I Need Journaling In My Life

The rain has started in California and I am feeling the joys of warm snuggly nights with hot cacao and marshmallows sitting beside my bed as I stay warm under the covers to write. Whether I am writing on my lap top for fiction stories or by hand in my journal to relive memories, that is when I am most happy.

Recently, and by that I mean in the last half year, I have not used writing to its full potential in my life. I know that writing out my feelings truly helps me by processing the emotions. Putting the words down on paper and allowing them to live in the physical world feels like I am detoxing my mind. I am free of their burdens and I am able to see the emotion so I can put together ideas for facing or organizing the way I feel.

If I know how valuable writing is for my emotional state, why have I been neglecting it as a tool? Well, let’s see what my potential writing time is being filled with: I am watching more content, even more than reading content, and obviously more than writing content. Watching television and reading books became my method for avoiding negative emotions and boredom when I was a child. That has definitely transferred to my adult life. When I want to avoid and bury my emotions, stress, anger, sadness, frustration, I put on a show that will transport me out of my life and mind for a while. My troubles are gone and I only have to be concerned with the trouble of characters on the screen. I know this is not a habit unique to me, a lot of people likely do this.

The problem with watching too much television or other content (Youtube videos) is that when I turn it off and come back to my reality, I am left with additional negative emotions. First, my original feelings have not disappeared, second, my time has been wasted – usually I binge shows and videos to lengthen my absence from real-world problems, and third, I am regretful that all that time not doing work was filled with watching content instead of with more meaningful activities that I always say I want to do like reading and writing.

Writing this all out now feels redundant because I’ve had all these thoughts running through my mind for a long time. I’ve talked them through with myself and tried changing my screen-time behavior. I have analyzed my weekly television (as a proxy for escaping reality) watching habits and tried to use that to help me change. So, the next question I must ask is, why am I having such a hard time turning off a show to do what I actually want to do?

The answer is simple. I am scared of facing the emotions I am feeling. If I take time to sit down and write honestly, the raw emotion living inside me will burst out. It will feel overwhelming and unmanageable. It will feel disorienting and intimidating. Maybe I won’t know where to start, maybe I will spend too much time on a single piece of the problem, maybe I will not be able to manage the emotion through writing after all and then what can I do?

It is likely that I’ve come to this same conclusion over and over in the past six months. I know that the fear of feeling overwhelmed, the fear of starting something, the fear of doing something wrong stunts my productivity and ability to reach my potential. Well then, I need to take a hard long look at my tattoo and remember what I went through that pain for. I need to take a deep breath and jump into the abyss.

Breaking the Binary

I was just browsing through facebook, a guilty pleasure that has become a horrendous addiction, and learned that CoverGirl has hired a new spokesperson. His name is James Charles. He is a seventeen year old make up artists, who I read only picked up a foundation brush a year ago.

While I see so many great initiatives to bring positivity to the world of beauty and fashion, i.e. larger sized models, shorter models, variously able models – well it’s really just expanding the world of women models – I have not seen such a bold decision as to make a male the face of a major makeup line.

You can see more of jcharlesbeauty on youtube, and of course his instagram.

When I took a second to have an out of body experience and realize what this looks like to the world I live in, I was excited to see a world where stupid societal taboos and structures are being shattered. Every day steps are being taken to break down the need for “girl” and “boy”. Some of the oddity that dystopian books describe of future societies (particularly I’m thinking of The Hunger Games and how the citizens of the Capitol were dressed in elaborate and colorful pieces – everyone, not just the women) is popping up around me and I am excited about it.

Odd and weird trends are coming out of the dark and into the streets of major cities. People who are scared of progressive thought are being overpowered by the youth and even the government. Media is opening its exclusive roles to nontraditional identities. I understand that nothing is perfect, people are still persecuted for their beliefs and actions, but I am grateful to be living and witnessing the progression of a society. It is exhilarating to see barriers, ceilings, and stereotypes be broken, and I am eager every day to see which one will be next.

I have good taste in movies y’all

Holy shit.
I am overly excited right now and need to post something. I grew up loving punk rock and rock n’ roll and all that black band tees and grunge look stuff. I might grow out of it one day, but I will always be sucked back through a time warp every time I listen to one of those “middle school” bands or see a kid on a board.
Sixth grade. I wanted so much, so damn much to watch this new movie that came out. It looked sick. It looked sexy, and it looked like the best thing ever. The Lords of Dogtown. 2005. I knew my parents would not let me watch that shit. Eight years later I finally got around to seeing it, as one of the five movies I told myself to watch this break. Hot damn no regrets. It was incredible. Even now I was completely enamored by these guys and their lifestyle and their skill and craft.
Maybe it was a good thing I didn’t watch it back then? I know, I KNOW if I had watched it back then these guys would have become my fucking heroes.
Major bonus: Heath Ledger was in it. I had no idea until today. Fuck. He is the equivalent to Johnny Depp in my eyes. The two most versatile actors I have had the pleasure of watching. Off topic, but this post isn’t specific so fuck it. Rant on: Heath, I didn’t understand till today in the lonely confines of my dark and quiet room that when we lost this man we not only lost “some famous person” but an irreplaceable actor and artist. He knew how to be an actor. He knew how to transform himself into each of his characters. No two characters of his (that I’ve seen to date) have been in the least bit similar. Hats off and rest in peace you wonderful man. You are missed.