I wish I had read The Phantom Tollbooth when I was younger. It would have been my companion to life. I think I have found my favorite book, at long last.

belated merry christmas, everybody. happy holidaysssss

I am anticipating a somewhat speedier release. I’ve barely been in for a whole week into the semester (read: no classes, just lines) and  I already feel the tempered pressure mounting. Mounting. When I think about it, what I fear most is not spilling over (thus, a longer stay), but the utterly insufferable consequence of burning out. I’ve felt what it is to have your few remaining creative cells deplete due to incessant procrastinating/cramming. The output always suffers. The culprit always dives into a pit of talent/skill-based self-doubt afterward. Not a pretty swim at all. Is there any other way to work, though?

Here’s to academic survival, coffee beans, and long battery life.

• Get to drive one of these babies.

RECON
RECON
RECON 

hello
(in case you’ve changed
your mind)
i understand—
and i do not take
anything back.
what a shame.

It’s funny how, now, every time I try to write a paper that requires the least bit of what professors would term “insight” from myself and my experiences, I seem to keep going back to a singular point and insist it applies to everything.

I keep talking about balance. What a shallow, romantic issue, you might say. It is, however, what we end up going back to after mini-episodes of despair and the euphoria have both waned. You’ve seen light, you’ve seen the pit. Has either dulled your abilities to distinguish?

On the surface it doesn’t seem that hard, but if you think about it, it’s the most difficult thing to achieve in the world. Always on the threshold of  ”trying.” Balance is all.

• Do this in some far-off beach.

I believe we are all so much stronger now.

My family:

I know now what I should have known six years ago: I should have believed in you, even in your failures. It does not serve us altogether, nor individually, to just keep seeing failures. I’m sorry I kept myself blindsided. Nothing good will ever erase the truths that hurt, but I will no longer lead myself to believe that we do not deserve any goodness at all. I’m sorry for everything and I hope you are, too. But I will not take anything back. This is the first time I can say that out loud. Our life is what it is supposed to be. Do not expect much of me, except that I will always try for you. I understand now. I love you, always.

In the dream I am standing at a shore, never more apprehensive. I feel my toes are crumbling with the sand and only the crippling vastness of the sea can heal—the depth, a safety; the ocean’s embrace a force to keep me whole.

And I know the tide is coming. The tide is coming like a silent storm yearning to devour whatever lies in its way, but I know it is coming for only me. There is something not right in the way I look for it, the way my chest heaves at the thought of rushing headfirst into its violence, the way the fear is almost a push and not a retreat.

For a second, I am sure.

Then, upon the sand which I disdain, a memory surfaces. And suddenly, I am made aware of all the metaphors I will miss making, and all the metaphors thrown into the sea that weren’t mine, and might get mistaken to be, if I rush. I know the tide does not deserve my surrender yet.

I walk, back away, until I’ve felt the sand has consumed me, knowing that if it were meant to salvage me, the sea would leap closer to the shore.

Uh I kind of want to marry Jason Segel.