08.12.2007 - 3:16 p.m.

I can�t write about myself anymore. Or at least, that�s what it felt like, all morning, curled on the couch with my laptop, blank entry screen staring blankly back at me. So I gave up.

When I first started writing voluntarily, when I was seven or eight, I would always wait for it. Even my first few journals, in middle school and high school, were this way; even then, I knew how I balked at obligation. I wasn�t going to do that to my own creativity, shackle it to a schedule like that.

Other than assigned papers and occasional margin-notes, I didn�t write at all during college. Why not? Because if you relax, become content to wait for inspiration, it will eventually stop dropping by. You can�t wait for the earth to move. You�ve got to shift your weight.

This last year� oh, this last year. I�ve been consumed. And when I haven�t been consumed, I�ve been absent. And when I haven�t been absent, I�ve been too busy tearing myself apart to pay attention to the glint of sun on the water or the wonder in the fact that I can still lug a mattress up a flight of stairs, when so many of my friends can�t anymore.

I gave up the laptop this morning, but I didn�t stop trying to write. I got dressed for the day and paid attention to the feel of the fabric against my skin. I put my hair up in a knot and got down to finding the kitchen under all that filth, my mind busy not with the drudgery, and not with what I would do to escape it later, but very, very present. Actively following whatever thought happened to fill it as I blasted music from the iPod, scrubbing pots, appliances, knives, counters. It was, perhaps, a sort of prayer.

My fingernails have finally grown all the way back. I�ve never been one for nail polish, but they�re long enough to clack on a counter, trimmed into half-moons, free of raggedy corners. This last year they�ve spent chewed was the first in a decade. Think I can keep them this semester? Every year, even the ones that are easier than this last one, I find myself wondering if this time, I can finally do it without running myself stupid.

I think so, maybe. If I pay the right kind of attention. If I write enough.

-stonebridge

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