hello, internet. 07 09 2008

it’s been a while, internet. of course a lot of things have happened since i last updated this biz, and i think i mostly just didn’t know what to say for a long time. i probably still don’t, and still have a lot of feelings that have come and gone and some that remain unresolved, but here’s the main scoop:

1) dropping out of library school was a pretty good plan. i felt like i was giving up my dream for a while, then i went through this thing where i felt really stupid and impatient, but i was tired of waiting for the real thing to start. i felt really stifled by the idea of getting a library degree, having to do that before i could do anything else, and probably most of all i was just tired of being a student. a lot of things were weighing on me when i made the decision to take a break, things that influenced me to do it more than i would have otherwise, but overall it was a good thing to do.

2) i moved back to st louis and promptly got a job at a beautiful library, the kind of job that i was really longing for when i was in north carolina. i feel good about what i’m doing and already am fiercely loyal to where i work. i also have a new love in ILL and have learned how to make really bomb photocopies, which i realize is a stupid thing, but i always felt secretly bad about myself because i always made such awful copies, so there. i also really, really, really love MOBIUS and am unapologetic about this.

3) while i miss a lot of things about north carolina, i feel very good about being back in the midwest. i don’t know what it is, but i think that my heart is here no matter what i do and where i go. i am kind of obsessed with my own life, and am so grateful for all of the friends i have everywhere, but it’s been pretty nice to kind of take a breather from hanging out, from drinking and parties and focus on things like my family and my job. and, well, st louis is a beautiful place and i’m glad i get the chance to re-realize that every day.

4) i still have a lot of free time (which is kind of a bummer) and so i’ve taken the opportunity to keep abreast of things going on in the world. LIKE: lindsay lohan and samantha ronson, fox news vs. the rest of the media, the NL central and the anheuser busch takeover. and i am really very excited about mamma mia.

4) unrelated to pretty much anything else, i really think that i am slowly becoming a dog person. i. love. dogs. my brother has this beautiful pit bull that i am completely in love with. she is the funniest, sweetest thing in the whole world and constantly makes me want to bust out my long list of reasons why dogs are better than babies (or most humans, for that matter).

amy knox brown from bookslut 05 015 2008

And though I feel like something of an outsider in Winston-Salem, I have to say that North Carolina has been good to us. [...] The housing prices are quite reasonable; we have a nice place to live, with a big yard. Because of our limited social life, we get a lot of writing done.

You asked if my writing would be different if I lived in Nebraska. You know, I think it might — I wonder if a feeling of longing for a place is necessary to imagine it completely.

springtime can kill you 04 021 2008

lately i have felt that my heart is very full, pretty confused, locked too tight where it is. dumb? i don’t know. overwhelming, for sure. i just have so many feelings.

feelings that i must blog about.

whatever, well, bottom line, there was an earthquake in southern illinois this past week, the aftershocks of which were felt from indianapolis to st louis to chicago and everywhere in between, and i’m bummed i missed it, i am bummed i’m missing legitimate springtime that i’m used to, i’m bummed that i’m missing every stupid event like my sister’s cat having kittens, my brother’s new puppy, flunk day at knox, being around enthusiastic baseball fans, et cetera ad nauseum. i am a profoundly boring person and, most importantly, just endlessly childish. these are facts. the amounts and balance of boringness and selfishness in my brain are criminally underestimated and super fucked up, respectively.

REGARDLESS.
i do feel much too connected to here to just leave or even consider leaving without a second thought — i think the small fact that i never actually remember that i am in north carolina or trying to do something so different from anything i was doing nine months ago says a lot about how ultimately comfortable i am in my surroundings. i don’t want to leave, i don’t want to fail, i don’t want to be upset all the time. i’d rather have things fixed than abandoned, but the prospect of repairing my psyche and rocky relationship with library school at the same time seems like such a colossal undertaking at this point. i know i can do it, though, because sometimes i just honestly doubt if i could ever feel any more heartbroken than i am this spring.

north carolina smells really good in the springtime, though — i drove out to durham the back way yesterday night, avoiding 15-501 in the rain with my car window down, simultaneously admiring the wisteria and checking for wayward deer. i got very emotional on that drive, thinking about jolie holland and a lot of other things that would be pretty dumb of me to talk at length about in a public forum. but all i can say about that, i guess, is that because i have intense warm weather sense memories, i end up being totally leveled by crap i haven’t cared about for years, feeling like my well-being has been punched in the gut and face 100,000 times.

anyway, even though it was awfully nice to rewatch my favorite episodes of gilmore girls while succumbing to crippling waves of depression, it was also good to get out of my house. and i had a pretty rad dinner with pretty rad dudes on top of it. pitchers of sangria never hurt anything, either, and neither does finding out that you (me) are by far not the only one in town who had to take out such a killer amount of student loans for grad school. i actually almost fell out of my chair in relief when i heard about that. that probably makes me a bigger jerk than i really am. which is a pretty big jerk.

while i realize that having a blog thing on the internet is a crazy self-aggrandizing venture to begin with, i still feel really stupid talking about myself this much and keep swearing to not do it next time. well, it’s next time, and here i am! in full force. maybe next time.

way back when in the now before now 03 031 2008

i’m having a lot of trouble with my blogging loyalty, a thing that i think about a lot. it’s probably pretty apparent to anyone who knows me that i am really, really into livejournal, and my heart contains the most unique unconquerable love for that site, but because it is so easy to have private space there — it’s just going to stay my private space.

so there is this, which is something that i made last summer when i was hanging out in galesburg after graduating from college. i lived with cats and took pictures of them. i wanted to have a photoblog, or whatever, before i kind of realized that the effort i put into flickr pretty much made it a photoblog in its own right. now it is gonna be my grown-up blog.

blog blog blog.

it’s been really rainy here lately, which is really good and not only some of my favorite weather, but also does something to quell the exxxtreme drought going on here in the american south. however, weather like this does nothing for my motivation to, like, get out of my bed for a significant amount of time, hang out outside, wear any kind of clothing i’d be comfortable with a normal person seeing me in, et cetera. it also provides me with unwarranted time to think about my life and wallow in some really rad feelings.

in short:
a recent trip to the midwest completely destroyed me. when i was there, i was thrilled out of my damn mind, really thought i was going to die, and cried like a child. then, and especially since, i just felt very, very young. what the hell am i trying to do to myself?

of course i’m not saying that it’s never a good idea for people to go to graduate school right out of college, or even that a person who is two months into their twenty-second year is not totally capable of shifting their whole life a thousand miles east, dedicating their life to a career, starting all over, broke and alone — just that i don’t think i was ready for it. honestly, i still don’t know if i’ve (for realsies) come to terms with the magnitude of it. the adventure was fucking beautiful but now the reality is driving me nuts: at this rate, i’m going to have a professional master’s degree before i turn twenty-four years old. combine that with the fact that i still feel, oh, around fifteen years old in my brain most of the time, and i just feel like i’m in trouble. i’ve never once, not ever, questioned my desire to Be A Librarian; i’ve questioned the methods, sure, and learned a lot on the way, but it’s a really big thing to learn that it’s okay to take detours and not have everything fall perfectly into place all the time. for someone who lives her life all loosey-goosey anyway, it’s sure taken me a really, really long time to figure that last part out for myself.

so i don’t know what’s going to happen. maybe i’ll move back to the midwest, maybe i’ll stay here and tough it out. i hate giving up, but what i hate more than that is being upset all the time. north carolina is such a beautiful place and i’ve met incredible people here that i love with everything in my bones, and if i leave i will miss it. especially the basketball.

in the meantime, i’m trying a little bit to cultivate a midwestern accent. i never really thought i had one, but lately i’ve been hearing it in my vowels and getting really excited. it’s a main source of joy in my life.

thrillinois 07 015 2007

Who said this was boring?