A Series of Starts

Because you have to start somewhere or at least that's what I tell myself.


I bought myself carnations because I had to stop to smell something.

[His closet was curated with self-awarness. The realization that someone could be so sure of themselves, the realness of a human being to an outsider, it took her breath away.]

You can say it every night when you crawl into your bed, filthy with hungover bread crumbs and an aspirin bottle, but today you really mean it. You don't believe in love. Not the kind that is singular or capitalized, accentuated with paper announcements and dotted with public kisses. The only love that exists is between the ideal and the pain of not having. You feed it with melancholy melodies and pages and pages of words written by decades of alcoholics, sucking out the buzz with every line and calling it infatuation.

this is the nature of the
cyclical masochist:
we replace habits with other habits,
content to believe we're improving ourselves.

I'm always hesitant to write about someone so new because within a month or so everything will be covered with a different filter and those words I wrote just a few weeks earlier will seem vulgar or overly zealous, shameful and naive.

Inspire 2013 (or how I started running again)

stop putting off the happy
in place of comfort.
inspire yourself daily.

Summer 2013 To-Do

• Travel through Alaska
• Taste some crazy food
• Present a slideshow to The Rosary Society
• Party down with the Campbell, Ix, and O'Malley fams at the Grad Party
• Book plane ticket to visit Notre Dame and Marie
• See The Postal Service
• Eat at Albany Pump Station
• Serve on the SPAC Junior Committee
• Go to a lawn concert
• Sip a cocktail at the Confectionary
• Publish another article in Saratoga Living
• Have a "Redneck Weekend" with Lindsey
• Give Maggie a tour of my Siena Life
• See at least 1 Alive at 5 Show
• Cash in on a Free Movie Tuesday
• Visit the track; wear a hat
• Get a cone at the Snowman
• Go to a garage sale
• Build my own bike
• Visit Annie & Chelsea in Philly (July)
• Check out the Saratoga County Fair
• Listen to "Jazz in July"
• Walk to get my groceries
• Pass the Google Ad Words Exams
• Take the GRE
• Become Web Savvy via U Albany Classes
• Make a trip down the shore
• Have a Valley friends reunion
• White Water Rafting Trip with the Bon Bons
• Make more smoothies
• Go to the Troy Farmer's Market
• Climb a mountain
• Take a class at Tiger Trap Studio
• Help grandma set up an Etsy shop
• Get a NY Library Card
• Utilize Book Mooch
• Purchase a Kindle...maybe

Tuesday Pep Talk

please please darling, start every day anew

no matter where you end up

• there will always be the shins
• there will always be walks
• there will always be juno and garden state
• there will always be your thoughts
• there will always be a pen
• there will always be amaretto sours
• there will always be sweat pants
• there will always be thrift stores
• there will always be dogs you want
• there will always be red velvet cake
• there will always be august
• there will always be late calls to anthony and annie
• there will always be grass to walk on
• there will always be twin peaks re-runs
• there will always be playground swings
• there will always be tickets to buy
• there will always be "okay" coffee
• there will always be weekend trips
• there will always be things to cry about
• there will always be warm laundry
• there will always be bad sunburns
• there will always be goat's milk soap
• there will always be books to read
• there will always be choices
• there will always be thoughtful laugher

Tip from Corita Kent

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Old drafts about first dates

morgan took erik to a cramped english bar five blocks downtown even though it was he who asked for the date. she drove, melodramatically fearing that she'd wind up at the bottom of the hudson, clothes torn from sex-crazed hands and a neck blushing with rope burns.  They looked up, startled by the slice of pearlized wings, placed like colorforms on the bruising sky.

"If you have an art that needs practice, stop neglecting it."

I haven't written a blog post in months, which means I haven't written anything of personal value during that time. For the past four years (dear god, has it been that long?) this blog has served as the recycling receptacle for my word vomit, a place where I could toss any and every thought and feel that it had accomplished something, had some merit since it was posted on the internet. You know, for people to see. This thought process would be perfectly sane if I shared this URL with anyone, or if I actually liked people reading my poetry. However, I hate blogging and feel like a pompous prick by telling someone casually to check out poem number 48 on my blog; it's a bit too self-assured for my likes.

But things change, life changes, and so will this blog. Today I was catching up on the second season of Girls, an HBO show that my Dad said I had to watch back in August. Ray, a 33 year-old coffee shop manager on the show told Marnie, a pretty twenty-something with an unfulfilling hostess job, that she needed to start doing what she wanted to do. If she wanted to curate, she needed to open her own gallery. If she wanted to sing, she needed to sing. A very simple solution that must be accompanied by a strong will to actually accomplish something. So this is how I am manifesting Ray's words: I'm writing.

My name is Michelle and I am a 22 year-old New Jerseyian who has fallen irrevocably in love with Albany, New York. I like to think of myself as an intellectual but rarely practice any intellectual activities, filling my time by slowly checking books off my "must read" list and getting drunk at local shows. I'm about to get my B.A. in English from a small liberal arts school in Loudonville, NY and have carved out a niche for writers there the past four years, re-instating the English Society and helping build some foundation for a writing community. Right now I'm interning at a local magazine as a Public Relations Intern, but spend most of my time alone in the office looking for jobs or editing the stories my supervisor sends me via e-mail. I also do a shit ton of service, I'm talking seventeen hours per week. I spend Fridays and Saturdays at a local art gallery explaining to a local alcoholic that no, I do not want to buy his plastic baby bibs and watching the heat slowly rise hour per hour as I wait for some real visitors to drop by. I also run a Culture Club for kids once a week. I plan out activities like drum building or beading to inject a little bit of cultural literacy into their everyday lives. It's fun and I love the hour and a half that I spend with them, but I doubt that I'm making a huge impact on how they see the world. This is problematic seeing as my senior Capstone project is based on my work with them; an incredibly long paper that I have yet to start and have yet to feel passionate about.

Beyond the day to day things I've been doing the past few months, I've been actively seeking a job doing something that I can stomach. I have a lead at a PR firm in Manhattan and know that I could work in the non-profit sector in Albany, but am caught between the whole "Do I go for my dream" or "Do what I know makes me happy" dilemma. To be honest, I'm scared. I'm scared that my neurosis and need to be loved is going to hold me back from stepping out of my comfort zone and trying to be that person I want to be. I'm scared that I'm not as driven as everyone thinks I am, scared that they'll see that I'm lazy and un-producing, as complacent as the next woman. I'm hoping that these daily posts will affirm that I can accomplish something; I just need to start.

This is me, this is my art, this is what I must do.