In Time

When you’re a creative soul, you can’t help but be your worst critic.

Can you help when you look back at old stories, poems and the times where you just wrote. You can only grimace by how lackluster it is. Can you help when you’re an artist and your old paintings are hidden in attics or stashed away in storage because they just wouldn’t sell? They spoke to you. Can you help when you’re a performer and the recollection of a past performance haunts you? You cried when you left the stage.

I critique as a way to become better — to unleash creativity that hides in small spaces of my skeleton, the kind that harbors until it is discovered. I critique to feel whole again — to know that I am human and I have something to reach for and find that part of me that needs to grow.

When pen meets paper, when fingers brush keyboards or pencils scratch at old napkins, I can’t help but remind myself of the writer I was and the writer I am and the writer I’m becoming and the writer I’ll never be….

Can I help it when I look back and read what I’ve written and I can’t help but be reminded of my past? And is it my fault that all I want to read is my future?

Contemplation

 

Imagining vanilla rum and candy coated pills

pushing their way past a resistant throat

she can feel relief in the thought of drowning

in shallow seas of disbelief

but she wonders why

she can never

die.

Ghoulish Love

He was a distant ghost.

Existing, but never

Really there.

Pale and delusional

To the life of a woman

Who attracts

soft-spoken men.

And then there is her

Beaming face of

Naïve expectations,

Thinking he will be

Less transparent.

But how can a ghost be

Anything less than

See-through?

He promised her

Forever until death.

Even death seemed like

An unfulfilled message.

Empty offerings and

Wishful thinking was what

He gave her.

So she buried every

Sweet suffering

And tantalizing thought.

Focusing on charismatic

Corpses.

Knowing it’s unrealistic

to spend eternity with a spirit.

Christmas is too Fast

The worst part about Christmas is that it goes by too quickly. Everything is one big blur.

You spend an entire month preparing for this one holiday.

You make sure the family can come over, or you figure out how many houses you need to visit. You make sure you can fly into a certain town the night before, or if you can drive all the way to so-and-so’s house to make it in time for dinner.

You decorate your house with garland and goofy knick knacks that only show their faces every December. You select the perfect pine, or maybe you drag one up from the basement, and fill it with every ornament that was packed away.

You watch your dad balance a stapler in his mouth as he climbs a ladder, all to string some lights that will sparkle when the sun goes down.

You make your lists and check them twice as you enter the stores, trying to find that perfect gift for your loved one. Then you go ask your boss for more hours because how the heck are you going to afford that…

You whip out every cookbook you own, call up your mom and frantically try and figure out what you should make for the eve and the day of Christmas.

Then finally, Christmas morning arrives. I don’t care how old you are, there is no way you can sleep in on Christmas morning. As you slug down the stairs (where’s the coffee?) and watch the young kids bounce into the room filled with goodies, you realize this is the moment you have been waiting for, and it doesn’t even matter that the sun isn’t up.

Soon everyone is done unwrapping and hugging, and there is still much to do on Christmas day. But the worst part is when everything winds down, and you realize the day is over. You realize the much anticipated day has arrived and left, just like that. It’s another Christmas to remember. Thankfully, everything was worth it, and now you can just start thinking about next Christmas!

 

Where’d All the Patience Go?

Yesterday I had to go to Walmart to pick up a few odds and ends for school.  I only had about five or so items, and everyone else had a lot more than me.  What made it worse was that there were only three registers open for checking out.  As I waited, I started tapping my foot, impatiently.  Then, I deeply sighed to myself in frustration.

Where are all the employees?  I have places to go.  I have to get to work.  I only have five stinkin’ items.  

That’s when I realized I was demonstrating a stereotypical American individual; rude and impatient.

This made me wonder, why are we so impatient?  Why is waiting in a line for more than five minutes life-altering?

Our lives are too fast.  Everything as at the tip of our fingertips, or sent to us in a fraction of a second.  Waiting in line for five minutes now seems like an eternity because we are used to our daily lives being super speedy. This makes me nervous because as time moves forward and our technology changes every month, we are continuing to grow more impatient, and lazy.  I really do not want this to be our future.

So what are we to do?  It’s easier said than done to just “stop being lazy.”  It’s actually impossible to some people.  In Walmart when I acted like waiting in line for a few minutes was the worst thing in the world, I just thought about how ridiculous I was being.  Instead, I thought to myself, “Well, it was my decision to go to Walmart on a whim so I have no right to be complaining.”

Like I said, easier said than done.  I know several people who would not be able to alter their thoughts into positive thinking.

I also think that our fast-paced days makes people develop rude habits.  For instance, obeying the rules of the road has now become faux pas.  If you drive the speed limit, you see a car riding your butt.  If you stop the appropriate amount of time at a stop sign, the car behind you rides your butt.  If you are going the speed limit in a lane, the car behind you zooms angrily in the next lane to get around you.  No one stops at stop lights when they turn yellow.  People constantly run red lights, and go too fast on the roads.  No one stops for pedestrians, even if they have a cross walk.  People yell profanities, and flip you off if you reprimand them (by casually beeping the horn the car came installed with) for disobeying the law.

Everyone needs to get to their destination lickity-split.  When they have to wait in traffic, dear Lord, it’s a madhouse on the roads.  You have to always anticipate the worst in life, and I think people are failing to forget to do this.  Some days you will encounter unfortunate events on the road, but this certainly does not give us the right to be rude and impatient.  You are endangering not only the safety of yourself, but others.

Sometimes you have to have patience.  It is really difficult at times, but I think developing patience is something that everyone should try.  You will see yourself becoming more relaxed, and notice others around you to appear more calm than usual.