"Maybe that's what love is like."
"Maybe that's what love is like."
When someone sends me a text, I instantaneously respond. If it's an email or message, I take a little more time (assuming I am near a computer), but it's answered. Regardless of the medium and attention it requires, I always respond within a few hours. A correspondence with me will never go unanswered beyond the span of a day. I understand that people have lives outside of the internet or their phones, but aren't the three interconnected? I am beginning to feel like the quickness in my attentiveness throws people off. Forcing them to reassess me as a person.
There is maybe only one person who appears to function under the same stipulations that I do. In a way, it's comforting, but at this point, it's expected and when the responses are less than frequent, I know why. Everyone else takes their time, slowing me down, and feeding me no real response. Not to their absence or to the questions at hand. I am not suggesting that people give me their undivided attention, always (or ever), but it would be nice if I felt understood.
I do not refer to this as being "obsessed with technology" or "having no life", I just see this as the etiquette of existing in the modern world.
I typically find myself daydreaming. Wandering around the flowerly bright land that is my brain. Running in circles and spinning in the opposite direction. Thoughts running rampant, but none going along the path of what is surrounding me. Thinking of pretty dresses, television shows, ten years from now, December, lunch, marriage?, careers, last week, tomorrow, whatever and ever. My consciousness pushes through and once out I feel a bit dizzy, light headed, sick, and confused. I run backwards and back inside my mind. There's an entire world inside, where I pop in for the more than occasional visit. I create my own people, places, and meanings. My world never ever lets me down, unless of course I want it to. The people are beautiful and do beautiful things. Unless of course I don't want them to. It's fall all year round. The trees only die once to keep the spirit of the season alive... On occasion my mind blurs the division between reality and my reality. It's such a fine line. Did this already happen? Do these people exist? Wasn't tomorrow last night? Unanswered question after unanswered question. I cannot ask those around me, for then they'd actually know there's nothing behind these bright blue eyes of mine. This sounds like instability, but really this is just how I've learned to cope.
It's been staring me in the face my entire life. I'm no good with poetry. I'm not imaginative enough to write fiction. I don't care enough to write about the news. My life is like a bad made for television movie. Therefore nonfiction writing simply makes sense. I'm good at it. I enjoy it. It's around me at every waking moment. I have stories to tell, but more than this, I have real stories to tell. I haven't fully mastered my skill, but I have the rest of my life to get there.
I guess what I'm really saying is, I no longer want to go into publishing. I want to direct my future towards that of a non-fiction writer.
When I wrote about editing and feeling like I was made for that, I think I misinterpreted what was happening. I wasn't made for editing. I was made to write the kind of pieces I was editing.
I have changed my mind several times in regards to my impending future. It may change again, but here's to hoping, I've successfully conquered the age old question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
