Things I Have Been Doing Instead of Writing...

All I want to do is write.

I've been feeling that more and more as I've sunk back in to the school routine, focusing on lab reports and group meetings and work. But - and I hate to be the cliched writer that always says this - there doesn't seem to be a lot of time for writing. Instead I've been...

- Writing lab reports, drawing skeletons, and reading books on Afro-Asian interactions in American history.
- Leading meetings and holding office hours.
- Presenting workshops on mental health and narratives at the ECAASU (East Coast Asian American Student Union) conference.
- Getting sick.
- Working to launch As[I]Am, an Asian American social justice website project that I am working on through Sadie Nash (speaking of which, y'all should check out the call for submissions and submit!).
 - Fitting in food, exercise, and sleep.
 - Reading and copying and writing about zines.
 - Keeping my relationships as healthy as possible with all of that stuff going on.

And I enjoy it. Well, most of it - there are some required classes that rub me the wrong way and there are some points when even meditation doesn't help me to quiet the thoughts and just be present. And I still want time to write. But there are some challenges that are do-able and then there are those you have to let go, and for now I'm treading water with all the things that I'd like to do in between those that I must.

The Demon of Perfect

I am sitting under a brown blanket on brown bedsheets in my dorm room, the first time I have seen the place in over a month, and I am sick.

If you take the 'everything happens for a reason' line of thinking, I suppose this could be signaling to me that it was a positive choice not to go to DC for inauguration, or that I am really not ready to complete my last semester at college, or perhaps that I should have heeded the warnings of the librarians last Friday when they said something was 'going around.' But, as I hack and sniff, I wonder if this is really just the latent effect of the work hard/play hard mentality that I took towards winter break. Though nominally a 'rest' period, this time for me was spent meeting up with friends and reading all the books I could and working and seeing all the exhibits/boroughs/TV shows that I don't get a chance to during the school year.

The fun blow-out felt necessary. To balance out the pressures of the previous semester, why not go on a 100% do-what-you-want spree? But somewhere in the second to last week before returning to campus, I started to feel like my energy was waning. An immense guilt settled itself like a bullfrog in the back of my throat: there was only a week left and I hadn't gotten through even half of my 'goals' for the break. I felt guilt over not reading articles, over not writing enough, over not spending more hours at work. The balance I had chosen wasn't giving me any rest - I had been caught by the demon of perfect.

I'm bad at rest, as I've written about previously. But when you're sick, all you can think about is rest. All you can think about is the presence of your body and how off it feels - what you normally 'feel' is an absence of body, something you can ignore until it drips or itches or aches. And sometimes it leads me to believe that sickness serves the purpose of slowing you down by force; it puts me in a reflective mood just by virtue of my lacking energy. And when I look back on the last month, I realize that my lofty goals were planned under the assumption that one does not have to sit still to replenish - that you can balance difficult academic pursuits by entering into difficult artistic pursuits, rather than putting a hold on any pursuits at all. But people don't always give themselves what they need.

I am sick at an inopportune time. A new semester of classes, with all its accompanying responsibilities, dawns tomorrow. I cannot even muster the energy to do the bare minimum things beyond feeding myself and browsing around on the internet. Yet the legitimacy it gives me, to feel tired and to slack, has allowed me to examine the wrong-headed guilt I've been feeling for the past few weeks. For that, I am grateful. As I am confined to my bed, I begin to dream up the connections between balance - this mythical state that we seek when looking for the best methods of productivity - and achieving perfect. Even when we're supposedly resting, it can take us away from what we really need.

P.S.
I've disabled the comments on my blog from here on out, not to discourage conversation (which I hope you will take to my email inbox, Facebook page, or Twitter), but to let this place stand as a great writer-ly experiment without the pressure of garnering pageviews or comments as a proof of some arbitrary notion of 'success.'

A Snippet of Soul Language from bell hooks

"From the people of the backwoods, I have learned that we can see into each other's hearts if we want to; that there is really never any need for words; that if you want to know a person you have to taek a good lok inside them, to move on inside their flesh, to open the doors of their heart and take a look. From the people of the backwoods I have learned that looking into a body this way can be violating, that it is always necessary to look only to be of service, and not to use what is seen for power. It is the difference between magic that heals and magic that hurts."

- bell hooks, Wounds of Passion

 When reading bell hooks' autobiographies, I was struck by how close to home her language came to me - we have not shared experiences, but we share a stylistic spirit that I can only hope is cultivated within me.

A Year of Collected Experiences

Time really isn't separated into years and months and days, as I'm sure we all know. It oscillates between quick and painfully slow depending on our stimulation - whether we're reading a good book or rushing around to our various meetings and classes and obligations. All subjective. We partition it because it's hard to keep schedules running based on our experiences, but that's truly what it comes down to.

We use the time around the New Year as a border between past and potential futures, regardless of whether it marks any sort of sea change in our personal lives. There are a million places I would partition this year differently, placing the New Year sticker on it, if I could base it off of my experiences. Instead, I have collected them, like marbles in a dish, for this moment of transition.

I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore. Rather, I make bucket lists for every season, tallying up the minimum goals and notions that I would like to keep in mind for the duration of a few months. Draw one picture that you like (at least!). It keeps me from getting overly ambitious. And it helps me recognize that my time is a melange of collected experiences - each one a valued moment that deserves acknowledgement.

I guess that's my way of 'living in the moment.' It's fairly impossible to stay in the moment every step of the way, but being reminded of it never hurts. Rather, it orients me back to the center. Collecting my memories, collecting my goals, collecting my experiences. As I enter the New Year, I wonder what else I will be collecting in this 365 day span. Some of them are known: college graduation, for one. But some of them are only speculation. And while it is exciting, it is also nerve-wracking - this waiting for the shape of things to come.

South Asian American History Lessons

"These personal accounts allow us to glimpse an alternate picture of South Asian American history, one in which migrants from the subcontinent built lives with and among people who had come to New York City--and to Harlem--from different parts of the country and the world and who shared class circumstances, living conditions, parallel experiences of racialization, and eventually neighborhoods and families, once they settled in the city. The stories of this hidden life of Harlem also make one thing certain: it is impossible to find the 'South Asian America' of the pre-1965 era as if it were a neatly delineated ethnic neighborhood, with clear borders and clearly marked signs; this South Asian America was and continues to be embedded within other Americas, within Puerto Rican America, Afro-Caribbean America, and African America."

-- Vivek Bald, Bengali Harlem

Please obtain this amazing book as soon as possible.

When I Can't Write, I Draw

Working on some new visual material.

I have a cinematic brain - as I write, I'll see snippets of scenes and hear the dialogue. And when I can't pick out just the right words, it flows out in other ways.

For some things, I can't really imagine it any other way.

The Cat Returns

Pages and pages and pages.

That's what's characterized my life in the last few weeks - having produced my final theses for senior year of college, comprising of 90+ pages of creative non-fiction and academic analysis, with a little bit of environmental science thrown in there somewhere. Hence, writing (and also reading) for myself have really given way to the requirements of my college performance. But really, what's so new about that?

I've been pursuing a majorly offline life for the past month or so, from reading my fiction pieces to working on my fellowship project to just plain buckling down on school. It's brought me to reassess where I'm going with my online life in comparison: is this blog a reflection of my work? A place to store memories? To test out ideas? Probably, it's a bit of all these things. But I have figured out what it is not: it is certainly not an obligation.

This is more a reminder to myself, I believe. I've had several posts in reserve that I wanted to put up when I am too busy to produce new content, but they haven't been calling to me. And that's ok. There are ways to not feel tugged at to produce, to be silent and not have to fill it with endless little nothings. Not until they're ready, that is.

What surprised me when I was done with my pages of writing and my college closed for winter break was that I was still hungry to keep on reading and writing. This isn't really a period of burnout as I've experienced in other days when you'd have to scrape me off the couch after a week for lack of energy. Instead, I've been delving (slowly) into new projects and new books, catching up on old TV shows and reading new blogs. I've also grown more confident about editing my work and figuring out where I'll be after college.

But more on that later.

For now, my plans are to turn this blog inward on itself - as a space for public experimentation in between the lines of my offline life. What does that look like, you ask? Well, that's something you'll just have to wait and see.