It’s been awhile since I made any of this…

they walked for a long time in silence
under the wind
and the westward winding of the sky
and the fall
of the dying colors
the wings of words left unheard
and the sun
goes down
scattering fragments of gold
at our feet
and soaking your face
in the color of everything that
you dream about
and i think
how much
i want to go on forever
but i am always looking forward
and every time i take a step
in the quiet
and the shifting play of light
i look behind
and barely recognize
the two who are walking
in our own footsteps.

original poetry by Kiersten M. Lawrence
26 February 2013

Apologetic

Good grief.

I'm sorry for being so long absent. I'm sorry for promising everyone I'd post in early January and then not following through (I have reasons for that, though they're mostly not very good ones). I'm sorry for other ways I've been unreliable and absent and lazy the last several weeks. I'm kind of dealing with (or cowering under) some spiritual and emotional rubbish right now—that's not an excuse, just an explanation. I've wanted to write about it here but, well, you can see how that's panned out so far.

I love you all (especially if you're still actually actively subscribed to this).
I'll try hard to update soon (meaning sometime in the next week). (Maybe committing to do so in writing will be that extra incentive I need.)

An Announcement:

To the Enemy:

You know what? Jesus wins. My God is bigger and better than you. So just shut up and let me celebrate at least one holiday this year in peace. You suck. HAHA. HAHAHAHA.

all the tags i tried to put at the end of my last post that blogger wouldn’t let me because of character limits (how dare Google limit my creativity; the irony of the post too is killing me)

please forgive me the odd title, oh dear—i’ve been too long on tumblr, even without the hashtag symbols, i am now just gratuitously adding more rambling via the tags instead of using them as an actual sorting mechanism, i apologize for contributing to the breakdown of the organizational order of the internet, except not that much, because organization LAWL, right-brained infp wins, at least on her own blog

NaNoWriMo and my squishy swollen brain

So everyone on staff at OLL and all the guest authors who write pep talks for NaNoWriMo and all the exhausted crazy people who dump stuff in the NaNoWriMo tag on tumblr all say the same thing:  "you’re writing 50,000 words on one piece of original fiction from scratch in 30 days; it is going to be rubbish and you are going to write on in spite of it.”  I’ve heard that easily dozens, possibly hundreds of times, over the last year-plus since I did my first NaNoWriMo.  But for some reason I’ve always had it in my head that that doesn’t quite apply to me.  Like, “I am KIERSTEN.  I am an ENGLISH MAJOR.  I write things ALL THE TIME.   I want to write fiction FOR A LIVING someday.  I am, like, contractually obligated by existence to only write things that are at least halfway awesome.”

And then it just hit me today how egregiously pretentious, egoistic, hubristic, and downright laughable that is.  How crackbrained do I have to be to think I’m only going to write good things?  Furthermore, how helpful is it if I kill my creative inspiration because I’m afraid that it is esoterically “not good enough”?  (The answers are, respectively, “extremely” and “not at all”.)

I’M WRITING A (short) NOVEL IN A MONTH, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE.  There are novelists I love and admire a great deal who won’t go near NaNoWriMo because they know very well how impossible it is to write a high-quality book in thirty days.  This is a month for pure stream-of-consciousness creative flow.  I can get down the plot and ideas, and then edit the living daylights out of it later.  There will be lots of places where I will have to intentionally write clunky and awkward rubbish just to fill in gaps.  (I have a hard time even doing that in essays, and those are usually pretty boring to read even when I enjoy writing them.)

And that is okay.

Halfway through the month, I am at 32,133 words.
That is not bad.
No bad at all.
And some of it is actually pretty neat, if I may say so.

I declare that this will be a success.  I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS STORY.  Even if I may not do it all that well.

titleless.

We're discussing sexual health and alternative sexuality in my holistic health class this week, and to be frank, I was terrified going in. I had an extremely sheltered, basically asexual childhood; a scary and confusing adolescence as a result; and at age 20 I finally feel like I'm stabilizing a bit, at least for my own self and future. But I can't speak for the rest of the world, or my opinions about it. I don't even know what is or is not, let alone what's right or wrong or good or bad. I didn't even know what to pray this morning. I just stressed about it and wanted to skip and just felt lost. Finally I was like, "God, just show me where you heart is in all of this. That's all I really want to get out of this." The result? After the end of my three-hour class, I wanted to go into the restroom and cry my eyes out. I just want people to get along. I want people to love other people. I want people to not be hypocritical. I want people to not be trapped in a fallen world that confuses the hell out of everybody. I want no one to have to feel alone, misunderstood, or unloved. I want people to realize that there is such a thing as right and wrong, that a moral dichotomy does exist. I'm not saying I have an understanding of what that dichotomy is and what it entails—not by a long shot. I just know it's there. I wish people who do believe in that dichotomy with me could see that you can't invoke one aspect of God's character while ignoring another: you cannot tell someone that God hates their sin while neglecting to tell them that He loves them, that he handmade them and called them "good," that he doesn't just want to burn them from the face of the earth. I wish I could somehow make up for the fact that people do very ungodly things in the name of godly principles. I wish that I had answers for people. I wish you weren't lost. I wish I wasn't lost, even after I've been found. I wish someone had told me the world was going to be such a hard place to live in and given me a few helpful hints. I wish I didn't disagree with some of the overbearing "hints" given to me by very vocal people who haven't known me nearly long enough to have any call to start making assumptions about what I think and believe and want. I wish I wasn't afraid to cry in public. I wish I didn't feel so freakishly lonely every time romantic relationships are a topic. I wish I wasn't a coward even when I do have something to say (but it's easier to hold it all in and not risk saying it "wrong", right? If any freaking thing in the world makes sense, it's how not to risk your reputation by having one). I wish God would give me a straightforward answer about how to love people without compromising righteousness. (I'd even settle for a case-by-case consultancy, which is probably what He has in place already and I just need to be better at listening). But I don't even know how to hold a conversation, about so many things. It isn't just sex...that's not even close to the whole problem. Is there anything that just...makes sense?

I'm really glad I'm not God, because I'd sure suck at it. Just holding His hand and seeing a reflection in His eyes for five minutes is difficult almost to the point of crippling.

All the same...not having a heart? I don't think I could bear existence itself, then.

(I have a lab exam in fifteen minutes. #WednesdaysContinueToEffingSuck.)

Regarding the upcoming elections: a short thing.

I’ve been hearing a lot of Obama-bashing from folks in person, and incomprehensible heaps of Romney-bashing from Tumblr.  It’s stressing me out, literally to the point of tears on more than one occasion.  I don’t know for sure yet how I’m going to vote.  I’m really, really torn.  I’m praying about it a lot.  It’s a very complicated decision for me, and I respect that it isn’t like that for everyone.

But I do wish that people would, in return, respect my desire to make an informed decision—a decision that I can be okay with because it was one I worked hard to make to the best of my ability, not because I was guilted into it. 

I’ve never done this before, and it scares me, frankly.  Even though I’m only one of two hundred million registered voters.  I know the fate of out nation doesn’t all hinge on my vote or something overly dramatic like that.  But it’s still important, because this is a part of me and it is a thing I’m doing, and I really don’t want to look back and regret it someday.  

So please, if you don’t have anything remotely encouraging to say to me over the next three days, don’t say it at all.

Thank you.

NaNoWriMo begins in one hour and thirteen minutes!

I’m super psyched, guys.
Even though I don’t have a whole plot outline (when do I ever?  Last year, I suppose).
It’s going to be fabulous and difficult and exhausting and frustrating and totally awesome.

So I have one hour and thirteen minutes to work on my stats homework!