Metanoia

Where the hell have I been?

I've been starting to live my life in a way that feels more true to who I really am. To the woman I want to be. What does this mean? I've been soul searching offline. Spending more solitary days in quiet and calm--away from social media, entertainment news, horrible news news, and the influences of the outside world. It's taken me a long time to slow down and shift my habits and thinking. I had fallen into the trap of needing to keep up with the times. I would find myself spending hours throughout the course of the day checking Instagram and catching up on all the "it" shows on Neflix/Hulu/Amazon/blah blah blah. I witnessed my friends (and really everyone anywhere) constantly reaching for their phones like a tic. Take a second and look around you--at the movies, grocery store, walking down the street--nearly every single person is looking down at their phones. Personal accounts become tagged and branded with everything we consume, and it truly becomes about advertising our lives through what we buy. It began to make me so sad and truly upset that I was a part of this. I can't change what's happening around me, but I can change my own actions. Hence, my attempt at a personal revolution.

The irony of this post is that I will inevitably use Instagram to share my words with more people. As much as I hate it, it's free. But the truth behind every post will be rooted in my written word. And the only things I'll be selling are my thoughts. I've been reading more books this year than I have in the past few years combined. As a child I was a voracious reader, and as the years have passed I've gotten more and more sucked into other distractions that have pulled me away from my first love. And as you may have guessed by the slant of the previous paragraph, getting back to reading has meant getting back to myself. What a great goddamn feeling. I have been particularly inspired by Steinbeck: A Life in Letters. John Steinbeck spent his entire life writing. Truly, his entire life. When he wasn't sat down for hours producing his manuscripts he was writing letters to all in his life. It was his preferred method of communication. I LOVE that. And I love the book. SO so so much. (I know, such an eloquent review...) His letters are as he spoke and without regard to punctuation and spelling. It's funny because I have always written my letters in a similar manner and tend to explain at the outset that they will be rambling, and they will be stream-of-consciousness. It dawned on me that perhaps I should begin the practice of writing more often with just that--letters.

I don't mean handwritten letters to anyone in particular, but as a sort of experiment with myself on this blog. I'm going to take my everyday life and all its adventures and share myself intimately with a universal subject. Some days a letter may be addressed to someone specific, but only to inform the tone. Who knows where this literary adventure will take me. I'm hoping to gain a better knowledge toward the use of language. Maybe the entirety of the works will one day serve as a sort of biography of this period of my life. Maybe through the practice alone I will find my inspiration for a book. I've always wanted to write a book.

So there it is. Let's see where this takes me--and you. Shall we?