Family Dinner

I hate when the mix of dinner crowd forces me in the middle of a group full of loud personalities, taking up the conversation with their empty, echoing words. They fill up the chairs with their bodies and the conversation with their bellowing, and those of us small in both voice and stature are left to sit quietly by, spooning rice into our mouths and wishing we were anywhere else.

It's not that I don't have input. It's just my words seem to emerge from my mouth, a few octaves lower than I intend, and escape into the battlefield that is the colliding sound waves above the dinner table. Mine are small, feeble warriors and quickly surrender to the pulsing sounds reverberating around the plastic cups of Mountain Dew and Diet Pepsi. Frustrated, I just sit there, replacing the words on the tip of my tongue with the bland food that people seem to think defines my personality.

I am so close to the people next to me that we can hardly eat without our elbows hitting; we are so close I think they might be able to hear my thoughts, tearing each new loudmouth comment apart for its ignorance and depravity, but it's really just envy because people are looking at them when they speak and responding, and that's all I really want. But I know my neighbors can't hear what is happening in my brain because they don't even hear what I choose to vocalize.

I know it isn't true. I know that some personalities are always going to win out, claiming the entire market, making it seem as if they have the only personality worth having. The only way to be. Social, exhaustively happy. I know that I'm as valid as them, as interesting as them, as important. But somehow that certainty just isn't enough to make that hour bearable; I just wait.

I wait until I can pour all the bottled up thoughts onto a page, onto a screen. Sustained by an eternally captive audience, I can release what nobody else cares to take from me. Perhaps I don't have a voice in a crowd so I have the words necessary to move my pen across the page. Maybe I'm meant to be reclusive, and I'm just fighting my nature to no avail. Maybe my dinnertime companions are unwittingly providing me with a livelihood, a reason to live.

Cautiously optimistic, I must accept my fate. Channel Salinger. Write because it's so hard to talk, and maybe one day, they will be sad they never listened, and finally read.

Password Please?

As snow days put me in a cleaning mood (or as in a cleaning mood as I'm capable of achieving), I ended up going through my computer files and deleting extraneous junk cluttering my aging hard drive.

In a file reserved for random writings, aptly titled "Writings," there are many documents. Most of these documents are unfinished pieces of crap, with inspirations long forgotten and trains of thought derailed. I vaguely remember writing most of them, though there is one curious file I don't remember. It is ever-so helpfully titled "stuff."

But when you click "stuff," a prompt appears asking for a password. I apparently password protected this file. I am not even sure how to do that, but I guess I knew at one time. I wonder how many similar skills I have forgotten. I know I have forgotten the password to access this file.

It is a very strange thing to be locked out of something you created yourself. I'm not sure who I was hiding it from, considering nobody uses this computer but me. I am also not sure of what sort of sensitive information I would deem it necessary to password-protect. This all has me very curious as to what I wrote there.

Lately, I have been very critical of my fourteen year old brother's illogical secrecy, but here is a nice example of my own. I bet that file and his facebook page contain many similar contents, and perhaps he will forget the password to his eventually as well.

My file also goes to illustrate what I've been trying to tell him about his adolescent woes--what seems so important then, important enough to set up security measures, is easily forgotten in a few year's time. I am sure what is written there was very pressing at fourteen, but is now laughable and probably embarrassing.

It is easy to make these presumptions about a time when it's easy to criticize yourself, but I'm sure the idea remains the same for any other stage of life as well. I will probably look back on this blog some day with absolute shame; I already do at some of the older posts.

But that doesn't invalidate the feelings I had at the time when I decided to commit them to hypothetical paper. Maybe my new prospective on them actually validates them; it shows growth in how I view the world and prioritize.

There's an essay that most English students around here have to read called "Dwellings." The author describes the experience of reading all her past journals and seeing past versions of herself almost as characters in the various books. They are all herself, but such variations of herself that they almost seem foreign. Very relatable, but not the same person. This concept is lost on many students who read the essay for class--they can only envision one possible conception of themselves, and they believe they've been this singular person their whole lives.

Anybody who writes at all or journals themselves knows this is simply not true. The essay resounded greatly with me; she is absolutely correct. Every time I read something I've written, I can definitely recognize myself in it, but it is not the same me that is reading it. I find that a highly valuable part of writing at all.

So past me that felt the need to password protect obviously wasn't thinking about future me's need to learn from my past writing. And she is also very good at thinking of hard to guess passwords.

Some Things Never Change

Yesterday, my grandma excitedly ushered me to a drawer in her spare bedroom and produced a letter addressed to her in my ten year old handwriting. I knew embarrassment was nigh.

I'd written the letter just before my family moved from Texas to Virginia. It was in two different colors of gel pen, written on the back of the notebook paper, and a few words were misspelled, but I could see my current self plain as day in the childish cursive handwriting.

It was written with weirdly adult phrasing. "They're shipping us out today," I began like the enlisted protagonist of a Tim O'Brian short story. I continued, "Sorry I didn't write earlyier (I'm ashamed, fifth grade me. Very ashamed.) as I was tied down with school work." I was tied down with school work. I was ten. Some things never change.

I said I had to pack up my stuff for our "diddy move." Eighteen year old me doesn't even know what a diddy move is, or why ten year old me put quotation marks around it. Dad explained it to me, and I did use the quotation marks correctly. That redeems some of the earlier spelling errors.

That letter is a perfect example of why I think writing is so important. I would never remember the mindset of myself eight years ago without it. The feelings that seem so monumental one moment are completely forgotten the next. I don't remember writing that letter at all, but while I was reading it, I was sucked back into that time of my life in a way I wouldn't do without that small reminder.

It also goes to show you that despite all the changes people undergo, there are parts of us that just stay the same. If I wrote those two paragraphs right now, I would probably phrase some of it the same. I'm proud of how mature I sounded, even if I don't remember it.

Grandma carefully tucked the letter back in her drawer, remembering the old me, hugging the current me. I'm glad both mes could bring her joy, and I'm glad that's something else that will never change.

Eggs in a Basket

I have been struggling lately, for the first time in a long time, about what I want I want to do for the rest of my life. It is no longer a distant thought, something hazy in the distance to work toward in tiny steps, a small talk question made by distant relatives. It is real and it is now and I need to figure some things out. I don't like jumping into anything without my head clear and certain, especially not something this important.

Lots of small inhibitions nag at my subconscious when I think of possible careers, and I've lost sight of the big pictures I think.

The big picture that's been most alluring as of late is teaching. But why?

There's something about teaching people to write that appeals to me. While there are always some people who just don't care to learn, there are others who have been robbed of the opportunity. There is the person that has a writer within them, but nobody's taken the time to bring him or her out. I want to bring the writers out.

Once the intimidation is gone and they get past the "I'm just not a writer phase" they begin to see the merits in it. Expressing yourself is not as easy as Madonna makes it seem; people simply never learn how to do it. It opens up a world to them, a deeper world that connects them to humanity in ways they didn't know existed.

I also like watching confidence build. I like helping people own their words, realize they have thoughts that matter and the ability to articulate them. I love when somebody starts tutoring scared, nervous, and unsure and starts coming smiling, proud, and anticipatory. They can't wait to show what they've accomplished. They're actually excited.

I feel like that's the most efficient and humanitarian thing I have the ability to do.

But is it at the compromise of my own writing? That is the last thing I am willing to give up. But I don't like putting all my eggs in the basket of me, my writing, my career hinging on my unproven abilities. I feel safer cultivating the abilities of others.

I know it wouldn't be such a stretch to do both, but it seems like I have to somehow choose which takes priority now. I've spent 18 years working on me. Maybe the best way to improve myself is to help improve others?

And I'm not even into a college yet.

A Mini Sociologic Theory on the Pyschology of Writers

I recently developed a theory about amateur writers (which applies loosely to professional ones occasionally).

There are only two types of beginning writers: level one and level two. These levels are easily distinguishable upon reading a piece of their work. Do keep in mind my definition of amateur writer. This is a person with a burgeoning interest in the art of written word; they are generally heavy readers and pretty nerdy. They are unpublished, unsure, and possibly mentally unstable for fantasizing about a career in writing.

Level one writers are characterized by conventions. In general, their works are thinly veiled rewrites of what they like to read. Twilight nerds write vampire fiction, fantasy novels, with the root of what they wish their lives were like at the core (dashing significant other, respect, power, beauty). Video games nerds write the plots of video games, just with more dialogue and less actual shooting. Realistic fiction readers write stories about poor people becoming famous singers and divorces and funerals. Eighty percent of the time, somebody wakes up at the end of these stories because everything is a damn dream.

Level two writers hate level one stories. They get a smug sense of superiority from reading the same five page tale of the first day working at a grocery store, where the zaniest non-zany things happen. They seek something more from their writing. They want to present metaphysical concepts, new perspectives, complex characters. Stories you have to read twice, with multi-layered allegories and names with hidden meaning. The problem is, they aren't good enough to write like that. They strive for the next Hemingway short story, and come up with something told from the perspective of a tree, a dog, or a teddy bear. It just creates a whole new set of cliches by trying to escape what is cliche.

I've been horribly caught between these two levels for a few years now. I know I can write the formulaic level one story with an acceptable level of competence. But I want to do better. Sadly, I do not possess the life experience, writing experience, and even reading experience to successfully execute my inherently lofty goals. The result is a story aiming for something higher, coming up short, and coming up sounding worse than the average to horrible level one stories. Average, average, average. They usually have titles like "A Mini Sociologic Theory on the Psychology of Writing."

I wonder what it takes to push somebody past this level one place. Is it simply the amount of talent one is born with that dictates what their pen will produce? Is it, as I'm partial to believe, all about experience levels? Do I need to pull a Mark Twain and float down a river?

I think I just need to keep writing. As every professional writer says to varying degrees and phrasing, you have to write a bunch of crap before you can get to the good stuff. I hope the elusive and mysterious level three is lurking beyond the cliche, trite, and self-important junk that stems continuously from my unripened brain.

Sweet Reassurance

Today, I got a taste of my possible future. I liked it. This is reassuring.

I liked the frantic feeling in the air that signifies something is about to happen. People in suits running everywhere. The abnormal events just make everything feel different; the air is different. I love that feeling. I want to chase that feeling.

And document it. I was afraid that my notes were inadequate and that I wouldn't be able to force the words out of my head and onto the paper. I sat, staring for a brief moment at the blinking cursor, impatiently urging me to write something. I started to type. It was rough at first, but the words did come. And they weren't half bad.

After my teacher read them, she made sure I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. I confidently answered yes. I'm glad those words were in me, that confidence was in me, that passion is in me. This was the kind of reassurance I needed to give me the motivation to power through this year. I was losing faith in my ability to do much of anything. Today, I tasted a little of my old fervor.

Now I'm excited for the future. Temporarily, at least. =]