Appalachia Year

Meta meta meta, but the first reason I haven't been blogging is because I managed to break my camera. Annoyed at my short-sighted past-self for passing on the warranty when I bought it last August, I've decided that I'm too goddamn old to be so needlessly hand-to-mouth. I'm gonna buy WARRANTIES, you guys. I'm gonna buy IN BULK. I'm gonna wash the cereal bowl immediately after I'm finished. Chrissakes.

The other reason I haven't been blogging is probably because I'm busier. The busyness of grad school was different; I was mentally tumored with stress and obligations but I still found myself very often with lots of time to reflect (and blog) in my big creaky house, trying to fill the hours before bed. Now I'm barrelling out of bed like a Roman candle each morning to pedal down Summit to my internship in the Short North, then changing into my server getup and making my way to Grandview. Beyond the internship and the job, there are friends here? And they want to buy me food and sing karaoke with me? Also, my boyfriend is cute and beardy and distracting. The weeks have been vanishing at an alarming pace, for example, it's JULY, which is weird because wasn't it just Christmas?

I liked the photo-blog format because I think a pictures and words are symbiotic, both em-better-ing the other. Also, a photograph helps me center my scattered writing (see: above sentences). But I miss committing stuff to electronic ink, drawing thoughts like invisible fibers from my skull. It keeps them from tangling as I'm trying to go to sleep at night, deafened by the sound of a twenty ideas talking to me at once.

So I'm going to be in a wedding in a week. While I know that I am going to be far more concerned with my appearance than anyone else in that gigantic Catholic church, I still find myself nervous about somehow screwing up my chance to look halfway decent. Every time I bang my shin on a chair at work or catch myself biting my nails, I straighten my spine and make a note to be a little more aware of myself.

Sure, I make an effort to wear makeup everyday and wear "hard pants" (pants with some sort of metal closure, i.e. not sweatpants) but I have never been terribly nervous about looking polished. I don't mind the occasional zit or bruised knee or chipped toenail polish. What I'm getting at is that being concerned with maintaining these sort of superficial things is making me terribly unhappy and it seems like no way to live. Bodies are for living in and they are made to be resilient. I look forward to being bruised and skinned and a little mussed again after July 11th.