Maybe the best online video ever - Jessica the Hippo

want - obsessing - want

     

Voice Post:

state of the emch

i feel productive. i feel eager. i feel like not listening to my own expectations of self but flying right past it into the zone of what i want - not what i think is appropriate. i applied for a residency yesterday that i really hope to get to finish the novella. i am making specific lists of the sort of things i want. i am going to sit down with rooster and make a five year plan for travel. i like my job enough and feel like i want to push myself to rock it harder. i am going to be thin enough that my knee won't hurt and my back feels better - but regardless of how much weight i carry i like myself and am done tripping on it. weight should be like hair color - i make a plan and change it when i want. it isn't self worth. i am looking forward to experimenting with my lifestyle. with how i walk in the world. with erasing the fears of things that have been holding on. did you know - since i was a child - i have always come straight home after. after school, work, socializing. i don't let myself have the room to wander or to change my plans or mix it up. even if there is nothing else planned for that day. i go home. because that's what you do. when i have strayed from that - i have had adventures and excitement and even... nothing happen. it's a rollercoaster or anticlimactic but it's always fascinating because suddenly i am actively driving the wheel of my experience instead of letting habit steer my car. i am done with habit. i am done with the passive expectation of going home right after. (this a largely symbolic statement - the going home after - it's a way of life). i am trying things. trying them immediately. and then moving on. today i saw a call for poems. i read it, followed the directions, sent in my work and had an email receipt that they had received it all within 30 minutes. there is no more room or time to procrastinate.

when i turned 30. i hadn't had a single poem published. i didn't know many other artists and barely any other writers.  i had just met the pal and final_girl in august (ish) and had only just started livejournal. i was full of want and ambition and excitement. but i was also 8 years and change of living in the bay area and writing only for myself and too shy to really read much of anywhere even on an open mic. i had made a decision to take any opportunity offered. the queer open mic had started that august. i read on the k'v open mic for the first time. i was alternately running and baby stepping my way into my art. i was writing furiously and scared to share. i was going to every open mic i could find and being as friendly as a shy person full of want could be. i was invited to a writing group. the open mic grew and people liked it. i started featuring. and now... it's only two full years later and it's hard to believe how much i have done since then. and yet how much more i want.

what will the next three years hold?
this is so exciting.