Life as I Know It

A Post About…A Work in Progress

Hello! Hello? Are you still there? Have you given up on this blog yet? Apparently, I haven’t.  Well, if you’re still here you’re in luck, because it’s story time. 

 Summer is the perfect time for books!  I finished two incredible books just today, and one of them particularly moved me and inspired me to write this post.  This ohsofascinating book was actually a short memoir of a young Midwestern woman’s year spent in New York City.  The author, who was only 23 years old and fresh out of college when she wrote the account, has become a very important role model for me recently.  She is a very beautiful and strong woman who gets to do what she loves for a living with a great group of people she loves.  She is intelligent and always put together.  The author and I come from similar backgrounds, and her life is basically what I want to have one day.  As I will be following in this woman’s footsteps and hope to be leaving for the Big Apple myself at a young age, I decided to treat the journal-like recount as a bible.

 Just as I had predicted, this book was everything I wanted and needed.  It offered sound advice, useful quotes, phenomenal wisdom, and some of the most inspiring words that I have ever read.  I laughed, I cried, and I had another one of those weird breakthroughs that I’ve been so wrapped up in lately.  As I was reading, the grammar nazi inside me noticed a few common errors. The typos made me stop and re-read a few sentences, and then, they made me stop and think.  This remarkable woman, whom I look up to so much, makes the same little mistakes that I do now. 

 I have been fortunate enough to encounter this hero of mine in real life, so I know that she’s a living, breathing, normal person.  Just for the record, I only got to meet her for a few seconds.  I didn’t get to explain how much she means to me or just how wonderful I think she truly is.  Nevertheless, getting to see her in the flesh and have my picture taken with her made her that much more human.  However, the experience hadn’t taken away the perfect image I hold her to and believe her to be.  The typos did that.  Don’t misunderstand me: I still think she’s perfect, and if anything her book only proved that to me.  But she’s different now.  She’s even more like me than I thought she was before.  She is still, as her story attests to, a work in progress.  And so am I.  She is allowed to make mistakes, little and big.  She is still growing, hell, she’s still in her twenties.  She can try things out and test waters.  She can do anything.

 As the book goes on, the typos stop and her journal entries become more poetic and crafted.  It is evident in her writing that she did some serious learning and practicing, that is, in writing and in life.  It was amazing to read this book and find my “bible” filled with the exact same thoughts and problems that I face, to read her internal dialogues between the different personalities in her brain and match them up with the ones my mind has been having lately.  Even the font that the book is written in is the one I use most often when I’m furiously typing into my word processor.  The similarities between my beloved author and I bring me so much strength and comfort.  Maybe trying to be just like her won’t be so hard for me after all.

 Now, I place this author among my Shakespeare, Wilde, Austen, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Coelho, and Rowling.  She’s just as good as the whole lot of them.  All those guys had to be works in progress at some point, too, right?  I like her even more now, knowing that she’s just as messed up as I am. Well… maybe a bit wiser. Okay, a lot wiser.  I still have a lot to learn.  And that’s okay.  I look forward to it.                             

A Post About…Travelling Home

I find myself travelling a lot these days.  The distances aren’t very far, but I’m a slow driver and that makes the trips considerably longer.  If I take a train, it’ll take me ninety minutes to get to my final destination.  I don’t mind the wait, though.  At least I’m going somewhere that I actually want to be.  This post isn’t supposed to be one of those “it’s all about the journey” things.  Yes, I think that’s important, too, but I want to talk about the destination.

I’ve lived in my house for three years now, and it doesn’t really feel like home.  When I look back on the places that I’ve lived in before, I realize that none of the houses ever felt like homes. No length of time can magically turn a place into home.  Home doesn’t have to automatically mean the place you were born in or grew up in.  When you’re home, you can just feel it.  It’s a place you belong to.  

The point is, home is the place you see yourself in, the place where you feel whole and the most comfortable.  My home is in the city.  I’ve never lived there, and I often don’t spend more than three days there at a time.  None of that matters, because when I’m in the city, everything feels brighter and lighter.  It feels like everything is in place.  The constant buzz of my surroundings makes me feel like I have nothing to worry about.  I see the dirt and the drunk people stumbling along in the night and the dark alleyways, but it never changes the way I think.  Or the way I’m inspired by it all.  Or the way I see a strange beauty in it. 

Right now, home is not the place I return to at the end of the day.  It gets frustrating, because it gives me a nagging voice in my head that says I should be going somewhere better, doing something better.  Being productive and giving myself busy work can help me ignore the haunting call, but nothing truly silences it until I travel home.  I might not know the exact cross streets the train leaves me at or the neighborhood I drive into, but I get the sense in my soul that I know where I am.  Maybe even who I am. 

You’re home might be in a field somewhere in Montana or on an island in the Pacific.  It could be waiting for you in the middle of India.  Wherever that place is, I hope you find it. 

Hello there, Internet

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a blog for a long time.  Like, a real one.  With words and stuff.  Yes, I know that this is generally frowned upon on Tumblr, but I hope you’ll give this blog a chance.  I love to write, and I wish to put my meager skills to good use here. 

It’s a place for my philosophical ramblings (insert snort), commentary, and reviews.  I hope to review a multitude of things, from the latest episode of Doctor Who to that new album from The Shins.  

Since this is an introduction, I suppose I should probably include some information on myself.  My name is Jackie.  I am many things:  a fangirl, a nerd, a bookworm, a media junkie.  I love to sing, and I believe music can save a soul.  I love to clean the lint trap on dryers.  I’m probably just like you. 

 This will be fun, I promise.  Try it out, and follow me. 

 Also, feel free to submit your requests for things I should review or talk about.   

Thanks for reading,

Jackie