I’m here I’m here
I’m lost
I’m found
I’m taking pictures and using filters and forgetting or sleeping or working or schooling
I am here
But I’m so not here
here
Present
Aware
I’m exhausted and achy
Here but elsewhere
Startled
Overwhelmed
Detached
I’m here. We all are
I’m building words together
Wanting to create more
Say more
Express more
Be more with you
In this world
Of photographs and phrases
I’m here
And I’ll be here
With or without words
I’m alive
I’m alive
Do you ever feel “earthy crunchy”? That stereotypical hippie like being who likes yoga and bangle bracelets? I feel like my outsides and my insides don’t mesh. Sure, I love bangle bracelets. I especially love that Alex and Ani are made in America (with love). I don’t love that most other items are made in sweatshops. And yet I still sometimes go to Walmart. I’m not even sure where my clothes are from. part of me doesn’t even want to know. I think instead of feeling bad its better to be aware. It’s better to at least know. Have some empathy or something.
But organic apples.
I buy a lot of tea, the fancy good for you kind from Teavanna in flavored with real dried fruit (i know, I tasted it) and one with chocolate. but I keep forgetting to drink it. I’m not sure why. I love tea. I’d drink it at every meal if it was ready made for me.
I’m not lazy okay maybe sometimes I am. But usually my mind is everywhere. I don’t remember to take the time to put on makeup unless its already out and on my desk. out of sight, out of mind.
And yoga.
Oh yoga. I did it for about fifteen minutes yesterday. I don’t know what happened. I was tired.. I didn’t have the space to do a standing sun salutation against a wall. That’s what finally got me to quit (after a half hour playing with the video and downloading a new one so it would play after the first five minutes).
I couldn’t focus. I already felt stretched.
The video was taking an incredibly long time to load and work properly
Don’t mention the food industry to me unless you want an earful. I can get straight up political on that shit. And yet I’m not eating any better.
What am I saying here?
I have all these feelings and thoughts and they don’t jive with my actions. I don’t jive with myself. And I can’t quite figure that out. I can’t quite figure me out. Where to start. Where to go from here. Into the earth somewhere, to a place where I am free to practice tree pose and contemplate if I’d really use the juicer I so badly want to buy.
Melanie Kristy
I’ve been trying to fill myself up with love so I have some to share and some stories to tell.
I’ve got nothing to say and everything on my mind. I want to keep replaying Counting Crows songs until something makes more sense. I have this terrible ability to make myself SO overwhelmed. Over nothing. Sometimes it’s over something. It’s like my mind can’t go in a straight line. It goes all of the place, all of a sudden. It looks like a child scribbled lines in all different colored markers until the page tore through.
This whole blogging thing is going to change for me. For a while I was so into it, and don’t get me wrong, I’ve been writing online for years and year and year. I’m not going to stop. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend that this blog is going to be something more than it is.
It’s just going to be me. Melanie Kristy. It’s going to be me and my readers, all of you lovely folks out there who are taking the moments to read a few lines of nonsense.
It’s us together.
It’s not about writing to please an audience, about attracting readers. I believe the right readers will be attracted. The right company will find its way here. This is about me, wholly.
And in the past year that I’ve been writing or not so writing as the case often seems to be, I’ve lost that. This is a personal site, the musings of a writer and librarian in training who is in her twenty somethings and finding armor and tools to rip her way through this world. It’s about a girl who stocks her shelves with teen literature, counts on a group of friends online to keep her inspired and writing (no pressure;) ) and is figuring out how to balance things. It’s about a girl who can’t balance things but tries anyway. It’s the journal of an online junkie, a girl who can’t remember life without the internet as sad as that statement makes her. It’s about a girl who is obsessed with camera apps on her phone, takes too many pictures of herself and has the same favorite band since she was twelve.
It’s about me. Melanie Kristy.
It’s nice to (re) meet you. We’ve only just begun.
Now tell me about you.
xoxo
Melanie
It’s December, already? How does this happen, anyway? How does time pass and all of a sudden you are here in this moment and you aren’t sure how you got here or why you’re here or what’s even going on. But it’s December, in 2012, the month that, according to the Mayans, the world is going to end.
Or the world as we know it.
That could mean we’ll be disconnected, battling a war on home grounds, without chocolate, the end of The Twinkie. It could mean natural disaster. It could not mean anything at all.
But if we take a second to think about it, trace the steps to how we got here in this very moment maybe, if the eternal light goes out on December 21st (or we lose someone or something or go through heart break or get sick or lose our jobs or become lost in the woods), maybe we can take a moment and inhale the pine and Christmas cookie scent, taste the peppermint lip gloss and sit in this moment.
& remember
Remember anything, really. Like those times when your biggest struggle was learning how to tie your shoes. The first concert you went to without adult supervision. What it’s like to graduate school with a degree. The last amazing meal you ate. The last time you really, truly laughed until your eyes watered (and then you laughed some more).
In reality I hate the busyness that comes with “growing up” and responsibility. I hate feeling stick with all these obligations because socially its become part of what’s “acceptable”. I’m going to school and working full time. I kind of hate it. But I don’t hate going to school. I don’t hate working.
And I really enjoy those free weekends full of Christmas lights, too much pizza, laughing until you cry and then ending the (too short) weekend with being immersed in beautiful, descriptive fiction.
But in the busy days its hard to remember what it’s like not to feel bush or stressed. It’s hard to remember what it’s like being five years old and riding a bicycle without training wheels for the first time. It’s that busyness that takes away. When we forget to breathe, we forget to acknowledge and we forget about the moment we are in or the times that we’ve already had.
Letters to myself
Past 18:
Senior year of high school is kicking off wildly. Be you. Write fiercely. Follow your dreams. There are going to be so many people who don’t understand. Don’t let them change you. One day you are going to meet Francesca Lia Block and she is going to help you more than you can imagine. But right now don’t forget to live. Let your emotions out. Scream at the top of your lungs. Go to the beach all of the time. And don’t stop writing.
Present 28:
You are exactly where you need to be right now. You are on ledges, dangling off and dancing with caution. But these ledges are only cusps to something better. Something beautiful. Relax. Your work will get done. Read books. Write fiction. Save pennies. Believe & most of all love.
Future 38:
Don’t forget who you were and all you’ve done and gone through. Don’t forget the magic. Spend your life shining. Wear glitter. And keep on writing, even if no one is reading. Youhave it all inside you.
dont dwell. Calm nostalgia.
Be here. Now. Today.
We all change, right? Tiny little bits of our lives make us into people we weren’t before. Or they solidify our beliefs and hold us to our cynicism. Like if you’re terrified of people leaving and then someone you actually trusted to stay disappears your beliefs go right back into place. You were right. And there are times when you go around to different places hoping to be changed. You make experiences happen in hopes of a shift that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t work the way it does in novels where one summer turns your point of view. Or maybe sometimes it does. And you use your journal to recover or ignore people who weigh you down and the shift happens so slowly and so quietly you’re left to wonder how and when and why. You read a book and it changes how you feel inside deep at your core but if you don’t change anything externally you are who you are still just with a different core. You blabber into a wordpress website and hope discipline makes you a better writer but you never actually learn discipline. You just learn to use more words. Or to ignore that little voice telling you to write.
And then.
Then you really physically make a change. You register for online classes for a Masters Degree. And you feel lost. But not lost because you’re confused, because this is a major life change you don’t really want, because there’s a whole bunch of money you’re using on loan to get this degree that whatifyouactuallyhate. You feel lost because your perception of time changes. You can’t believe it’s been an entire month when it feels like a week. You forget to do nothing because you can’t because if you do you’re screwed. OR you might be screwed. Or you might spend an entire day on an assignment that still feels mediocre but you can’t think or read or write anything else or you might explode.
You are confused because the things you love you don’t want to do anymore. You’re burnt out on words. And words carry you by. Words are everything.
And blogging is a foreign concept. You skip articles in your newsfeed because there are just too many words. You remember and forget your blog which is no doubt losing readers (Because who needs readers if there’s nothing to read?).
I’m still here guys. I’m just writing to say I’m confused. I’m burnt out on words. It kind of physically hurts to write this right now. My hands are tired, my eyes don’t want to see more letters. But I can’t not have words. I can’t not write. I can’t not read. I can’t save these things for school and work online. Because that makes them even more depressing, if you think about it.
So what’s a girl to do?
I need expression.
I need connect.
I need something here that’s tangible, even if it’s only on the web.
I’m writing to say that I’m here.
That beneath the heaps of new music I need to listen to and the piles of notebooks and writing 2400 words of fiction for the first time in months I’m still here. And I want to be here. I just need to figure out how. How to be a presence. How to express myself. How to connect. And still not sit down and write another essay to post in my little corner of the world.
“let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start here.” – Cheryl Strayed
I am writing you in the note app of my iPhone while my iPad is just two inches away. I am drinking a pumpkin latte that was supposed to be decaf but I can feel the caffeine inside me. I’m writing to say I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I’m sorry I’m missing out on the wonderful blog world, a place where I kind of sort of belong but don’t (-and will never) belong enough to make this a living. While I’m writing to you, dear friends, I should also be writing my characters. I should be etching words of apology for the lack of progress I’ve made in the story I worked on so hard last year and for bits of this year. To Rynn who still needs to find her recipe, to Topher who needs to find his meaning, to Quiet Boy for being the perfect example of himself by waiting patiently and quietly for something inside me to get things moving.
Nothing is wrong, but I don’t feel right. Nothing is missing but there’s a space that needs filling.
I suppose it might be because I’ve extended the audience of my online musings to anyone im friends with on Facebook. I’ve shared the link to this website with the guys I’ve dated an the people I see on a daily basis. No longer am I only talking to friends I know through the Internet.
I suppose now would be the time to say: but I’m not sorry. Or: this chapter of blogging needs to end.
But that’s not what I’m here to say.
The only problem is: im not sure what I want to say. I don’t know how things are going to change, but I need to make that change. How do you move, reshape, feel, unfeel the things you don’t have a vision for? How can I make this blog about me but in doing so make it about you, too? Because I’m not here to only talk about how much I love pumpkin flavored anything or to flaunt any places I’ve traveled to. I’m here to share love, life, wanderlust and writing. I’m here to hope the things I love might have a place in your heart, too. I dont to write out of self obligation. I want to write out of the NEED to write. And lately that need hasn’t been around. It’s been lingering behind bushes and disguising itself as nostalgia.
In truth, my words don’t need meaning. They don’t need purpose. They just need to be.
Now would be an awesome time to let me know if you are a reader and who you are and where you’re from and your favorite childhood book or place to travel or dreams undiscovered. But I wont hold it against you if you decide not to do just that.
Xoxo
Melanie Kristy, searching, seeking and maybe finding.
(from one of those delicious drink beach days)
I feel like every day is a case of the Mondays, like I can’t get into a routine that sticks so I stay in bed for a half hour after my alarm goes off reading messages on my phone. Now I’m sitting here in makeup and pajamas avoiding thinking about breakfast.
I had this awesome weekend. But they’re always too short. Can we make the weekends a little bit longer?
Or make the week nights feel weekendish. I’m not even sure what that means. Mostly leaving work refreshed and ready for anything, instead of tired after a long day. Plans that aren’t too complicated. Or absolutely no plans at all. What do you weekends look like? For me they’re usually about a meal out or two, driving a lot and hanging out. Or they’re about going things for me, hanging out in Starbucks nursing a drink while I stare at blank pages, write in my journal or read. Sometimes, usually when the weather is a bit cooler and it doesn’t cost to park at the beach, that’s what I do. I drive down there and sit in my car with the windows open and I take pictures out my window and I drink something delicious. (I hate drinking calories but there’s something about an amazing drink that makes me do so occasionally). And I read. Because I can’t really write in my car. Sometimes I daydream. Sometimes I listen to Pandora.
I have nine minutes to get dressed and make/ eat breakfast. This is always the part where I fail.
Someone ought to bring me a Peanut Butter Wonderful iced coffee.
xo.
Melanie Kristy
Have you read a really really good book lately? One so great you want everyone to read it?
Have you stumbled upon an awesome blog post, a song that makes you cry or a movie that inspires?
It’s summer time. Have you been burned yet? Gone to the beach? Scratched off some mosquito bites? Have you made a summer bucket list, written in your diary, tried a new recipe?
Have you sent out pictures of yourself attempting to be creepy to guys?
Have you deleted Facebook, complained on Twitter, gotten a cold, bought new sun glasses, changed the background picture on your desktop, asked for time off, planned a trip to Myrtle Beach, boxed up most of your books into boxes that are sitting on the floor, drank enough water, lost the weight you put on after joining Weight Watchers, forgotten medicine and vitamins?
Has someone to like ignored your existence, someone else haunted your thoughts, more of the same old same old. Have you taken out The Secret and decided to manifest your own life? Have you looked at your old hoop that’s in the corner of your room behind your desk and thought about relearning how to dance with it.
Have you taken some ballet classes, thought about taking tap, asked about buying a condo, let your clean clothes pile up around you in your bedroom?
Has anyone asked you about you, blog, lately? Has anyone asked if you’re still blogging, where you are, how are you.
I’ve done most of these things in the past month or so. Or I’ve been asked these things. Stuff has happened. I have done things. I have lived or not lived. I have bought new prescription classes and got a new car.
I’ve eaten a lot of Indian food. Maybe I’m addicted. I also tried Ethiopian.
And somewhere in the middle I just disconnected. I turned off Facebook, I deleted (and then readded) my Twitter account. I stopped writing. I let an advanced writing class kind of go to waste as I sat and allowed work to pile up around me. I made a lot of outlines. And I gained weight. And kind of lost it. And lost a little more because having a cold is incredible on the appetite. I changed locations at work, I ate some lobster. I caught a fish, tried on some hats and sunglasses. I saw a swan in the parking lot of Dunkin Donuts. I baked two cupcakes, attended a wake, signed up for graduate classes (did I already type this one?) and bought more books.
All of these are things, little things, big things, influential and trivial. They’re parts of every day. Parts of moments that aren’t always heard of.
How have you been spending all of these important moments?
ps. Can I add that I’m amazed that I still have a steady flow of readers here? Even after deleting my Facebook and only posting one other time in the entirety of June. This is the perfect time to introduce yourself, readers! (Or reintroduce, or just say hello). I can’t wait to meet you.
