Morning routines, instant coffee

My love for the silent section of the library

A photo from home

These days I find myself waking up between 4:15 and 5:00—lately I’ve been waking up at 4:38 with my blanket thrown off of me at some point in the night and still plenty warm. I’ll roll over and check my phone, expecing to see that I’ve slept through my alarm entirely, and realize how much time I still have to rest.

College showers are disgusting, an unfortunate part of them being shared with half of my floor, but they seem a little less bad at 5:30, when I leave most of the bathroom lights off, and try not to think too hard about what the dark spot in the grout might be. Willful ignorance is key.

I’m still operating on autopilot while I brush my teeth and get dressed and pick out jewelry and perfume and lipstick for the day. When I remember to buy milk I make instant coffee for myself in the travel mug that I bought at Fred Myer during my second week at school.

Outside it’s raining, and I forget my rain coat in my dorm and have to walk back to get it. I don’t put the hood up while I walk—I’ve spent too long in a drought ridden state to hate the rain, and even though I wind up soaked and my hair is frizzy it’s still so worth it.

The silent section of the library has been a new and wonderful discovery this semester. My favorite desk looks out over the reflecting pool, and it feels private, somehow, even though the room seats 30 or 40 people. At 6:30, though, its just me and my book laden backpack and the white LED lamp at the Richard and Maye Lowry desk. I’m not sure if the desk actually made of real wood or if the grain is just a plastic veneer. I don’t know that it matters.

People text me photos of the sunrise, and I send them photos of my journal, my cursive, Martin Luther’s 95 Theses open on my computer. I understood the first 20 and then progressively got more and more confused, such is the life of someone in a religious studies class.

Also from home.

Classes are fascinating, and play a large part in why I haven’t written much here lately (or at all). I still journal, but I’m trying this new thing where I keep all of my journal to myself—according to Julia Cameron it’s how you tap into your creative energy.

I’ve recently discovered that I can buy drip coffee (the morning light roast) from the on-campus coffee shop for 2.35, and I have since become a fixture at any of the tables with a booth seat. My favorite organizational tool—google calendar—gives me a go write darling reminder every morning at 7:30. I make an effort to write, but I’ll often end up reading or doing coursework instead.

I take a lot of photos these days: of the sky, of books, of interesting windows, my roommates. Earlier this week, my grandmother sent me photos of my family and I when my sister turned 7. We must have just moved in to the house that we’re living in currently, because the walls of the kitchen are still bright blue, and the cabinets are painted a brown that has turned almost black under the flash. We don’t have our piano yet either, so in the photo the living room looks huge and white.

I’m a little bit obsessed with the human condition, and if I’m writing that’s all I’m ever writing about. There’s this piece of writing advice that every creative writing teacher will tell you—write what you know. This advice is given to keep the writer from appropriating somebody else’s pain as their own, but it often contrasts with the other piece of common writing advice—write only what you see, which is meant to encourage a break in the self-involvement that some writers sink into.

I recently described myself as being terribly self involved. I don’t know if that is true—only that I was letting someone read a piece of writing in which I relied overmuch on I and could speak only to my own feelings, and I was embarrassed that they might realize that I was writing only of myself (then again, I also write this publication which is exclusively about me, so perhaps I’m not inventing the self-involvement).

I’m reading a lot of books lately—A Little Life, The Friend, Bluest Nude, The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers—and I’m trying (somewhat successfully) to spend less time on my phone in the morning. The idea being, if I don’t start my day on my phone, I will stop associating my phone with a morning dopamine rush, and I might turn to reading for dopamine more often. Crossing my fingers that it works.

I’m hoping to see more birds come out as it gets warmer, and I’m hoping for a restful end to this week.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

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Things I am leaning into lately:

1. Morning stretches, especially the kind that men used to do in the 1920’s (go look it up, it’s hysterical)

2. Tea, coffee, matcha, just starting my day with a warm drink

3. Jewelry, jewelry, jewelry

4. Lipstick, now and forever

5. Spending time in writing groups and with other creatives

Albums on repeat this week:

1. Feeding Seahorses by Hand by Billie Marten

2. Stick Season by Noah Kahan

3. Cat by Hiroshi Suzuki

And a poem:

Author’s Prayer
- By Ilya Kaminsky

If I speak for the dead, I must leave
this animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over,
for an empty page is the white flag of their surrender.

If I speak for them, I must walk on the edge
of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through rooms without
touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking “What year is it?”
I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,

I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition, and the darkest
days must I praise.