This is a crazy world. Every day it seems there is a tragic event with a new hashtag to pray for. People find their own places to advocate. Most people have an emotional attachment to what they deem important to raise money and awareness for. We are constantly flooded with media, reports, and opinions.
These are all wonderful. Caring and having a passion is a great thing. However, what I have realized is that it is good to step back from all this. Life is hard, and bad days and weeks happen. My 18 year old, college student advice is watch the sunset. There is something so grounding about watching the sun drop below the horizon. It has a way to put life into prospective. Your problems suddenly seems smaller thinking that the same God who allows the Earth to spin also created you. It happens every day. This might sound dumb or overtly obvious, but think about how many things actually happen every single day. The sun rises and the sun sets. You can count on it. When I feel overwhelmed I often am simply feeling out of control. Watching the sunset is something you can rely on because no matter how awful the day was or hard it feels it may be to carry on, the sun will still set.
0 Comments
This week I dislocated my finger. Most of my blogs aren’t journal-entry-esk, but I promise there is a moral to me telling this story.
I play soccer at George Fox University. It is a fall sport so for the last four months I have been rigorously training during the off season time. Tuesday night when I injured my hand, as much pain as I was in, the bigger pain was my sadness at the set back to my development. By the end of Wednesday I had x-rays completed and had met with an athletic trainer to discuss the next steps. I was devastated. How was I supposed to workout? Lift? Train as a goalkeeper without the use of my right hand? As I battled with my thoughts as well as the pain, I decided on a walk around campus that I was going to change my mental state. This moment is what I needed. In life I think it is easy to let setbacks change our mentality, even if we can’t change the situation. When the situation can’t be changed, the only thing there is left to change is our mind set. So my pouting walk around campus turned into a jog. I will do what I can. Train how I can. A hurt hand doesn’t mean I can’t jog. I wonder where else in life we can turn our walks into jogs. Stephen King’s book On Writing is a nonfiction guideline of writing for all types of writers. He outlines the ins and outs of writing including grammar, style, and his own personal writing process. When I first took an interest to writing and began considering it as a career, I was introduced to his book. His fiction pieces are thrilling and terrifying depictions of his creative mind. Books such as It and The Shining are some of his dark pieces that captivate his readers.
In the video above King briefly explains some of his own writing habits. One of the main points he makes is “You just go where the book takes you.” As a writer and self proclaimed control freak, I fall into the trap many writers do and try to make the story what I want it to be. I change and guide the characters in the manner that I want them to act in. King’s advice is to let the story go where it wants to go. He even explains that a lot of his stories did not get published the way he imagined the story would evolve. A lot of readers and even other writers pride themselves and gauk over a published completed book. King is different. He finds joy in the process of writing, not the “dead skin” finished product. “The fun of writing novel isn’t in the finished product.” Writing can be grueling. As a young and learning writer, I aspire to love the writing process more than my products in the same way as King. Sometimes I wish I could make up words. Actually, I can. Well, I don’t know if I can, but I do. Frequently actually.
We were posed the question to defend our process of doing everyday tasks, asked what made our way the best way. Spontaneousness? Spontaniablity? Spontinuity? I like spontinuity. When I think of how I operate I would say I do so with much spontinuity. This, of course, is not a real word, but I’m going to use it as such. Spon-tin-u-ity. Noun. Doing something with a spontaneous nature. “She baked cookies with spotinutity that day.” (Apologies to the English buffs out there who aren’t going to like this post.) I am very spontaneous. Everything I do is planned, yet still spontaneous. I know what I need to accomplish, but often the timing is random and impulsive. Let’s say I have a to do list for a day that says I need to clean my room, do laundry, and write a blog post. Some days I will wake up and do all of those in an hour. Some days I will do one thing and then not the others until 11 pm. This may not be the most organized approach, but I would argue it is superior to the color coded hourly planners. That just seems so permanent. What if I miss my time window to do my laundry? Do I not do it until next week now? I challenge everyone to act with a little more spontinuity this week. It’s fun. Walking around George Fox campus there’s a few things you are bound to see:
Trials come and not all of them can be explained. Sometimes you just aren’t okay… and that’s okay. As an 18 year old who is trying to navigate the adult world for the first time, there are things I don’t get yet. And there’s things I will never get. One thing I think high school misleads us about is that after we graduate life is all better. You go to school, get a job, have a family, and live Happily Ever After. So when, inevitably, there are bumps in the not-so-straight road, we don’t understand that this is, in fact, okay. While the shirt still bugs me, and I think a mural or poster of the saying would be better, I do believe “it’s okay to not be okay.” “Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor” -Anne Lamott
Desperate. Painful. Grueling. Agonizing. Joyful. Wonderful. Spontaneous. Releasing. I think writing is all of these things. As an athlete, I want to compete. Writing challenges me in a new way because you can’t simply “win.” Success in writing is not based on scores or even awards. In writing, success, to me, is defined by your pride in your own work. Most of the writing I have ever done is a personal release of emotions are feelings that others will never read. That writing is no more relevant or important than the books I have read, or the blog posts I’ve written. I use writing to express myself, and I’m learning that that is its own victory—I don’t need any other form of success. No matter the work produced, the grade received, the recognition you do or do not get, we as writers must be willing to claim our own victories. If you’re only writing for external praise there is simply no point. So, when we say that writing is desperate, that does not mean we are desperately trying to make a product for others to enjoy. The desperation comes in the writers block, or ruthless editing sessions. It is not easy, and it’s honestly normally painful. But words expressed on a page are beautiful and possess their own victory that don’t need an award to prove their success. What defines me?
I’ve been sitting for the past hour and a half trying to think of a blog topic. In the same way I call myself an athlete because I play soccer, I call myself a writer because I write. But now, sitting here staring at my computer, unable to come up with a topic, am I still a writer? This got me thinking. Even though the original question came in emotions of confusion and frustration, it puzzled me on a deeper level. If I cannot write, am I a writer? If I cannot play, am I still an athlete? As I thought deeper I realized that almost anything a person can define themselves by could be taken away. You’re a student, until you graduate. You’re a teacher, until you retire. You’re an athlete, until you can no longer compete. So who are we? We are human. We are children of God. But what else? When I say this puzzled me all day I am not exaggerating. Does their need to be something else? I think we all can ponder these questions for ourselves, but after a lot of thought and wanting an answer so bad, I allowed myself to conclude that their doesn’t need to be an answer. I can be an athlete for now. I can embrace being a student, and being a coworker right now. There is no reason that I can’t enjoy those things. However, my sole identity will not be placed in those. If and when I can no longer be those things any more, I will still have my identity in God and in myself as a person. And yes, I still am a writer. Swirly noodles. Blankets. Working out. Laughing. Cold water.
What do all these have in common? They are on my list. My happiness list. It is so easy to get caught up in the emotions of the world. Especially as an 18 year old female college student. I find myself often caught up in my head. “This person said this” or “They must not like me.” Those thoughts aren’t unusual. In fact, if you haven’t had any of those thoughts yourself I would question your honesty. However, I think most people understand how toxic thinking like that can be. As a writer, I keep a journal. It’s not a dear-diary-esk collection, but almost every night I will take some time to process my day by writing. About a month ago I took some time and read back through these daily scribbles and didn’t find what I was expecting. Although looking back on my past few months I feel like I’ve grown a lot, had fun, and made friends, my journal entries were almost all about something bad that happened that day. Apparently, no matter how good the day was, I usually sat down to write, and was only thinking about the worst part of that day. I was upset. How could I let every day end with “what was bad today?” That night, I decided to make my journal look different. For the next few weeks, no matter how bad I thought my day was, I found one thing, no matter how small that made me happy. It was crazy how much my mindset changed. Every day ended with what I was thankful for, not what had upset me. A couple nights ago my journal turned into a list. I filled the page with all the things I could think of that make me happy. “Stringed lights in a dark room. Blue skies. Pictures. Swimming. Sweatshirts. The beach. Sunset.” Whether it is noodles, blankets, or lights, we all have things that make us happy. Amongst the emotions, I challenge all of us to remember our own happiness lists. An audience. Some audiences clap. Some audiences cheer and shout. Some snap. And others you can’t even see.
How could you not see an audience? In writing, an author’s audience is those who read their work. The people who the author is directing their writing at. You often hear of “young adult authors.” Shocking enough, these author’s primary audience are young adults. There is a tough line to draw between authenticity and finding your readership. An authentic writer is one who is themself and doesn’t forfeit that for the benefit of others. However, an author must keep in mind their audience and keep in mind their experiences and expectations. As a college student currently writing a blog sitting in the cafeteria, my audience is fairly limited. The people who currently read my work consists of my mom, my aunt, and maybe my roommate if I send her the link enough times. When I am writing I am not questioning what Peyton Manning or Leonardo DiCaprio will think of my work—they are not my audience unfortunately. I am, however, thinking of what my professor of Writing 200 will think when she is grading it and also my peers in my class during peer review. To me, it is not hard to stay authentic. I write what I want to share with limited thought put towards what my audience would like to hear. My blog topics are seemingly random, often chosen when I find a sudden interest in a topic or have strong feelings toward a debate. Author’s have a tough job and walk on a thin line. That line, however, can be balanced when you stay true to yourself and understand that there are people who will read that honest work. |