I was formatting my 5-years-in-progress novel last night, and I felt agonized by the whole process. Some nights (like two nights before last) it goes smooth as silk. Others, I want to toss this whole unpaid writer shebang out the window. Hence, the 5-years-in-progress thing.
I started outlining and writing the story in 2007, when I lived with my best friend and had a hot pink bedroom full of tossed-off bar outfits and booze bottles. I started living it long before; at about age nineteen I experienced a very different life from the domestic cupcake who now pens this healthy, hippie, happy blog. (Yes, I'm exaggerating, kind of. I will never really be that girl.) I think everyone comes of age at a certain time, and that it's a different number for different people, and for me it was certainly nineteen. My headspace back then was (cloudy and) creative, filled with lust for every little thing, and recklessly, horrifically fun, amidst quite a bit of tumult, which I think back then I harbored quite an addiction to.
Anyhow, the book was born of a million things and people and ideas, and of living in a midwestern post-factory town and in bars, and of being--or becoming--an enlightened fuck-up.
After I moved to Blissfield (oh, what an accurate name in so many ways) with Ben, it took me a couple of years to find my footing. I didn't touch the manuscript for a long time. It made me too sad. I stopped working at the bookstore and worked for a little while as a bank teller. If you know me personally, you'd attest that the last sentence is evidence of a total identity crisis on my part. I truly felt lost, but not in the good purple-haze way of yore.
Somehow, I found my way back to the book. And it sort of saved me, and maybe in a way that's why it's hard for me to be done with it. Allowing somebody to scrutinize something so deeply personal feels really scary. Over the years I have grown attached to all of my characters and to my little made-up Midwestern world.
Tonight, I felt inspired to look through a few things from the year I became me, the year where I started looking around and mentally scrapbooking snippets of life for later words in sentences in chapters in this mess of a thing I call a novel.
Here are pages of my '04 journal:
"It's okay to think you're fabulous."
-advice from a hedonistic young adult
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I wish I had done this every year, written out my yearly lessons and mantras. Maybe I will, from now on. In comparison, here are some things I learned (or believed) when I was 27:
-"You are not in the world. The world is in you." -Deepak Chopra
-You should be a constant learner. Learn about every passing curiosity. Learn how things are made, how things work, how things are, how you wish they were, and how you can change them. Knowledge really IS power.
-Going to college straight out of high school doesn't work for everybody, and sometimes you are better off waiting to go back until you have real reasons for being there in the first place, even if you're pregnant with your second child in 17 months and working full time and are married and have bills to pay.
-The busier you are, the more productive you will generally be or become.
-"Leading with your heart" is not always sound advice. Sometimes you gotta chuck that heart out of a rolled-down window and move the eff on.
-Fitness and nutrition are sexy. People who party too hard for too long are not sexy. Moderation!
-People generally don't judge you as much as you fear they do.
-Learning to say no to things that don't align with your top priorities makes life a bajillion times simpler.
-Becoming a mother is truly the most astounding experience. You realize your potential for being an unselfish person. You also see the world through brand new eyes.
-Whatever you think most about, you become.
-Anything is possible with a positive attitude.
-It's never as scary as you think it's going to be. Your mind contorts things out of your fear. Good news: you control your mind. Practice!
-Unfortunate events occur from time to time. You are always strong enough to handle them. You are, after all, a pillar of self-sufficiency. If looked at in the right light, all of these events are opportunities to discover who you really are.
-At the risk of sounding new-agey, there is a silent place in all of us that is infinitely wise and calm. Sometimes we have to shut up to find it.
-Regret is pointless. Move forward. Great advice from my cousin Jamie: "Remember, you did the best with what you had at the time." Isn't that so true? Hindsight's 20/20. Living in the present is, like, 20/500, but it's way more fun!
-You are only as old as you think you are. It is NEVER TOO LATE to be exactly who you want to be. My sister's freshman classes at Cleveland State were peppered with students of all ages, including seniors (as in citizens). My mother is 50 and teaches aerobics, spinning and linebacker classes. Take care of yourself, keep learning, and the world is your oyster.
-You never know when your kind word or your piece of advice or your shared story is exactly what someone else needs to hear. Be genuine. Share what you know.
-Wake up every day and go to sleep every night with gratitude. No matter how shitty things seem, there is ALWAYS something to be grateful for, and the more you appreciate what you have, the more you'll have to appreciate.
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MY PLAYLIST AT 19:
Saves the Day (Rocks Tonic Juice Magic)
The Get Up Kids (I'll Catch You)
Hole (Miss World)
Death Cab for Cutie (Title Track)
Death Cab for Cutie (Residential State Street)
Ben Kweller (Family Tree)
Modest Mouse (Bukowski)
Audio Learning Center (Hand Me Downs)
Armchair Martian (Jessica's Suicide)
Bright Eyes (Haligh, Haligh, a Lie, Haligh)
Pedro the Lion (When They Really Get to Know You, They Will Run)
Pedro the Lion (Options)
Tori Amos (Icicle)
Tori Amos (Northern Lad)
Logh (Yellow Lights Mean Slow Down, Not Speed Up)
Broken Social Scene (Anthems for a 17 Year Old Girl)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Rich)
The Stills (Gender Bombs)
The Stills (Still in Love Song)
Cursive (The Recluse)
The Shins (Girl Inform Me)
The Shins (So Says I)
The Shins (Pink Bullets)
Metric (Succexy)
Cat Power (Speak for Me)
Liz Phair (Flower)
Interpol (Stella was a Diver and She was Always Down)
MY PLAYLIST AT 27:
All of the above, plus a million others, including
Great Lake Swimmers (A Merge, a Vessel, a Harbor)
Margot & The Nuclear So & Sos (Jen's Bringin' the Drugs)
Pedro the Lion (Criticism as Inspiration)
Smith Westerns (Be My Girl)
Friendly Fires (Hurting)
Bon Iver (Skinny Love)
Metric (The Gates)
Nadia Ali/Sultan& Ned Shepard (Call My Name)
Mutemath (Spotlight)
Real Estate (Green Aisles)
Wild Nothings (Live in Dreams)
Doves (M62 Song)
Atlas Sound (Recent Bedroom)
Stateless (Bloodstream)
The Xx (Crystalised)
Lana del Rey (Without You)
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Money can't make you rich like experience can.
-penniless, experience-full 19 year old Lindsey Smith.
:)
