On My Love of Haikus

Wow hello again blog, it's been a minute! I kind of forgot this existed, but the nice thing is, I think the handful of people I told about this blog when I started writing have definitely forgotten about it too. I feel like I'm in my little cocoon of anonymity, which is why I am freely admitting that I am typing this at a snail's pace (or caterpillar's pace, if we're sticking with the cocoon theme) on my phone, in bed, 11:30pm on a Saturday night. I'm not really sure what inspired the recollection of blogging or making a new post, but I think it has to do with the fact that this weekend has been the first weekend since the semester started that I've been able to do slow down and do things like READ A BOOK. Usually reading reminds me of my love for words and their malleability and beauty and voila, here I am. 

So I'm not going to go into detail about my life right now but suffice it to say, it's February, my life is studying for the CPA exam + 8-week accelerated classes, boys suck, etc. etc. On Thursday afternoon, while feeling the culmination of all these sucky aspects of my life especially acutely, my best friend helped to cheer me up by writing haikus to make fun of one of the sucky boys in my life right now. Was this a childish thing to do? Yes. Was this a wonderfully entertaining thing to do? Oh yes. Haikus are the shit. They convey what you want to convey without mincing words. They're simple but powerful. Every syllable counts. So with that, I'm going to write some haikus about my life...

I've become both an--

Early bird and a night owl 

Afternoons are hard

I can't remember

The last day that passed when I 

Didn't have coffee

Do friends dance like this?

There are many more questions 

I wish I had asked 

I deserve better

Then again, so did the guys 

I did that to, too

Take me on a trip 

I would like to go someday

San Francisco Bay?*

*loosely based on the Estelle/Kanye West hit "American Boy" because I hit a creative wall

Until next time

Xoxo

On Writing Essays

There are two things I tend to do when writing essays, exacerbated when I find the topic uninteresting and/or difficult:

1. Find pretty much anything else in the world much more interesting and demanding of my full attention than usual.  Like blogging!

2. Scroll up to the top of my Word document every two minutes or so to see how much I've written, then scroll back down, and then scroll back up again, etc. etc. This either leads to me feeling motivated by all the BS words that I've typed so far, or shocked by how few BS words I've typed.



ESSAYS SUCK

On Freaking Fun Facts

A small piece of me dies every time the leader of a group I'm in says a variation of, "Let's get to know each other by going around and saying fun facts."  It's the actual worst.  Not only do I have to be reminded of how unexciting I am, but now the people in this group who don't know me get to figure this out too.  Usually I like there to be at least a few days before people come to this realization on their own.

I was forced to give a fun fact about half a dozen times this summer alone, and usually I said something like I went to Europe last year or played for a competitive traveling basketball team when I was younger.  Once I was pretty desperate and mentioned that I have toe thumbs.  But the fact of the matter is, I'm not a piano prodigy, I haven't ridden elephants in the Sahara, I can't do weird things with body parts, and I'm not related to anyone remotely famous unless you count a former NASA astronaut (**s/o to Joe Engle only person to ever fly two different winged vehicles in outer space you da man**).

Something I did realize in all of those situations, though, was that there were a lot of people who had "fun facts" that were at least as lame as mine, if not more so.  The thing is, I still find the majority of them fun as I've gotten to know them.  I suppose it's a good reminder that you can't be completely defined by your past experiences and you definitely can't be defined by who you know.  Like, if my cousin happened to be Brad Pitt, does that change who I am as a person?  (Rhetorical question, because in actuality I would probably be richer and have cameos in his movies and babysit Shiloh and Pax and crew, but no.  Beside the point.)  There's still - hopefully - plenty of time to develop as a person and have new experiences that will give me a whole host of new fun facts to choose from the next time somebody asks.

I think the toe thumb one is a keeper though.

On Wanting to Throw Your Phone into the Deepest Well Because It Sucks Up So Much of Your Time But Also Not Because Your Phone is Your Lifeline

I don't know whether to envy or pity previous generations' lack of smart phones more.  On the one hand, social lives must have been simpler in so many ways without iMessage.  If you had a problem with someone, you hashed it out in person, or at least over the phone which allowed you to hear inflection and tone of voice.  Or maybe in letter format if you lived pre-Alexander Graham Bell and wanted to tell someone off via Pony Express.  If you wanted to ask someone out, same thing.  There was no agonizing delay, no gray ellipses bubbles.  On the other hand, it's so much easier to stay in touch with people or to ask a quick question without the hassle of calling.  With Instagram and Snapchat and Facebook, I get to see where my friend and her boyfriend went for dinner or a picture of, like, my former neighbor's new dog.  Cool!  But I (and I know I'm not the only one) also get acute fomo.  That's "fear of missing out" for anyone who's not quite with the generational lingo.  Basically I feel little pangs of jealousy and self-pity when I see ~her~ pictures of studying abroad or ~his~ pictures of ~that~ music festival.

So yeah, iPhones and social media are a double-edged sword, good and bad, blah blah blah.  We've all heard this spiel countless times.  I feel like I'm enough of an old soul to realize the ludicrousness of how attached I am to my phone but at the same time, I was born in the 90s and therefore have an inevitable predisposition to be attached to it.  As I type this, in fact, my phone is about half an inch away from my left hip, face up so I can see any notifications.  I currently have a snap and a text waiting for me, but I'm willing myself to at least finish this paragraph before I look at them.  It's so pathetic, though.  My phone is usually the first thing I look at in the morning and the last thing I look at before I go to bed, even though I've read all those articles about how the screen impairs sleep quality or whatever.  It's also kind of scary how my mind will sometimes be on autopilot and I'll open Instagram, scroll through it for ten minutes, close it, and then open it right back up before realizing how idiotic I am.  What else is scary is if I can't find my phone or the battery dies, LIFE LITERALLY STOPS.  The Earth stops spinning on its axis and revolving around the Sun until I hear the blessed double-buzz that is my phone resurrecting.

Over the past few days, I've grown more aware of this phone-dependency and am verrrrry slowly trying to make tiny changes.  For instance, instead of doing my usual Insta-FB-Snap routine before I go to sleep, I'm trying to read an actual book instead.  Okay, that's honestly the only thing I've done so far to change, but maybe I'll just silence my phone and throw it across the room every once in a while and focus on everything else that's happening in the physical world.  Or if I'm walking towards someone who's going the opposite direction and nobody else is around and we keep making eye contact and a glacier passes by because time is going so slowly, maybe I'll stay strong and keep my phone in my pocket.  Baby steps.

On Moving Back Home

I did something this past weekend that instigated sympathetic smiles and questions of concern from many of my friends.  It’s something that an increasing number of people around my age are doing for various reasons.  Some of my friends are even doing it.  Does it sound like I’m about to say I’m dabbling in hard drugs or getting engaged?  Because I’m not.  My life’s not that exciting.  I just moved back home.

Let me provide some background: my university is conveniently located in my hometown.  Freshman year, I lived in the dorms so I could get the quintessential college experience of living in a shoebox and sharing community bathrooms with girls who leave masses of hair in the sinks and getting slammed with the pungent smell of Thai fusion pouring through the vent right outside your door from the restaurant in the basement.  I wanted that.  And I’m glad I did, because it taught me some solid life lessons.  Plus, if you’re dorm-mates with one of your best friends from high school and still consider each other one of your best friends by May, then I’d say that’s a pretty reassuring sign. 

So I lived on campus freshman year, but if I’m being honest, I went home pretty much every weekend.  Sure, I guess I had a valid excuse as I lugged my overflowing collapsible hamper on Friday evenings to my dad’s car parked in the visitor’s spot outside my dorm.  Community laundering sucks, and I hate wasting precious quarters (for real, I will park half a mile away and walk rather than pay a meter downtown).  But I’m going to call out freshman-year Courtney right now and say that she was homesick and the thought of spending a whole weekend in the shoebox made her freshman-year heart seize up a little with panic. 

Freshman year ended and so did my residency on campus.  My overflowing collapsible hamper and my polka dot comforter were moved back to my parents’ house.  Truthfully, I don’t remember too much about living at home sophomore year, which I’m just now realizing.  It must not have been too bad then.  But by the end of the year, I knew I had to move out again for the sake of everyone’s sanity.  I signed a lease for a duplex with my freshman roommate (I mean if it works, don’t fix it) and one of our mutual friends for junior and senior year.  And it felt right.  It was finally my place – well, our place.  Maybe it’s just me, but living in the dorms feels a bit like staying at a really, really prolonged summer camp.  But in this duplex, I was paying rent and utilities.  I was checking the grown-up mail addressed for me at my new address (note: grown-up mail loses its novelty very quickly).  I was buying my own groceries.  I was coming and going at whatever time I felt like, and didn’t have to report to anyone.  Usually I would drive the fifteen minutes to my parents’ house on Sundays for a couple of hours to see my family and the dogs, but that was it.  Then senior year ended and I spent the summer in downtown Kansas City living with another of my best friends as we both did internships at a public accounting firm.  As far as summers go, it was a great one.  The independence was exhilarating.

The independence was also short-lived, as evidenced by my current situation: sprawled on my parents’ leather couch in the sitting room flanked by a fluffy white dog and a fluffy black dog.  I woke up about an hour ago in my old room under the old polka dot comforter.  I poured some cereal and drank some coffee, neither of which I bought.  It still feels a bit odd, like I’m a guest here staying indefinitely, encroaching on the good grace of my parents. 

The reason why I’m back is because I have one more year of school for my Master’s degree, and then I’ll be moving back to Kansas City to start work full-time.  The lease on the duplex ended last month, and the majority of my friends has graduated or will be graduating in December.  Plus, it makes sense financially.  This way I’ll be able to save up a little money before it all goes to paying for inflated KC real estate.  

So why am I writing about this?  Do I sound like one of those entitled girls on the show Girls?  The ones whose parents pay for everything while they work unpaid internships in New York City?  I hope not.  If anything, I’m partially writing this to remind myself that I have literally no acceptable reason to bitch about my current situation.  After all, as soon as I turned 18 my parents could’ve been like, “Uh, byeeee.  Take out loans and figure out life yourself.”  A lot of parents do this and the kid usually turns out fine, really fine actually.  But my parents are sacrificing the peace and the space that they so deserve after raising two daughters for most of their married life by letting me live here one more year.  I’m also reminding myself that since this is the last time I’ll be living with them (in the same house and in the same town), I need to cherish it.  When my mom asks me if I have plans for later and if I’ll be home tonight, I’ll do my very best to not make a bratty comment about her needing to know my whereabouts at all times.  When my dad sees me opening mail and asks, “Fan mail from some flounder?” in his Bullwinkle impression for the millionth time, I’ll do my very best to not roll my eyes.  Because my parents are freaking saints, and I don’t deserve to be living in their home expense-free at age 21, but they’re letting me.  There are definitely some things that will take some acclimation, like living with the wallpaper/paint combo that 16-year-old Courtney thought was a good idea.  But I will be appreciative for this year with the parents and the puppies I love.  And just a heads up: if you are my friend and live in Columbia, you’ll probably be seeing me a lot at your place.