another one bites the dust

i was going to write this post about guilt - specifically spending too-much-money guilt, as christmas/pre-christmas chicago trip where i bought shoes that were way too expensive (more on that later, as they are beautiful) totally kicked my bank account's ass - but i have another kind of guilt today to confess. the jealous-of-those-i-love guilt.

this is a new year's thing i'm trying to do - get these bad feelings out into the blogging world, which will somehow make me feel better, because maybe-just-maybe one of you is feeling how i feel. comrodary in numbers, or whatever. you know, one of the 10 or so people that reads this blog.

another friend is married. she's amazingly hilarious and the tallest girl i know. she used to get me my milk at the sorority house and once came over to my house senior year of college to rescue me when i "thought i heard something." it turned out to be the oven. i shared cookies with her in humble gratitude. but she's engaged, and i'll be honest, i thought i would go first. of course that's what i said about the last friend, and the friend before that. there are still a few people holding out, but i swear if they beat me...

see, this is the problem, that gnawing jealousy that makes me think i should be growing up, too. i'm going to be 25 in a few days. it's a scary age, mostly because i can't say "early 20s anymore." it's "mid-20s" now. mid-20s. i'm complaining about being in my TWENTIES. that is the level of sad desperation this jealousy causes me to fall to.

from what i hear, 30s are better. 40s are supposedly fun, too. it would be nice to not feel like such a fuck-up all the time, to actually not only know what i'm doing, but not care if i don't, feelings that i've also heard come with age. and i am so, so happy for my friend, who is lovely and kind and deserves a beautiful future, which i'm sure she has in front of her.

i am. seriously.

i am a crap writer

i have had one dream ever since i was little, shining like a beacon that i held in front of me - i want to be a writer.

not just a writer, because in my mind that's not enough, but a published writer. and perhaps a critically-acclaimed published writer whom jhumpa lahiri really, really enjoys, but "just" a published writer would be good, too. in fact, that wold be great. that would be a dream come true.

i'm doing nanowrimo this year, that crazy thing people do every november. the idea is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. basically it's 30 days of hell, because writing is 20% actually writing and 80% overcoming the constant self-assessment that you are the very worst writer that ever lived, ever breathed, ever existed.

writing is not for the faint of heart. or the lacker of self-esteem. it's basically a cesspool for sadists. or masochists. or both.

and here's why - it's because i care so much that i hate everything i write. those papers in high school and college, the ones that i got a good grade on simply because i could string a sentence together, were no reflection of my writing ability. they were simple showcases of my talent for vomiting bullshit on a computer screen. and believe me, i was proud of them, especially after i had friends who spent hours on papers, only to get Cs and Ds. but those papers weren't anything to be really happy with, not on a writer's level. i didn't care about those papers about crappy books i hated or homoerotic, metaphysical feelings between two random Shakespeare characters. i cared about the short story i wrote for samrat that he absolutely massacred - and about the second draft that he praised. because for two seconds, just a wisp of time, i felt like i wasn't the very worst writer that ever walked the earth. i felt like my moments of talent could possibly come together to create something that some literary agent would connect with, and then beg and plea some publisher to publish. and it all might come true, this dream of me of opening up a box and seeing a book with my name on it and smelling that truly wonderful smell of fresh book - possibility, hope, pages and pages of words that are all mine.

so i keep writing this crappy story i'm working on, keep churning out words that sometimes remind me of the bullshit vomit, keep going, hoping the next sentence will be better, or the next, or the next one after that. it has to be. what i lack in self-esteem, i make up in determination. i can do this. i have to do this.

just one more word.

dealing with things way beyond my maturity level

if it's meant to be, it will be.

i really, really fucking hate that god-awful cliche. mostly because it sounds like i have no control. and i have to have control. control and white wine = two of my best friends. when i don't have control, when i feel outside my comfort zone, when i start edging past the ability to schedule and label and categorize my various conflicts and problems, when i can't make a list on my pastel pink post-it note - that's when i start to spiral down into a pit of self-doubt and deprecation.

most of the reason i don't believe in fate and destiny and all that crap is it implies i have no control over the decisions that will lay out my life - that they're already decided and mapped out in some blueprint in the universe. i don't want to be some helpless person who has no control over her future, even if i am some helpless person with no control over my future. i know i can't predict or plan or even guess what happens next. but i would rather fool myself into thinking it's possible, that maybe, just maybe all my dreams and hopes will come true, and all my fears and doubts will just be dust in the wind.