Weird and Unorganized Thoughts

I haven't blogged in quite a while. Part of that is because I feel like all my thoughts are jumbled, and I can't quite get them organized enough to write about them. I also had this idea that my next post was going to be my thoughts on An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and John Green as a writer in general. I still do want to write those out, but I have to return those books to the library and my thoughts aren't as fresh in my head...

But, anyway, I've gone too long without blogging and I don't want to procrastinate it any more. Here are some of my strange and unorganized thoughts, written in my lovely, sleep-deprived voice:


1. I've been struggling for a while with being unhappy. The other day, I had an epiphany: I have been waiting to be happy. Like, literally, I have been procrastinating happiness. I mean, who even does that? Who procrastinates happiness?

So I decided, screw it. I'm done with this. I'm done with being unhappy, with waiting for my life to start, for letting myself be held back by anxiety and bouts of depression. This is my life, right now, and I'm going to live it the way I want to live it. I'm going to do what I need to do to be happy.

2. But, of course, things are not quite that simple. I can't just switch on the "happy button." Life doesn't work that way. So, I've started reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I am absolutely loving it. I identify so much with this woman. I'm taking notes, and I'm going to do this. I'm going to be happy.

3. One really important thing I read in Rubin's book is a quote by C.S. Lewis. "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." I think this touches on one of my biggest anxieties: my interests being too childish.

That quote, and Rubin's experience starting a children's literature reading club (which I totally want to do), have brought about another "screw it" moment. I do want to mature in the sense that I want to become responsible and independent and all that jazz. I've always been told I'm on the fast-track to doing so; I do perhaps act maturely for my age. But my interests don't align with the interests of my peers as an age group, and I'm no longer going to pretend that they do.

Today, I colored while I was watching TV with my mom and sister. It felt awesome and relaxing. And I'm going to openly read children's literature this year. I miss and enjoy that genre greatly. That's what I like. And, the way I see it, as long as doing what I like doesn't hurt any one and doesn't prevent me from doing what needs to be done, then I shouldn't have to apologize for it.

4. One kind of strange thing that I can't quite reconcile is the fact that I miss praying. I am an atheist. I don't miss praying in the sense that I miss talking to God. I don't miss God. But I do miss sitting down and thinking about other people, about hoping for something to help them or comfort them. Obviously, I can still think. But it just feels purposeless now. When I believed in God, I believed that those thoughts might be able to make a difference. I believed that by thinking that I really want the pain everyone in Haiti is experiencing to go away, somehow, someway, it might. Now I don't believe that. I don't believe an all-powerful being is listening to my thoughts...so maybe dedicating those thoughts are meaningless.


5. There is no hope for any kind of "theme" to unify this blog. (I'm just throwing that out there now in case it wasn't apparent before.)

It's a New Year!

It's officially 2010. A few things have been going on in my personal life that make this not the best start to a new year that I've ever experienced. On a related note, I haven't gotten a chance to sit down and think about what my resolutions are going to be. I've never really taken New Year's Resolutions seriously, so I think my first resolution will be to take them seriously. Part of that is getting the time to sit down and really think about what I want to do and map out a plan of how I'll achieve my goals.

I do know that some of the more vague (and more easily-attained) goals are to blog more, watch more movies, read more books, and be better about keeping up with Internet-related things in general. So, I'm blogging today for the sake of blogging, and I've also started reading An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, to take care of the "read more" goal, as well as the Nerdfighteria/Internet-y goal. I've already got mixed feelings about Katherines; I'm taking notes and will probably write a short review when I'm done.

It's hard to pick resolutions; there are so many things I want to improve about myself. I hope this will be a good year. Welcome, 2010.