The Watering Hole

The Starbucks in my building is the local high school watering hole. At 2:30pm, high schoolers congregate to get their frappuccinos and lattes. Who knows why they need caffeine at this young age, but I guess they feel cool when they’re doing it. 

The students come in cliques. I’ve noticed “cool girls” wearing heavy makeup and low-rise jeans; they eye everyone around them to see if someone is looking. There’s the girl and boy duo, best friends that dislike the cool girls but secretly wish they could be them. Then there’s the nerdiest of the groups who wear big backpacks that make them hunch forward because of the weight.

I was one of these kids. Maybe the weight of my backpack in those days is what is killing my lower back today. On occasion, I get intense lower-back spasms. I’ve dealt with it since I was a kid. I remembered yesterday how I used to wear a black back brace that was specifically shaped to my lower back. It was embarrassing to wear, and I’d only wear it at home when the pain became unbearable. 

What’s funny is that in my memory, I correlate the start of this pain to a car accident I was in when I was 13. I wasn’t the one driving, of course, but I was in the front passenger seat and witnessed the driver of my car partake in road rage. That is why we crashed into a wooden utility pole and began seeing chiropractors at such a young age. My father was an idiot.

The writing I’m sharing is taking on a different tone maybe because of what I’m reading. I find it true that what you consume influences how you create and write. I’m reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Memories) by C.G. Jung. How did I land on this title? I was trying to keep my reading streak going, and my eyes landed on Memories on our bookshelf after I finished reading Etna by Paul Yoon. 

Jung writes, “I was taking a long road to school…when suddenly for a single moment I had the overwhelming impression of having just emerged from a dense cloud…Previously I had existed, too, but everything had merely happened to me. Now I happened to myself. Now I knew: I am myself now, now I exist. Previously I had been willed to do this and that; now I willed. This experience seemed to me tremendously important and new: there was ‘authority’ in me” (32-33).

I often have to remind myself that some things are in my control, like sitting down and deciding to write. I complained about my boredom the other day, and when I showed some art journal entries to a friend, she said, “With all your skills and ideas, I don’t know how you could ever be bored.” Maybe I’m bored because I’m not acting on it. I used to say that when I didn’t “see magic” in my everyday life it’s because I’m not documenting it (life, that is).

So, the struggle I feel is with myself. Usually, when I feel excited, doing things I love comes easily. But I haven’t been excited lately. Scratch that. When I start writing or making some progress on a new greeting card design, I feel excited. I guess I’m the roadblock. I’m two logs in the middle of the road preventing traffic from going through. 

Deep down, I’m afraid of drawing again, drawing like I used to. I guess it’s because I’m curating things before I even put pen to paper. I’m just out of practice. 

I look back at my time in Boston and, thanks to the blogging I did, I was never confident or “magical” all the time, but I made things. Yes, I expressed fear and anxiety, but I still made things. I need to get back to making.