You are not a bad person if you don't like a vendor's work or product; thank them for their time, and move on until you find something that you do like.  This is the way business works.  Interview as many as you can, ask as many questions as you can possibly conceive, and create a dialogue that works both ways.  They will have questions for you as well.  They have other clients/bosses.  They have a life outside of their career.  Function as two people in a symbiotic relationship, show them respect, and appreciate their work-- after all, you selected them.

9.  Be gracious and thankful to everyone involved in the wedding planning process.  Your friends have suffered through hours of you blathering about chair ties and invitations.  (Sorry, everyone.  Y'all really are the best.)  Your friends should always be patient with you in life (that's why they're your friends!), but they've probably adapted a dosage of extra patience with you during the wedding planning, and you need to be respectful of that and know when to dial it back.  Your family is doing their best with you as well.  Smile, answer the same questions you always get asked, and be grateful that they care enough to ask.  (Please let me take this opportunity to apologize to everyone in my life for when I haven't followed my own rule here.)

10.  Refer back to Item #2: at the end of the day, you're still going to be marrying your best friend.  Stop every now and then and appreciate the love that is flowing in from all around you to make this vision of yours something of a reality.  There is so much love.  Revel in it.

Secret Competitions

This is not an insightful post or a deep-thinker post or a soul-searching post.  This is a gloating post.

Fess up, y'all.  You are currently entered in a couple of secret competitions with others, except they don't know that they're in these competitions with you.  Don't lie.  You know what I'm talking about.

These competitions can cover a wide range of events.  Perhaps you are secretly racing the car next to you (until they turn at a street prior to your destination, in which case you win by default).  Maybe someone's reading the same book as you, and lo, you finish first.  Or maybe you are secretly battling to get better test scores than that one student in your class.  Maybe there's a new intern at work, which bumps you out of the "new employee" position, so you secretly compare your first few days to the intern's first few days to see who would win a "best new employee" competition.  (For the record, I also competed in a secret "best new employee" competition, and I SO WON.)

I am competing in dozens of secret competitions at any given moment.  I lose, a lot, but luckily for me, since the other person is unaware of these tournaments, I usually save face.  And I don't have to congratulate them on their victory, because they don't know about it.  It's kind of a win-lose situation for me (lose-win?).

Anyway, this blog post is brought to you by a recent victory of mine.  I have been competing against "Person X" (for the sake of anonymity and to keep this secret competition secret) for a couple of years. The thing about this competition is that we are very similar people, with very similar hopes and dreams, with very similar thought processes.  Person X has beaten me in this ongoing competition at nearly every turn.  Curse you, Person X.  But finally, for what I believe to be the first time, I BEAT PERSON X.  I examined something created by Person X as objectively as I could, and then it hit me: Person X did not deliver at Person X's usual standard.  And I compared my own work to Person X's work and to me, it was clear: I was the winner.  To my knowledge, I was growing and stretching and trying, and Person X was stagnant.  After years of just trying to measure up to Person X, I ultimately surpassed.  

Is Person X aware?  No.  Would I ever tell this to Person X or try in any way to make Person X feel bad?  Never.  Is this really healthy for me to do be doing all the time?  Er, probably not.  But all these secret competitions make me push myself.  We could argue that comparison is a really dangerous thing to do, but I like to think that I've got my competitive side somewhat under control, to a somewhat healthy degree.  Sadly, it's difficult to celebrate these triumphs because no one really knows what I'm talking about, but knowing in my mind that I "won" makes me happy.  And that's why it's good that these victories are secret.

I would never, ever put someone down or be so vain as to inform someone that I'm better than them, because Lord knows how often I actually lose these secret competitions.  I just try to use them to better myself in my personal life and use it as the push I need to strive to be the best I can be.  And this little victory march that I've been doing for the last day or so sure feels nice, like a little reward to remind myself that I don't need to be so hard on myself all the time.

This is not meant to be a mean post, or a nanny-nanny-boo-boo post.  This is meant to share with you all the sigh of relief I finally felt I earned after striving for so long.  I feel like I put myself down so often in my own head, like I try to hide any talent I might have in fear of hurting others, that it might be nice for a change to just-- you know?

Apologies for the rambling.  Looks like I wound up doing a bit of insightful soul searching without meaning to.  I win!

23:22

it smells not like coffee
but cappuccino
and tastes like goosebumps
erupting over cold flesh
raindrops fat and heavy
streaking over glass looking
like cracks waiting to deepen
little earthquakes, little fault lines
on the windshield

it's somewhere in the nasal cavity
where scent converts to taste
and taste runs down throats
to pits of stomachs to tips of fingers
thumbprints raised on edge
with anxiety at what they will
be forced to touch next
sinking their ridges in malleable metal
and leaving their marks

it sits heavy weighing down the cranium
and counterbalanced at the end of
the spinal cord, vertebrae waiting
to fall like dominos so they no longer
have to hold up the guilt of
bearing a human body that
sits purposeless and unfulfilled
throughout the day

waiting to crumble, waiting
to collapse, waiting to sink back
into the dust
from whence it all came


January 30, 2013