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-FRUSTRATED. and afraid. It’s so weird when you make a decision to do something that is so unlike you in search for better. A better life. More adventures. Fuller relationships. Active living. Especially when you’re like me and decide to make it up as you go. Right now everything is falling apart as far as my plan to travel the US and it has BARELY begun. It makes me want to quit. I am afraid because I am working around other peoples lives to make what I want to do happen. That’s always going to change your plans. I had a specific amount of time I wanted to do certain things and how long I wanted to be gone and as far as money I’m fucking broke but I’m making it up as I go along. Planning to sell some things I made to make ends meet but it’s a little scary and difficult when nothing is certain. I don’t know what to do but I’m going to try and trust that I will find my way to whatever I need. If I don’t need it, I won’t find it.
-Somebody That I Used to know has been playing on repeat for the past 5 hours.
-I need to stop doubting my talent. I always hold myself to other people’s standards. I have to remember that I am not them and that what ever I create is as good as it can be at the moment because this is who I am right now. Maybe next year I will be better and subsequently so will my work. But right now, I have what I produce. I need to stick by it. I just turned 20 but I’m comparing myself to 25 year olds around me. That doesn’t make sense. By the time I’m 25, I’ll have my own experience and I’ll have more to add to the person I am right now.
-Anxiety has been bothering me. I need to relax.
-This week has been an odd mixture of things.
-I got my acceptance letter from FIT yesterday, which to me is my ultimate pat on the back from the universe right now.
-I realize that I am super needy. I like to be smothered with love. If not, I forget I like having you around and make myself hate you. It’s that simple. I am too much. I want too much. I need attention. I need to be cuddled with and kissed and called and if you’re not doing that, I’m going to detach myself. I don’t think anything is wrong with that. I’m the type of person who gives so much of myself to any given moment. I need a love that reciprocates that, or else I’d much rather be alone.
-That may be something I need to see a therapist for. I don’t care.
-I decided to leave my job. I’ve been mulling over it for some time now. I didn’t fully make the decision until my manager gave me the April schedule and it had my name on it for the time I was planning to leave. I made the decision because I’ve been feeling really stagnant. Super comfortable and safe and afraid to be uprooted. I think that is as good a time as any to go.
-My cousin bought me a one way ticket to Atlanta for my birthday. I decided to extend the adventure since I didn’t have a set date to come back. How often is it that people have the opportunity to explore laid so neatly before them as this one has been?? I think about how many people will never leave their town, their city, their block. I need to do it for them. I need to do it for me. I plan to be a well traveled woman as the years progress. I need to start now. I have school to come back to in September. I have a mother and a home and family and friends in New York. I have roots. I should not be afraid to spread my branches, to blossom, to bear fruit, to have that fruit drop and roll somewhere foreign. I am still as much of a tree regardless. I am not any less. So yes, it’s scary to leave my world behind but this universe is comprised of millions and billions of worlds and I need to see more of them.
-My plan is to go to Atlanta on April 20th (my birthday) spend about a month there… go from Atlanta to Illinois to see my friend Chanel, then go to Puerto Rico with my friend Natasha for a week (I have to visit Old San Juan, the Bio-luminescent Bay, and a rainforest before this year is over). From Puerto Rico I’m flying back to Texas to meet my birth father and my grandmother for the first time. Then I’m driving to New Orleans, Louisiana and Sedona, Arizona. From there I plan to visit San Francisco and then my birthplace, Seattle. The origin. I think that’s important because I’m at a turning point in my life. I need to get back to the basics, gain perspective. By then, I think 3 or 4 months should have passed and I might then go straight home or if I find somewhere I particularly like I might stay till August. Then back to New York, friends, school and other familiar comforts.
-I am going to be documenting this adventure daily. My photographs will be at GiselleBuchanan.com and I will still post here regularly.
-I have a cold. Again. Work was a long sigh. I was so anxious to leave and let my body rest. Seeing Amber was a nice surprise though.
-This is about the same time every year when I have a midlife crisis and need a change of location. I try to be stable, but I am a gypsy in denial. My cousin bought me a ticket to Atlanta for my birthday next month. Hopefully that satiates my hunger for change, if only for a few months.
-Still compiling my chapbook. It really wrote itself. I had a completely different idea but ended up scrapping everything and paying attention to the story I needed to share… the one I’ve been sharing unknowingly. My recklessness and my precaution. My fearlessness and my terror. I’ve decided it’s going to be called FIRSTS. The past two years have been a mass of them (firsts, that is).
-My mom is making soup. I’m grateful.
-My throat hurts. I am thankful for my days of health outnumbering my days spent with sickness.
-I am also thankful for serendipity. New friends and old friends merging. Three months of the best food of my life (seriously, this year has been treating me soo good when it comes to food. So many new restaurants, so many yummy things. I have really been sheltered, culinary wise).
-I can’t find my house keys.
-I can’t bring myself to write the last few poems, but I need to. They hurt the most.
but when I was sleeping, I had a dream that every time I swallowed, an image would pop into my head in the shape of the pain in my throat. (I’ve had a cold all week.) It kept happening and I started to mentally destroy the shape. Form new cracks in the figure until it didn’t exist anymore. When I woke up, my voice was back. I think I healed myself in my dreams. Do you guys have any strange stories? Have you experienced things people would probably give you crazy looks over?
-So sick.
-Gonna go to bed early
-Watching a movie. The first lines of this movie are:
“It takes approximately 500 lbs to crush a human skull, but the human emotion is a much more delicate thing.”
sounds promising, no?
-I get sad when people remove me from their lives when I want to stay. Now I know what it feels like. Karma is a bitch tho aint she? Only when I deserve it.
-Thankful for:
Seeing little kids with promising futures
Making things for people on a (almost) daily basis
Good movies
Starting a day with breakfast
Being early to work and getting to walk around the city before I start
Waking up from a nap on the train and seeing a handsome stranger
The days I’m healthy.. because today I’m not, and this shit isn’t fun
Netflix
Being able to read
Art… being able to experience the world through a different mind and set of eyes
and I am sitting in my room watching Basquiat and sipping water. Feeling so much bliss just being alive. Learning from those that have come before me.
It is detrimental to focus on what has been lost. Loss is an illusion. You never really own anything in the first place. It is better for our neurological well being to focus on good things; the magic in the ordinary, every-day miracles we get to be witnesses of.
