"Getting older's not been on my plans"

      Ernest Hemingway once said this, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” How dark and demented. What in this statement is appealing? A writer writes for purposes that only he understands, but that writer is also human, and what human actually wants to bleed for the sake of being understood? Macklemore raps that, “The greats weren't great because at birth they could paint. The greats were great cause they paint a lot.” Such can be said for a writer. How often on a forum do you see a famous author answering the question, “What can I do to become like you: famous?” The answer invariably is: write. Just write. Write everyday. Write when you don’t want to write. Write when you have nothing to say. Just create something with your thoughts and words. Write.         But damn! That is exhausting. Hemingway and Macklemore, two creators of the writte...

First, let me start with, "No, I have never seen the movie ‘Me, Myself, and Irene.” Good, now you don’t have to ask.      So, after contemplating the whole idea of being single and 29 living in the midwest, I said something that has been running in my head all day: “Perhaps it doesn’t help (to my own chagrin) that I believe I will be the greatest person they will ever meet.” Huh...I said that. And I meant it. If I don’t know what vanity/self-confidence is then I don’t know anything. I do believe this. And why shouldn’t I?         I have spent 28 years alone, and in that time, working on myself. I never had a string of boyfriends growing up; I never had casual relationships that were for fun; I never had any kind of relationship that brought me any kind of knowledge of how to be in a good and healthy relationship. But I know myself, and I like myself. I could say that I have lea...

For most, this probably doesn’t seem like too much of a big deal. I can easily scroll through my friend’s list on facebook, and see that most people, I went to high school with or are acquainted with now, are either married, married with kids, or divorced (but that is a whole other set of issues I know nothing about.) But I know singledom, and I certainly know singledom in the land of people who marry young. So how do we fare?         Eh...we make do. I will admit, that I can get a little sentimental when I see people posting pictures of their adorable children: over and over and over. I get it. Your children are the greatest thing you have accomplished thus far. Yay! Moving on...I understand, I have a dog. No, seriously, I get it. The dog is my world. And the sentimental side of me tends to want to stay away from people with kids, because they make me want them: the kids not the people. And to be clear this has nothing to do with my niece...

Or, maybe I should say, “When I fall…” I fall to shit. Never have I experienced a fall that ended in a graceful landing. And most of the time, when I fall, I fall like a boozy kitten on catnip. It isn’t peaceful, and unlike a cat, not usually funny. I had this entertaining thought that perhaps turning a year older, that I would increase in grace and stability. Alas, it is not so. I am still me. I am the same me I was at 28. But this isn’t just about me falling from grace, which I feel as though, at times, I am perpetually doing. This is about life, and what little I know of it. When I set out to write, I set out to create something that will perhaps be about me, because in Anne of Green Gables, Gilbert tells Anne to write what she knows, but I also set out to create something that rings of universal truth. Because, if I spend my time writing about me, what good is it for anyone? What good is my life for anyone else? To be a teacher? To be an example? Perhaps, but life is so mu...