my mind is a garden

I am a tired bird today. I lay in bed willing my eyes not to clamp shut again, willing my head not to slump against the pillow and come back up with the indentations of a crinkled sheets once more. One nap is enough for one day, I tell myself, but still my body insists otherwise, reminding me that I have been up since before the sun this morning. Running, the reason for such an early rise, tires me, but it is nothing, I dare say, compared to the toll of babysitting. Negotiating with a seven-year-old who only wants to watch TV and/or a piggyback ride while simultaneously going bankrupt in a game of Monopoly against an eight-year-old who also wants your undivided attention while also trying to make sure the pet dog is not, in fact, going to kill an innocent neighborhood cat can be quite draining. (The dog may be the most well-behaved being in the house, I'm afraid. Myself included, perhaps. I try.) No, I don't think I shall have kids for quite some time.

Anyway, that's been my life in a nutshell lately, since I got home. Babysitting, and running, and watching the Olympics in the evenings although that, sadly, is over. Lots of routine punctured by some bursts of, well, excitement, I guess-- I had my birthday party last weekend and I'll most likely post about it when I get my pictures back.

I do think that I'm happy right now, when I can push the worries of the impending year to the back of my brain. Those thoughts of school creep up and stress me out when I should be happily enjoying my summer. I could be truly happy if for those nagging worries that never fully go away. Forgive me if this is trite, but I tend to think of my mind as sort of a garden. All the worries are weeds, and while there are some that can be easily plucked out, or remedied with a slight of hand, others are more deeply rooted. You can cut off the stems, forget them for a while, but they will grow back eventually. I'm trying my best right now just to cover them up with flowers, with nice thoughts of 'living in the moment' and all that. It's going okay...but I can't help but working myself up about insanely banal things sometimes.

Like reading. When I was younger, I was something of a voracious reader. I read a lot, but more than that, I was really invested in these stories. To this day a lot of my disappointments in life stem from the fact that my life is not a novel. (I say that in all seriousness.) I have always thought of myself firstly as a reader, and then as a writer, photographer, musician, etc. etc. A lot of my identity, how I define myself, is rooted in being a reader.

So this is why it distresses me that, lately, I can't seem to get through a book. It started with school, when I didn't have 'enough time' to read regularly. But now it's the summer, and I've been going to the library and coming back with five books, only to return about three of them unfinished. I've speculated the cause of this annoying phenomenon, as I do with most things. Did my attention span somehow become shorter, due to this awful internet culture of the 21st century? Is this just something that happens when you grow up? Is that why so many adults have to put "read 25 books" on their New Years Resolutions, a number I always found to be insanely small? Am I just reading the wrong books? I don't know, but it makes me sad. It's always alarming when something that used to be a rock-solid fact is no longer true.

I hope I can get back into reading. Everyone says (and they're right) that you have to read to write. Maybe there's some correlation between my not-reading and my not-writing?

I've been wanting to write here (or anywhere, really; just write in general) for a while, but instead of forcing it, I've just been kind of waiting the dry spell out. I don't really recommend this strategy if you ever want to get anything accomplished, but sometimes I just need a break, even from the things I enjoy. I want to get in the habit of writing even when I don't feel like it, though, because, really, not being in the 'mood' for it is no excuse. If I just sit down and do it, something will come. And it may not be the best something, but it's better than nothing. I think it would be good for me.

(This was a long, disconnected post. If you actually read it, you're cool. Thanks.)