Time to work harder.

On Sunday night I stayed up late. I couldn't sleep. In my apartment, at midnight, I grabbed my keys and went for a drive. Portland is full of secret corners and I have yet to discover one that seems fitting for me. A place to call my own. But I know about this field, a pocket of greenery and weeds and a picnic table. If I had to pick a spot, maybe this would be it. The field is at a steep slope and you can see the radio towers from the top, blinking red along the west hills. I sat on the picnic table for a long time.
I thought about all of my wrong doing, and all of the wrong doing that has been done to me. I thought about things that happened years ago and how they feel like another lifetime. I thought about how this moment will feel like another lifetime to 25-year-old Mary.

And I realized.

I am wasting all of my fucking time.

All of these things I want to be doing. Writing. Reading. Photography. Painting. Learning to play the guitar. Picking my violin back up after so many years of letting it collect dust. After I finished and published Originally From Here (buy it), I just sort of stopped. I hit a wall, if you will. None of my work since has felt good enough to continue on with. I thought, well, I'm not a writer. I am not creative. I am not any of the things I have claimed to be my entire life. And if I am not those things, I am nothing. Nothing.
 So I fiddle faddled my time away. TV, movies, tumblr, facebook. I stopped buying books. I stopped reading books. If I write, it's here and there and incoherent ramblings about unimportant happenings. I couldn't bring myself to write about the things in my life. I felt almost as if writing about those things would cause them to slip away.... Or maybe it's because I am, for the most part, happy. Do I need to be eternally miserable to put pen to paper and write something worth reading?

Anyhow. All of these thoughts brought me to a conclusion. Seperate myself from Facebook, and from Tumblr. And from any other distractions. If I cannot control the distractions, I will eliminate them. This morning I deleted my Facebook. Later today, I will delete my Tumblr. And how sad it is, the thought that went into deleting my account from a website. But you know? I want to be remembered for something I create, not something I once posted on my wall about. And honetly guys, who wants to know you're eating rice for dinner?

Really, what I am getting at with all of this isn't that I am egotistical and will tell you all about me. What I am wanting to tell you is to examine yourself, your life. Look closely at where you put the time you're given. I know you hear this often, but your time is precious and you cannot get it back. Do something that matters with it. I am not saying social sites are a bad thing, they are only bad if you cannot handle them.

Let's get back to how I said I was nothing. I'll leave you with this.

Enjoy every minute.

Love always,
Mary