But I Can Tell You This For Nothing, Affairs Don't Win.

Inspiration is found in the strangest little pockets. So far this year, the most inspiration I’ve gotten has been through my fiction writing class. I am absolutely infatuated (it might be love) with this class. It’s such a move away from the science paradigm I have to put on for the rest of the day. Today we were talking about our final papers - which is a ten page short story of our choice - super broad - and I believe it is because of this broadness that no one has really started theirs yet. This followed with our professor discussing inspiration; inspiration has to be facilitated, she said. We can’t sit around at a bar and hope that inspiration will just hit us (we can hang out at bars for other reasons though, I suppose). We must go home and sit at our desk and type away and THEN we can justifiably hope for inspiration to pay us a visit.

On a side note, my fiction professor is the cutest thing of my life. She is SO passionate about writing. One day we were talking about our favorite authors in class and she started talking about how one feels when they read something really amazing: she likes to copy down pages of what she’s reading just to get an idea of what it would feel like to write those words.

So back to inspiration, this whole facilitated inspiration concept can be applied to things other than just schoolwork...it works for religion, too. I’ve been wanting to get straight again, but I’m not doing much to get there other than just thinking about it. I gotta create a window for Allah to come in.

Another source of inspiration was the latest smart pretty and awkward post: http://smartprettyandawkward.com/2009/11/04/two-rules-of-success-in-life-1-dont-tell-people-everything-you-know-anonymous/

Everything about this post is relevant to my life. Firstly, I agree with the quote...I’m way too much of an open book and that usually proves to be a huge problem. Next, there’s a certain someone in who I’ve been hanging out with a bit too much this whole quarter and I’m not sure if it’s good for me. Like it’s fun but at the same time I’ve been feeling less creative since my conversations are, in a sense, limited to this person. If my mind isn’t being expanded, my creativity is staying where it’s at. He used to inspire me, but now I know too much about his lifestyle and I can even call out every single guitar riff he plays...it’s time for a break from that for sure. being selfless isn’t always the best thing to do...I need to take care of myself first and my number one priority is to NOT compromise who I am for anyone else. I feel like that’s what I’ve been doing...changing my plans and going out of my way for this one person. I used to think I wasn’t that great of a person, but NOW I def am not and in retrospect I wasn’t too bad before.

The less awkward part is really powerful as well, I don’t want to break anyone’s heart because I know how much that sucks. But it seems like everyone these days wants more excitement in their life and EVERY aspect of it HAS to feel like a reality TV show. I find myself doing the same thing...but every action that has sprouted from that want has been regretted...life isn’t a TV show and people’s feelings aren’t a joke. So even though it would add so much more (temporary) excitement to my life to lead this guy on, it will not only hurt him, but it will hurt me in the end.

SO tying all of this together, I’ve decided that this is all part of the growing up process. And growing up doesn’t mean becoming a completely different person and leaving everything you did before behind. I think it’s about taking little parts of what worked for you in the past and moving forward with those while adding to them. So in a sense moving back while moving forward.