From my iPhone notes and my journal.

August 18, 2018

The most meaningful conversation I had tonight was with an alcoholic. When my chin was in my hand and my eyes were scanning his for bullshit and we were talking about why human beings seek the answers they seek, I actually cared about that moment.

Everything else tonight was so fucking boring.

The “What do you do?” and the “How long have you been together?” and the “How long are you studying for?” Nothing below the surface and nothing that had me blink an eye.

Give me the person who is willing to read me the letter he wrote his mom because he’s completely messed up her life. Give me the person who also does not care about “the footy” because we are too into our conversation about death.

I just wanted to hear everything he had to say and I don’t care if I ever see the rest of them again. All the ones with their lives together.

Nothing left to lose is so much more interesting and somehow I left feeling like everyone else was bullshitting.

This is just an observation.

Maybe I just like dirty laundry.

July 20, 2018

After reading a Man Repeller post (still my favorite place on the internet) I followed a writing prompt and it lead me here:

“What season are you living in right now? What can you nurture today?”

I recently made this little list and all it said was: design school. write the book. yoga yoga yoga. almalfi coast.

It was short and perhaps the most focused little list of goals, or dreams, or things-to-do, that I had written in a very long time.

But that little list is the season I’m in.

Studying fashion feels like I’m tying together all of these things I’ve already dipped my toes into except rather than looking at merchandisers and designers and having tremendous job envy, I’m just one step closer to always looking forward to my Monday’s. In regards to the Almalfi Coast, it’s been a decade since I bought a book about it and I still haven’t gone, so it is time to get it on the calendar.

But in regards to writing a book, this big piece of unfinished homework, I have a lot of thoughts.

I never rushed through to publish it in the swirl of my late twenties when I was very focused on being a “writer.” Working and writing was different than just, writing. This thing that I had always done alone in my apartment. On my bed or on my couch. In tears or in love. And I will always do it. That I know for sure.

If I had committed to finishing and publishing my book at say, 27 or 28, it would have been a collection of funny dating stories. If a publisher had picked it up, it may have been marketed like the book a friend had been given by her step-mother. I can’t remember the title but “Unlucky in love,” was the theme. The cover was of a blonde girl in a white dress with her head in her hands and hot pink lipstick on.

That’s not the book in my heart.

There’s this assimilating happening. I have something to say and I’m still writing and sorting and restructuring and journaling to find out the answer. 

I am in this season of letting it all sink in. With a lot of cutting and pasting and rambling happening in between.  Thus far I’m glad I’ve given it a chance to evolve and morph and blossom into something more than it could have been otherwise. One iPhone note, one old journal entry, one “undo” button at a time. 

Or maybe I’m just procrastinating. I write about my own dirty laundry. Do I really want a hardcover around it all?

For some reason the answer is yes. This dream isn’t going anywhere.

All of these things that I always said I wanted to do – live beside the ocean, go back to school, write a book – I suppose I am in the season of doing them. I am right in the middle.

June 3, 2018

I think I have landed somewhere very important. At this space of focus, not on other people’s checklists – just my own. With the ocean down the street, a printed off draft of a book, a drawing portfolio, and a flight back to a Canadian summer, I feel like I’ve come back to myself. Or found myself. However one looks at it.

It’s nice to stop and stare for a while at the place one has found themselves in. The seasons go by too quick not to.

But note to self: Having my life together, scratching the thing off the to-do list, those things I get so focused on . . . they aren’t where the magic is.

The magic has always happened in the fumbling.

In the messing up, so to speak.