I think that this past year is the year that adulthood suckerpunched me in the stomach and then kicked me in the head while I was down.

The worst part about it was that due to my still being a student, I seem to be hanging onto the bleeding edge of that freedomy feeling of college. I remember thinking when I had spent like, oh, a week in my dorm room about how I lived all on my own now and it was awesome and I'm so great at this.

17 year old Ally was so naive.

Trying to balance school and work is extremely difficult, along with trying to find a new job. This past semester was rough, and I burned out pretty quickly. I'm hoping this next semester goes better. I cut some of the extracurriculars I was stubbornly holding onto in vain and potentially denial of having to grow up. So that's more time to work, and hopefully more time to breathe.

Because bitches (and bills) got to be paid.

Or something.

Finally, a poetry prompt from Plinky. I truly didn't write enough this summer, but this was a nice warm-up and I'm hoping the result is not TOO disastrous.
The apartment next door to us is vacant. Except for the occasional sound of maintenence crews in there prepping the apartment for the next renter, it's dead-quiet next door. I wrote this poem imagining there is someone living there and doesn't want us to know about them.

I'm not sure you're really there at all;
All you are is whispers through the air shaft
that our apartments share; it could just be the a/c.
I thought I heard you vaccumming once but right now
you're just the sound my cat follows with her eyes
or something I imagine when the television is off.
Maybe you're the one who keeps moving
or doormat around the stairway landing.
Maybe, just maybe - come over for tea sometime
and tell me just how real you are.

You know, it's odd. I own two Moleskine journals, but I have written nothing in either of them. Why? I'm afraid to waste the paper on drafts. I know it sounds pretty strange, but to me, paper is far more tangible than an open word document. You can feel it - the weight in your hand, the texture, the way the pen indents the surface just so. You can smell it (and if you think about the way paper books smell, than you just might be an English major). With a word document, if I screw up, there's no messy smudges to ruin the overall appearance of the page, there's no trace the mistake was ever there.

Granted, some writers will argument that there is some benefit to actually seeing your mistake, but I like the thought of "this never happened". I also harbor this secret fantasy that one day, someone will be looking through a box of my belongings, find these Moleskine journals, and publish them or something; there's a certain romanticism about being remembered and famous after you're long gone, don't you think? So, I guess as a long, rambly answer, I PREFER paper for a final product, but keyboard/word doc as far as the practicality of editing goes.

I bought the Moleskine journals for the purposes of publishing something for myself. As I write poems and push them to where I want them, I'll write them in the journal. There is the small issue of me not doing nearly enough writing this summer, but there has been so many other things to worry about I haven't really had much gumption to do so. Just as well, I am used to deadlines and prompts and exercises from my creative writing classes at college; now I feel like I've been left out in the ocean and the boat left me behind, so there is the matter of establishing a routine of some sort. I'd like to be able to keep a writing schedule, but I think that's one of those things that will have to wait until after I move.

And, you know, I'd post something here sometime, but I just have to find something I don't want to submit to a review or journal. (...I know, excuses, excuses.)