I don't feel 18

I know it's not like your birthday comes by and suddenly a switch is flipped and you're supposed to feel OLDER. I'm not sure what older feels like. For the last couple of years, older feels like having less of a clue about everything, being less sure--and not necessarily in a bad way. I'm not saying I even want to feel noticeably more mature, even though I'm now legally now responsible for myself.

It's just weird. I remember being younger and thinking I'd have it all together at 18. Well, 16, too. I just assumed I'd be grown up and together. Sorry, 9-year-old self, you must be a little disappointed.

Or maybe you're not. I'm not. I think.

cleaning my glasses

I cleaned my bedroom window today.
It's something that I've been meaning to do and thus procrastinating doing for a long time. I'm not sure what I was waiting for, exactly, because every time my mom volunteered to do it, I told her I'd get around to it. And, though I wish I hadn't waited, I'm kind of glad I did.

I find it so absurdly easy to look back at everything that's happened and wish certain things had happened earlier but, not surprising to you if you watch Doctor Who, time doesn't work that way. If I had gotten out the bleach and Windex and cleaned my stupid window a month ago, I might not have had the same, staring-through-the-clear-glass-at-the-blue-sky epiphany, type moment that I experienced today. I might have been listening to a different song on repeat which would have led me down a different train of thoughts. It might not have been so simply satisfying.

Sometimes, things are worth the wait.

And just like that, my list of things to remember for this year is constantly growing. It started with 'chill your pants' and grew to 'cheer up and chill your pants.' I'm happy to now add 'clean your glasses' to the list.
When you're looking through the same window for a year, it's so effortless to think everyone is looking through the same one and grow accustomed to its flaws. It's so ridiculously difficult to keep in mind that your window or your lenses can get smudgy and warped--that is, until you push a cloth across the surface and check out how much dust you picked up.

I'm always laughing about how sad it is when I put on my glasses and my sight is just as horrible as it was without them. I think we all need to be reminded to look through different, cleaner lenses sometimes.

the art of quitting

"It's so hard to leave--until you leave. Then it's the easiest thing in the goddamned world." - Paper Towns, John Green

Same goes for me and quitting. When we're told as children all those lies about how winners never quit and quitters never try or whatever the hell it was, they're really just that--lies. The less simple truth is that there aren't hard and fast rules about quitting and the people who do it. It's not always about surrender. Sometimes, quitting is an act of self respect.

small world syndrome

You know how when crazy coincidences happen and people attribute it to 'small world?' I disagree with that. It's a huge world, so huge I sometimes fail to grasp, and--population wise--constantly growing.

We're the small ones. There's this feeling I get from staring out at the ocean that I can best describe as a glorious insignificance. It's like this beautiful realization that in the bigger picture, my life is pretty tiny. In my lifetime, I'll try not to consume more than I need and I'll hopefully help people ad do some good ad maybe it'll even out. Maybe all my positive contributes will cancel out what I take away. But looking at the human race broadly, my impact will be pretty small.

Some people may fall into a depression of sorts upon realizing this, feel lost in a sea of purposelessness. Like in  a book called Nothing, where this group of seventh graders are faced with the idea that nothing matters and are not able to live with it. They go to incredible lengths to prove to themselves and each other that something in life has meaning.

What people fail to appreciate, in commenting that it's a small world, is how naturally interconnected we are I feel like one of the biggest failings of the human race is to put things in perspective. Like, if we just saw that throwing your toxic garbage in a landfill that leeches into the groundwater that goes to  the rivers where the fish we eat swim, would we be this thoughtless?

So, to me, it's not that strange when it turns out that my dad and my friend's dad went to the same highschool in a small town on the other side of the country and other weird connections reveal themselves.

It's not a small world; sometimes it just feels like it.

stories

I have a love affair with--you guessed it--stories. We're getting more tangled up in each other, too, as I realize how radically different my life would be without them. If I was dating stories, I would probably advise myself to cool off because this relationship may be just a tad unhealthy.

Yet I don't think about these facts until it's 11:30 at night after five sixths of a Star Wars marathon and I'm gesticulating wildly, telling the most epic tale of babysitting that I've ever told, to my third (and hopefully last) audience. I'm smiling and laughing and cringing and feeling everything and everyone is looking at me and we're so in the moment and I get so hopeful because storytelling is such a beautiful thing about being human and being alive and can't it just be like this all the time? Why can't everyone keep smiling because I'm saying the right thing?

I love making people laugh. There are these constant moments of doubt that I'm not actually as funny as people tell me because most of the time I haven't half a clue what I'm saying or where it's coming from. And sometimes my humour is mean which is a rather unfortunate side effect. It's so hard to create jokes that laugh with rather than at.

But I'm trying. With every word that I say, I'm improving my craft of this incredibly human activity. Every story, every blog, every chapter of my neglected novels has gotten me a little better at the thing that I love the most.

I don't consider myself exceptional at lying like John Green but I think I'm good at telling stories. And even if I'm not, I won't be stopping any time soon. I don't even think I know how.