How To Be Introspective

 

Recently a friend commented on how introspective I am. She marveled about my ability to put my recent relationship into words and speak from a distance where, in certain points of view, I understood. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, trying to locate when I became introspective. Looking back on my life I feel like I wasn’t the most self aware person, especially not in grade school and high school. And college? Maybe that was the Becoming of me. But anyway, this is what came out of those internal thought ramblings.

Write a letter to yourself and date it for five years in the future. Write a letter to your past self and tell her it will all be okay even if it isn’t. Read a lot of self help books – but only the ones that call to you. Think about spirituality in a way that’s more than just organized religion. Read. Read. Read. Read fiction in genres you aren’t familiar with. Read non fiction about health and nutrition and your body. Read blogs about everything but especially about life and love and magic. Dance at night when no one’s watching. Do yoga. Spend a lot of time with yourself. Surrender to the fact that you are born alone and you will die alone. Learn who you are when you have no best friend. Learn who you want to be when you are married, or not married, or traveling the world. Venture outside of your comfort zone and sit there in insecurity. Date boys who don’t understand you. Date boys who understand you but can’t handle how amazing you are. Write in your journal nightly. Tell it how sad you are. Talk to paper like it’s your best friend. Ask it questions and write the answers. Think about something you may have said or did and try to contemplate why. If you can’t figure it out, give it time but keep thinking. Consider a situation you don’t understand. Write. Write the alternate side to that situation. Practice empathy. Walk a thousand miles without shoes, then find someone elses’ and walk in theirs instead. Draw a map of all the places you frequent regularly, then refuse to go to any of those places (okay, except home and work) for a month. Talk to people you wouldn’t normally talk to. Asked to be surprised by the cake pop flavor you ask for at Starbucks. Be alone. Entirely alone. Think about death. Talk to those you know who have passed. Sit and meditate and ask for forgiveness. Imagine God as a spirit inside a tree (Like Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas). Imagine there is no God. Live outside of the moment. Live in anxiety about the future and the present and your health and the state of the world. Live in nostalgia of the past and when things were easier and less complicated and your favorite band had more poetic lyrics and you were soaking in sunshine in California. Look at old photographs and try to remember. Make up stories about your past. Make up lives for strangers. Find solace in sitting in Starbucks surrounded by strangers. Make friends with people all over the world online and dream about going to visit them. Plan a trip to Australia in your mind. Dream about the beach. Write letters and e-mails to people just to make sense of your life. Take what is bothering you and sit on it. Write about it. Be creative with it. Make art.

Do all of these things. Do none of these things. The most important part is to sit with yourself, no matter what way. Think to yourself. Spend too much time in your head. When someone asks you what you’re thinking and you’re supposed to be mid-makeout session but you’ve paused to wonder about dandelions or The Future or what would happen if you sneezed, just smile and apologise and go on with your moment. Read nonfiction memoirs and more technical books about your “problems” and learn why you might eat too much or spend too much money or shut people out.

I think for me, what really turned me into the person I am today is a huge combination of reading and writing fiction, practicing empathy (which is a natural personality trait for me) or sympathy, and spending a lot of time alone and inside my head trying to figure out what’s wrong with me and how to make myself right.

Also, often I can’t put words and emotions into ways that will make sense out loud unless I write them down first. I can’t contemplate all of the workings of the world and my mind and be okay with it all unless I sit and write first. Or talk to people (but through text. often words in real conversation just don’t work unless I’ve extensively thought about them first). I’m like my own therapist, but I can’t figure out how to change my actions. Just why I have these actions and thoughts.

This is why I need to write. This is why I should journal more often. This is why I turn to online friends states away to make sense situations I find myself in. This is why it’s easier for me to meet someone online and date them in real life once they have some sense of who I am inside my head.

 xoxo

Melanie Kristy

Things Boys Have Said About My Blog

I very rarely share my blog information with dates or potential dates. I can be a little vulnerable in here and why would I want to allow someone I don’t yet trust to know all of these things about me? That being said there are a few who I’ve wanted to share my words with, and I thought it might be interesting to reflect here.

It doesn’t matter to you who said what, or why. So they aren’t in any certain order.

“You have a big online presence and it’s intimidating” this made me laugh because I think he imagined much more of my blog, especially because I have a Facebook page for it.

“If you spoke with half the peace of mind as you do in your blog, you wouldn’t have these problems connecting to people.” While he’s totally right here, I was blown away by this comment. It also shows something about me and the way I an comfortable with being vulnerable. It’s easier to do that in words in a removed place.

“I just decided to start my diet five minutes ago then I open the page to these [cupcakes].”

There have been other things, a few at least but I can’t remember.

Do you ever let someone you’re dating read your blog? What do they think or say?

Love,
Melanie Kristy

Nine Things I’ve Learned in My 20’s

So a couple weeks ago I entered the last year of my twenties. I made a list of nine things I’ve learned in my 20’s (one for each year) and I meant to post it on my birthday, but things got in the way and I never typed it up. Turning 29 was kind of weird this year, but not weird in a bad way. I spent the entire day with my boyfriend, something I’d never done before on a birthday. I spent the morning alone at the beach even though it had snowed before I woke up. Last year on my birthday the temperature was 72 degrees and I drank iced coffee and watched the water. This year it was 32 degrees and I drank hot coffee and lamented the fact that I didn’t want to open my car window as I looked outside. I spent the rest of the day dragging J to a photo booth, not wanting to drive far enough to go to my favorite places (bookstores, Lush and Duck & Bunny). We wrote fiction in my living room then ate pizza at a restaurant that has two-for-one deals on Tuesdays. J made me red velvet cupcakes, the first cupcakes he’s probably ever made. It was super sweet and low key. I kept celebrating with dinners and lunches and friends after the actual day. Every day should be a celebration, really. Every day should be filled with friends and great food and love and acceptance.

Here are nine things I’ve learned in the past twenty years:

* If you aren’t sure if you like-like someone (that you are dating, might date, etc.) you don’t.

* Essentials include writing, good food, tea, movement, reading, music & creativity. Don’t sacrifice these. Also don’t sacrifice love, friendship or family.

* Invest in quality / natural food, shoes and body products

* make friends everywhere in every state and in other countries. use faraway friendships as vessels for travel, mental escapes and excuses to send and receive snail mail

* There’s someone out there who will defy what you’ve come to learn about dating and love and relationships. There may be many someones.

* “All we really have in life is the ability to help each other through the tough times” – Francesca Lia Block 11/7/13

* You will meet people you’ve never dreamed of meeting and go places you never thought you would go

* Happiness isn’t  goal to strive for but a state of mind to be in. Find joy in the small things and change what you don’t like

* life is made up of millions of tiny moments. These moments are beautiful, heartbreaking, fragile, intimate, daring and ordinary. It’s what you do with these moments that make up your own meaning of life.

 

*** bonus ***

have passion, don’t lose it. let it waver. let what you’re passionate about change. water your passion. let it fill you. if you think you might want to do something for the rest of your life – follow that dream. go back to school. join the circus. risk everything. take care of yourself. you are an adult and it’s no longer acceptable for you to rely on anyone else to take care of you. take care of other people. don’t let life pass you by. don’t follow trends just because. don’t sacrifice yourself. be amazing. open your heard. eat that cake.

love,

Melanie Kristy

I’m here

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

Earthy Crunchy Stuff

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 couldn’t focus. I already felt stretched.
The video was taking an incredibly long time to load and work properly. 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).

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

Love

I’ve been trying to fill myself up with love so I have some to share and some stories to tell.

Winter Blues

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

On Slowing Down

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 on My Birthday (11/12)

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.

evolution

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.