Intrepid Girl Reporter

I knew I should have waited to post until the frazzled feeling had faded. Now I have a desk and a completed dresser under my belt, and I can admit a few things.

1. I wanted this place to feel familiar, so I played Dave Matthews Band’s “Under the Table and Dreaming.” Go on and judge.
2. At the risk of sounding like a huge asshole, I’m okay with not having air conditioning right now. Not because I like sweating or anything (although, given my current appearance, one could be forgiven for thinking that I do), but between the fans and cold showers, it’s reminding me that I need a lot less than I imagine. I’m going to change my mind about this tomorrow probably.
3. Thanks to one of my housemates, I now know how to use a ratchet driver.
4. My furniture will not fit.
5. I’m dying to work out, surprisingly, so I can get rid of some of this nervous energy.
6. All of my stuff is still in boxes in the basement.

It’s hard to describe how satisfying I find it to make things – specifically, things about which I am pleased and satisfied that do not also happen to look like carbon copies of other people’s work. As anyone who has ever met me can attest, I have issues with not succeeding, and that applies to knitting about as much as it does to flunking a test.

Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot better at accepting that it’s okay to:

1. practice my ________ project  before actually doing it (sewing, writing, painting, etc.)
2. practice the specific skills that will allow me to do something complicated, rather than just JUMPING RIGHT IN because WHO NEEDS BEGINNER STUFF (yes, I thought like this as a first grader. Doesn’t it explain a lot?)
3. not succeed the first time
4. make something that looks handmade
5. improvise
6. not listen to other people’s aesthetic suggestions

Even so, it can be really frustrating to realize that you’ve spent three hours bent over a collage or your sewing machine or whatever, only to realize that despite the sweat and paper cuts, what you’ve made is the equivalent of a macaroni ornament. I’m not going to pretend like I haven’t kicked a lot of chairs in my time. Even though the chair always, always wins.

I went through those same angry-first-grader feelings yesterday, as I tried to make a mockup of my still-embryonic website and realized that although I know how to doctor photos and make neat pictures like nobody’s business, I lack the basic Photoshop knowledge to make a grid 960 pixels wide. This is my issue with more or less everything: I decide to teach myself the most difficult things immediately, and thus end up with really large gaps in my understanding. (See: why I am reading Teach Yourself Economics.)

But today I decorated a pillowcase I made, and it not only shows off one of my favorite Louisville institutions, but it looks like someone armed with a thread marker doodled all over it, which was exactly what I was going for and exactly what I achieved. And that is pretty much all I wanted to tell you, that sometimes things go right and it feels good.

(Also, that one of the photographs from my old blog is being used for a press release for a design exhibition in Belgium, which means that surely I am very close to stardom of some sort. The next time you wonder if your life is complete, stop and ask yourself: “Am I famous in Belgium yet?” If the answer is “no,” keep on trucking.)

I’ve been passing the time lately by writing lists. It’s an oddly satisfying habit, and one that the casual observer, seeing me in all my disarray, might not be conditioned to expect; but I like lists for the same reason that everyone else likes lists, which is to say that they impose a certain order on the world. And they’re fun to make, in a certain narcissistic way. Either you’re required to be self-involved, or you get to focus on how much you know (or don’t).

For those five of you who have noticed that I’ve been posting increasingly on my Tumblr and less onto here, and for the three of those five who might be disappointed about that state of affairs, rest assured: there is a plan, one that has to do (somewhat) with my (largely nonexistent, but still planned, really) website. But I suppose there’s a bit more to it than that: spending all of this time alone, or more or less alone, drives one away from introspection. I spend enough time without anything to distract me from my own thoughts. I don’t know that I need to go further. Or that it would be productive. It probably would be productive, in that I would be *forced* to write and therefore forced to improve my writing skillz, but I’ve spent enough years in my own head to develop a certain skittishness about going too deep. These are all issues that I should probably work out. Nonetheless, I’ve done okay so far. (Emphasis on okay.)

I’ve been trying to post more to Lancelot Sturgeon, too, but as much as I hate to admit it, those entries don’t come as naturally to me. I love it, I love writing about food and thinking about food and I want and I plan to get better, but I don’t feel as comfortable there as I do here. My voice here is well settled. People know me. And if they don’t know me, they don’t know my name, which, again, probably for the best. I want to be able to write about what I eat with the same frankness and enthusiasm with which I discuss basketball players’ nicknames or my children, but I’m still stretching into that form. I’m trying to abandon my self-consciousness. Hopefully you’ll see it by the side of the road soon.

The summer hasn’t been filled with much, a lot of crafting and some cooking, apple fritters from Pal’s, freelancing for too little money. If nothing else, this summer has allowed me to brush up on my knowledge of paracord tutorials, welding schools in Colorado, and how to locate the parts number of an iBook. I had this idea that I would make enough money freelancing to head to Geneva and visit Rooms, along with someone else that I met here in the States and liked very much, but it didn’t happen. So I went to move my little brother into His School, a well-known and lovely Southern institution that is, quite frankly, located in a swamp, instead. I have a lot of things I’ve assigned myself to work on, and I’m glad I have all this time, but despite myself, I’m starting to get a little itchy for movement.

I have been in this house for one whole year, one year exactly, which means that it’s been a year since I was getting four hours of sleep a night, a year since my grandmother died, a year since I’ve slept on that godawful couch in that godawful cold house on Capitol Hill. It’s a lovely thing, to not be living out of a suitcase anymore, although I confess to a little bit of antsiness. I can’t help it. It’s in my bones. This is the longest I’ve stayed in one place since I was eighteen, which was six years ago, a fact I try not to contemplate too much. (See: Joyce Maynard.) It’s a strange thing, to be so domestic and yet so accustomed to motion. I’m not even sure which one is the natural inclination anymore. Nature? Nurture? Who knows.

In a lot of important ways, though, it feels as though I’ve rejoined this city in the past couple of weeks. I’m auditioning for a choir. (Which I have not done since high school.) I’m working on an article proposal for A Real Magazine. I’m taking a class at the Alliance Francaise in an effort to not lose the one foreign language I know at a level higher than first grade, and I am remembering how much fun it is to learn stuff. I am starting to feel again the compulsion to learn things and to share them – for example, the fact that Julius Caesar’s death is commemorated with a drunk run in Rome every year by the Hash House Harriers. Does that weird anyone else out? Because I find it a little disturbing.

This is ramblier than I wanted, probably because I am a little out of blogging practice (for this purpose, at least), but what I am trying to say here is that I am slowly starting to take root a little again. Even if there are still nights, such as this one, when I find myself rereading old poetry and navel-gazing for too long. I have Nina Simone’s cover of “Who Knows Where The Time Goes” stuck in my head and I swear it’s a coincidence.