Month: July 2015

When Will I Be Boring?

/ Glenna / Leave a comment

When you make it a habit to write about your life, you eventually question: will I run out of stories? Like most of us, I could (and have) fill journal after journal with my exploits. Sometimes they are actually interesting nuggets of wisdom that someone else can use; more often than not they are run-on sentences with no clear beginning, middle, or end.

That’s life though. If you would have asked me two years ago if there is where I’d be: halfway through graduate school, married, living in a house…I would have looked at you the way I look at a Pepsi can when it is the only option. A begrudging bewilderment. I’ll accept it only if I have to.

So I aim to write stories as they happen, as I remember them, or as they become culturally relevant. Yes, I could save them up, wishing for a better offer–planning for a big break. But honestly, it may never come, but these stories always will.

Advertisement

How to Love, Lose, and Everything in Between

/ Glenna / Leave a comment

When it comes down to it, most great literature is about two things: love and loss. And in some cases, the loss of love. This human emotion, raw and tender, drives pen to page day-in and day-out. I’ve tried to deny it. I’ve looked back at old work, searching for a different category, a different meaning; I was unwilling to admit that my work, all that I’ve ever felt the urge to express, the hastily loopy words that flowed from my BIC, could in fact be so simple.

There is a sense of release when I write something down. I occupy a space where my thoughts are five-steps ahead of my words, and language is a daily ropes course I try desperately to traverse without slipping. That hamster wheel, round and round. Just when I think I know where I’ll end up, I emerge in unfamiliar terrain, bumpy with questions.

I’ve never been to Denver, but to me it is like a Fairyland. “It’s fine,” I say to my husband in frustration, “when we’re in Denver it’ll be better.” I imagine it to be lush and green, rolling hills and changing temperatures. Not like Florida: where it’s just plain hot on the best days, and unbearable on the worst. The weight of sweat-soaked skin is a heavy burden.

Like most days, I’m not sure where I’ll end up, what I’ll write. Maybe it will be Denver, or the next listicle on BuzzFeed, or smeared scrawling in a Snoopy Moleskine. The only thing I’m sure of, the only loss of love I’ll never have: composing snapshots of moments, easily forgotten and sometimes painfully remembered. Do we have to lose to know how to love?