Summer 2018: Between the Lines

This summer I had the chance to do a research fellowship at the University of Iowa, where I'm currently (like, today) moving back for my second year of college.  I worked with the International Writing Program and Between the Lines, their intensive summer writing camp.  For the first part of the summer, I did some research on the impact of social media on global communities (help me collect more data here!), and prepared for the camp. Then, I spent the month of July in Iowa City for the actual camp.

It. was. the. best. experience. ever. 

Oh my goodness.  I can't put it into words so I have no idea why I'm attempting to write a blog post, but I loved it with every electron in all my atoms.

For two weeks, I hung out with 36 high school students from the United States, Russia, and Arabic-speaking countries.  I was the photographer for the camp, but I also spent a lot of time hanging out with the students, acting as a tour guide for all the best ice cream and book stores in town, and just soaking in the inspiration that naturally comes with a group of writers from around the world.  

By the end of the two weeks, I had:

• ~1500 pictures
• 36 glimpses into what it is to be human, to be a writer, to be yourself
• 50+ new pages of poetry and writing in my journal
• 1 new family

and so much more.  These amazing people helped me understand pieces of myself, and probably more importantly, be more okay with those things.  They reminded me why I love writing and why I will probably be writing for the rest of my life.  I learned about creative nonfiction in some awesome workshops, and realized that I really enjoy it.

I think one of the most huge things about this camp was that everyone felt so understood, so accepted. It was two weeks of the most true versions of ourselves that we had ever experienced.  I'm so grateful to have been a part of it.  

I wrote some poetry on the night everyone left, as most of the students were flying back over the ocean to their home countries.  This is the best way to give you a glimpse into my summer. This piece was inspired by Anya's amazing nonfiction workshop and a piece by Joe Brainard, "I Remember", and it's for all the people I met this summer.

I REMEMBER: BTL 2018

I remember walking. Walking over rivers and through downtown. Walking over borders and between lines and into things we didn’t know or understand about ourselves. I remember saying goodbye and realizing that I understand a lot more of it, now.

I remember circles. Beginning circles where we stood at a distance and took careful steps to you in the center. Circles close to endings where we realized that you can find family from across an ocean. I remember crying, laughing, and laughing while crying. I remember how you asked me to take your picture and now I have one thousand memories of you in a folder on my computer’s desktop.

I remember overwhelming the waitress with pie shake orders way too close to closing time. I remember absolutely wrecking the seating arrangements in Burge so we could squeeze ourselves into two overcrowded tables. I remember the Haunted Bookshop and how many times we went back. Because you wanted to see the cat. Because you couldn’t get these books back home. Because you needed 31 more books. Because we all love places like those, where an old home became some other sort of home.

I remember how brave you are. I remember how you had so much to say, even if you didn’t always say it out loud. We heard you. I remember hearing your stories. I remember how powerful they were. How much you was packed in there, and how we all recognized each other.  

I remember screaming into The Void at 10pm and losing our voices for the rest of the week. I remember finding a giant teddy bear back at my apartment. I remember the most enthusiastic karaoke night I’ve ever experienced. I remember when we became the entire world, and when we were afraid it might not always be that way. It will, though, because together, we’re everywhere.

We went back in time. I remember dancing. I remember how proud I was of you for walking up to that podium to accept your certificates.

“I had hoped you’d see my face and be reminded that for me, it isn’t over.” -Adele, Someone Like You

I remember how time didn’t exist that night. I remember blankets and scattered chairs in the lobby the next morning, because you promised you wouldn’t fall asleep but you did anyway.

I remember how suddenly there weren’t enough people standing in our circle.

I remember telling you I won’t forget. I remember how your eyes reflected mine, pools, too shiny for goodbye. I remember how your car door closed, over and over again, but I was left open.

I remember how you left home to come to my city, and how when you returned, you left another home behind you.  I remember realizing we have the same soul. I remember how easy it was to be myself around you. I remember how you taught me what it means to be myself and when you cared about me, I cared about me more, too.

I remember smiling, after. I remember breaking and feeling whole and what it is to be loved, and I remember you.

– Caroline Meek

PS - I also want to give a big thank you to the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, for funding the Between the Lines program, and to the Iowa Center for Research by Undergraduates, for granting me this fellowship. You can find the International Writing Program at iwp.uiowa.edu.

are you living your life like a second person narrative?

hey you

you're really free

you're more free than you think you are.

with the exception of stealing a dragon or raiding a candy store (in this example, those two probably aren't mutually exclusive), you can do just about whatever you want.

are you stuck?

have you arrived at the universe and found a one way sign? pointing back the other way? you're pressed up against a fence. you're breathing too hard in zero gravity and it's really dark.

you've come to the only conclusion and it's disappointing to you.  this is a black and white script. you thought you were the author but you're the stage directions. you don't get to decide where you're going.  

are you living your life like a second person narrative? 

the thing is: you weren't born with an instruction manual.  but you picked one up along the way, anyway, and now you're stuck and now it's your religion. 

society is writing your book in second person, future tense, and you think you're the protagonist. 

WAKE UP

what if there isn't an ending?

what? 

artwork by Tim Andrew

i mean, what if you aren't working towards some predetermined goal. what if this isn't a hero's journey? what if there's no pressure on you to perform, no goal for you to reach at the end of the day what if you aren't a character in this book at all?

i'm not saying you aren't a hero.
you are magic. 
you are everything powerful and i believe in you. 

i'm saying:
stop writing poetry that rhymes
metaphorically
stop answering rhetorical questions 
there is no peak to your mountain
and if there was, you'd never know when you reached it

you aren't trapped between two covers. this isn't a fairytale.
and before that sounds like something tragic, like i'm destroying your childhood, stop for a moment and think:

you are more than fiction. 
you have more than one possible ending.
you don't have to follow a script.
it's okay if you forget all of your lines.

if you want to, you can write the fairytale. 

and what am i saying, actually?

i'm telling you to believe in yourself.  i'm telling you to trust that if you take a step out onto a metaphorical bridge built of dreams and passion and hard work and possibly unicorn poop, that bridge is going to hold your weight. 

i'm saying, go for that dream job. go to college and study whatever the heck you want to learn. go backpacking this weekend.  open infinite doors.  go buy a cute lil flower plant, and keep it alive the best you can.  discover there weren't infinite doors– 

just infinite doorways.

do things that matter to you.  because if what you're doing doesn't matter to you, there's no one else for it to matter to.  everyone can do stuff fulfill themselves. it's not up to you to reach someone else's happy quota. 

that's not how happy quotas even work, silly. in the end, you care the most about your own path, and you're the only person who can get yourself to where you want to be.  

it's not too late. it's not ever too late. just look in the closest imaginary mirror and say to yourself, hi self, i believe in you. 

bam. from now on, you're doing this. whatever you wanted to do (minus the dragons and the candy story), you're doing it.

you're so much more free than you thought you were. 

i believe in you too

 – cm ♥

when your new year isn't new

New Year's didn't exactly feel "new" this year.

Like that magic you feel when the calendar flips over. It just wasn't quite there this time. 2017 flowed into 2018, and the First Week of the Year feels the same as last week. I woke up January 1st with the same anxieties running through my head. The "New Year" couldn't quite erase the problems of last year. And I couldn't quite put my finger on why.  Why didn't the reset button work this time?

The question has been swimming around in the back of my head like a confused penguin all week. I haven't really stopped to think about it until now, when I was writing a letter to my fren Aimee, who makes me happy and inspired.  So this post is sponsored (unwittingly) by her.

Maybe it's this: maybe I don't need things to be "new" right now.

Maybe they are beautiful and good and right-for-me just the way they are, and maybe I just need need to learn how to fully appreciate them.

I think I just need to learn how to live the life I have right now.

For the most part, I love everything about it. I love college and I love my friends and the future is this wide open thing that I'm equal parts confident and excited about.  But at the same time, I get way too stressed about it all.

This year, I want to learn how to thrive where I am.  2017 was the "New Year".  College and emotions and new people and SO MANY THINGS HAPPENED.

2018 will be the year for making peace with it all, learning how to love it, and just living this life. :) Cause it's a good life. :)

How does your 2018 feel, and what does new mean for you?

Hidden Figures (the movie) // poetry

The best things in life always inspire me to write poetry. 

I came out of that movie with words practically dangling from my fingers. 

I've always been told I can do whatever I can dream up, and for the most part, I haven't needed much convincing. 

But maybe I need to do some more dreaming, because lately, I've felt the boxes closing in on me. 

I can do whatever I dream, but what can I do if I'm not dreaming? If I refuse to even shut my eyes for a moment, imagine the universe?

I want to dream. 

I want to hang my hopes on the stars and believe I can actually follow them up there someday. 

I want to love freely - to wear my heart on my sleeve - no, to wear it as my entire coat. Warm and enveloping everyone around me, without the fear that it isn't my jacket to wear. Without letting myself freeze or worrying that someone will take it away. I want to love myself. I want to love, to ignore the faces my mirror makes at me when I try to stand up, and unwind the clock until time does not exist. 

I want to find the hidden figures in the sky, those beautiful wandering souls with stories that have been swept under the carpet when they really deserve to be named as constellations and set into orbit. I want to hear their words, because they are a part of who I am, too. 

I want to keep discovering this language, the bridge between my heart and the world, until the words bend in my hands like metal heated right up to to the verge of its melting point. I want them to come out like birds flocking to a telephone pole - electric, feathers flying, a strong clear message. 

I say I'm a dreamer. I stand in front of the mirror everyday and tell myself I am alive and thus have great giant wings that span the width of all my problems.

I still forget to jump, though. I seem to be forever caught in the hypothetical confidence that I've gotten so good at. I believe in the possibilities. And then I never ask myself to try one of them out. 

When I walked out of that movie theatre, I had a rare moment of belief beyond my mundane dreaming. 

I believed that I could truly be anything I wanted to be. I believed that I was who I wanted to be.

Do you believe in yourself?  What do you dream of?  Have you seen Hidden Figures yet?  

The Unexpected Inspirational Qualities of Country Music

So somehow, my country radio, which I listen to in the car sporadically, has inspired me to write again.

After 6 months.

And mind you, this is my W.I.P. Labyrinth, the high-fantasy, combat-heavy, dystopia book.

Not your typical country picnic, yeah?

I'm not questioning it very much right now, though.  I just wrote over a 1000 words in an hour, after being unable to write more than a few hundred for the last half year.

So usually, I listen to battle soundtracks from Lord of the Rings, Narnia, etc. for this kind of writing.  I mean, you kind of need intense music when writing intense scenes with your mythical Minotaur beastie, right?

Now, I'm not one of those people who are violently opposed to country.  I listen to it every once in a while, even sing it sometimes.  I like it for certain moods.  BUT.  I don't think I've ever used it for writing.  

So now, after having a such a productive writing session while listening to the same country song on repeat for 72 minutes, I'm left wondering why it was so effective. 

(By the way, the song was "Doin' What She Likes," by Blake Shelton.)  ;)

What is it about country music that can work so well for writing?  I've come to a few conclusions. 

1) Country music tells a story, too.  

One of my favorite things about country music is that it tells a story, possibly more than any other genre of music is known for.  Each verse contributes to and develops the plot.  The chorus is dynamic, often changing by the end.  There's a change of emotion, twist at the end, realization - something that makes it dynamic.  

So perhaps this helps my writer brain get into the storytelling mood, too?  It's basically like listening to a 4-minute plot model condensed into a few verses passionate about trucks, drinks, and women.  A great example, really.

2) Country music has real emotion.

Those country haters out there may disagree. But honestly, these lyrics hold a lot of emotion.  There is clear desire  present in every song.  The singer is obviously motivated, has a goal, regrets something, etc.  In my case, the emotion in the song made me want to write a scene with those emotions in my own story.  I'm not even sure how it came into my head, because I haven't thought seriously about Labyrinth for a few months, or even tried to work on it.  But I just found myself being able to connect to the emotions in these songs, even if I hadn't experienced that truck myself.  And then somehow, I was thinking of my characters and for the first time in forever (SIIIIIIIING MY FRENS, LET IT GO AND JUST SIIIIIIING), I wanted to play around with them and write something.

-   -   -   -

...Is it even grammatically legal to have a list with only two things on it?  Oh well, that's about all I can figure out about it at the moment, and I think it gets to the heart of the situation.  I have no idea if this new inspiration will last beyond tonight, but I'm grateful for it right now, in this moment.  I've been trying to worry less about the future lately.  Months without writing inspiration has made me realize I shouldn't force it.  Sometimes it goes away for a while.  

And then sometimes, it just pops back up again, out of no where?  (Honestly, I haven't been believing that myself lately.  I've been started to wonder if I should even be trying to write books at all.  It's hard to go without inspiration for that long.)  But apparently, it really can just come back "just like that" sometime.  

So if you're waiting around for inspiration, that's just fine.  It's lovely.  Keep waiting for a while.  Bake some cookies while you wait, or something. But don't give up on a dream.

Dreams are precious things.  

~Sincerely, your dream

Keep dreaming, my friends, and listen to country music.  

Or at least, consider listening to a completely different genre than what you're actually writing.  See what happens.  ;)

(P.S.  This country music is amazing.  One night alone and it inspired 1000 words on the WIP and an 800-word post.  xD  10/10 would listen on repeat again for 5 million years.)

Are you a country music fan?  No?  Has anyone else had a heavenly break-though with country music, or am I a lonely penguin in this cruel writing world?  What do you usually listen to when writing?

Story Behind the Title: The Drawing in of Breath

You might have heard of our book and wondered about the title.  "It's about breathing?"  "How can you draw wind - it's invisible!"  Hehehe...well, I'm glad you asked. 

Earlier this week, my friend Skyler and I published our first book together, The Drawing in of Breath!  It was quite a wonderful experience.  

Um. Maybe we freaked out. 

Wow, though, this whole process has been great and fun and long and so worth it!  We're really excited to share this one with you.

This book is largely about inspiration.  Most of the poetry and stories contained aren't about it, but the book itself is centered around the idea. 

How many times have you sat and wished for inspiration?

Skyler wrote a blurb for the book: "Breathing. A constant among the living. Inspiration. A craving of humanity. We take these concepts and pour ourselves into them. Breathing in our uncertainties and our insecurities. Exhaling words of promise and assurance. We live in these words. Throughout this book you will find humor and sadness. Security and salvation. Apathy and sympathy. You'll find our hearts and souls spilled onto this paper.  We hope that someone will be inspired."

The Drawing in of Breath is about inspiring others, and it is also about our own inspiration.  Life. Love. Belief. Questions.  

What inspires you?

For a long time, I thought inspiration was something that came in bursts, and sometimes not at all.  It was a spark that ignited my creativity and motivation, something that drove me to stay up late into the night, that made me grip my pen until I couldn't let it go.  

But more often, it was absent.  Elusive.  I'd sit in its not-presence and wait.  It's hard to write without inspiration.  It's hard to make art, or live life, or laugh, without something to inspire it.

And then I read a blog post by the wonderful Emily Tjaden, who showed me the definition of inspiration.

Google it.

The second entry is literally: "the drawing in of breath; inhalation."  What does this mean?  It means that inspiration isn't as fleeting as we often think.

Inspiration, to the human soul...is as natural as breathing.  

It is constantly there with us, the fiber of life, throughout our day.  Inspiration can come in different ways - we may not always feel that wonderful spark - but there is always something to keep us going. 

This life is so vibrant.   So breathe!  Draw in a breath and hold tight to the knowledge that you are and will always be "inspired".  Put the pen to paper, open your mouth, take the book off the shelf - whatever you do to create - and start.  Don't wait for inspiration.  It is already here.  

You can order The Drawing in of Breath for $9.99 here on Amazon: 

 http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Breath-Caroline-D-Meek/dp/1519163193/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457749136&sr=8-1&keywords=the+drawing+in+of+breath

Alternatively, if you live in the Kansas City area, let me know you want one, and I'll hand-deliver it next time I see you, signed and all!

Have an inspired week, everyone! :)

Do you ever feel like you're without inspiration?  What inspires you?

When Your Heart Has Fallen Away From Your Mind

I'm going to be very honest.  I've been distant lately.

Unsure.

Tired, stressed...running circles in my head with the questions I have.  Like my friend Carlyn wrote about, I've been feeling passive.  Very shallow in my life.  Physically and mentally exhausted.  Emotionally nonexistent, sometimes. The problem goes deeper - I can't figure out why, and then I don't have enough strength in me to get up and do something about it.  

For a while, I've had an intense internal conflict - good vs. bad.  My mind can't seem to decide whether it wants to be happy or sad.  So I'll sit there, weighing the choices, feeling like I should be happy but not quite wanting to.  

I've been reminded that self-pity can be dangerous.  It's so true, and I suddenly remember how much I feel sorry for myself.  Upset, regretful. Wanting people to see and care. It makes it worse though - it lets the negative side win.  When I let myself think or talk about feeling down, it reinforces those emotions and thoughts.  It's a hard habit to break but I want to try.  Annabel suggested helping others, and she's so right.  I feel most connected to God these days when I'm talking to other people, encouraging them...

I think I've reached the bottom of it, the main problem.  Because my head tells me I'm broken and that it's terrible and tragic.  But my heart won't hear.  It won't choose to care...and I don't know how to piece the parts back together. I believe that's the essence.  My heart has been separated from my head and...I can't breathe.  

The nerves don't transfer things like they used to, and my head can't remind the heart whatever I believe in and love.  I am quite literally broken in half.  Two parts of myself - which one has the strength to fuse everything back together?  Neither, I'd have to say.  Like so often, I think I need help from above.

But here, more questions arise.  Where do I find the voice to call for help?  Where do I find the balance?  Do I even have to call?  Do I just sit here and accept that I'm in a "dry place" and can't feel much right now?  Do I work blindly through until something sparks?  Or do I build a wood stack and wait for lightning to strike?

As I write this, the last option seems the most true.  I need to move.  I can't stay here.  This dark, thin place is not a place for staying.  God, I know I can't light that fire in myself. I can't tie my heart strings back to my head.  Build a wood stack and wait for lightning to strike.  I bring the firewood; make things ready, spend time with you; wait.  You bring the spark.  I just have to trust that the cycles of nature that move mountains can make it rain, too.  

I've also realized that I have made "work" a massive idol.  Homework, self-assigned deadlines, personal projects and goals - they have become my world.  I shed tears over them, worry about them, put my life and heart on hold for them.  Indefinitely?  I've taken this idol and tied it to my heart like an anchor and thrown it into the ocean.  

And it is oh so hard to drag it back up out of the water again.  It's been buried in the sand at the bottom, made normal and engrained in my life, so much that I forget why I do it. Why I keep heaping sand on the pile, keeping the idol secure there in my ocean like it's a lifeline.  But really, it's like I'm throwing dirt on my own grave.  

I must find a way back up.  To get out of this sluggish water, so I can breathe properly again.  Cut the strings, Jesus - tie them back to you.  Call back my heart and my head.

I understand the battle better now.  The constant decision between joy and sorrow.  For my heart and mind have been separated, and I've blocked the glue that's supposed to hold them together.  I thought I could hold my head up, leave it on the surface like a bobber to mark my position, so that everything looked fine - then go exploring with my heart.  I thought I could take a small stroke down into the ocean, away from the light - just for a moment - to see the bottom, to explore.  I guess...I took more than one small stroke.  

Over these months - maybe a year - I've dived down deep.  Found an idol down there and tied my heart to it.  (The glue would stretch, right?)  I sunk lower and lower.  Funny thing was, I thought I was going up.  Perfect grades, good friends, a busy and successful life.  Sounds good.  Healthy.  These are great things.  It was easy to believe that I was going towards the light when I threw my heart at them.  

But ignore the late nights.  Ignore the stress and irritation.  Close your eyes to the tears, because these are just side effects.  Just tiny inconveniences, not long term, that must be overcome.  Until they started to disable me.  Too tired, too stressed.  Working harder to keep up with the "standards".  If I complete my to-do list, I'll finally feel good.  Then I can be happy, carefree.  But until then, just gotta plug through. 

And then I just couldn't. I got to a point where I physically and mentally could no longer maintain the demands I'd built up for myself.  I simply couldn't keep playing the deadly game, courting the idol.  There reaches a point for every human being at which they realize that they are not invincible.  The longer it takes, the harder it hits.  Not that I had exactly been thinking I could do everything....but I hadn't hit a limit yet.  

So my heart finally broke away.  I was so tired, depressed, and without hope.  I'd gotten pretty far down into that ocean before realizing I was going the wrong way.  (And I know I saw it before this point...I just couldn't let go yet.  I didn't have the strength to try to reject the idol.  It was so heavy.)  It was pretty hard to breathe down there.

I think God caught my drifting heart and ripped the string off.  The fake-anchor-idol is beginning to fall away.  And it hurts.  It hurts when he does that. I've been grasping at that still-sinking idol for the last two weeks, even as God pulls me gently back towards the surface.  It's hard to let go of a "life".  But that wasn't a "life" worth living.  

My heart needs to be connected to my head.  I need to have feeling there that matches with my thoughts, that makes sense.  That is deep and rooted in faith.  There will always be battles - both within me and outside - and I want to have my head on my shoulder and my heart nearby.  I don't want to worry so much, work so much...I want to rest more, enjoy more.  Stop letting "work" be my priority.  There is so much more to life...

I learn as I write.  It's one of the main reasons I do it.  My heart is often changed by the end of it.  Earlier in this post I asked God to cut the string.  To light my fire wood with an electric spark. To make it rain, because I wasn't feeling anything and a good rainstorm might feel good to the skin.  I wondered how I could ever find the voice to call out for help, and how to balance waiting and trying.

I think he's already cut that string now though.  The climax of the last few weeks could be equated to the pain and danger a diver goes through when rising back to the surface from a very deep place.  It's dangerous.  If they rise too fast, it could be fatal, so they have to do it in stages.  Life is dangerous.  I've been moving up, back....so slowly, to someplace with more light.  God's started something in me.  I believe he will continue it.  I guess it's time to start swimming now.  

~Love you all! 

Caroline M

What are you anchored to right now? What is God using to call you closer to him?

The Sound of My Thinking Tag (and The Army of Notebooks Who Stand at Attention)

Introducing...The Sound of My Thinking Tag!  For deep thinkers, wild thinkers, loud thinkers, abstract thinkers, absent-minded thinkers, and beyond!

Rules:
1. Grab the graphic above
2. Stick it in a post about your thoughts: thought process, deep thoughts, trains of thought, imaginary worlds...(don't forget to include a copy of these rules).  You can personify your Brain, have a conversation with it...the possibilities are endless.
3.Then tag other friends to do the same and thank the person who tagged you!

To start off, I'm tagging Olivia, Carlyn, Sierra, Cait, Hannah, Katie, Cait, Krissy, Maddy, Victoria, and Olivia. (although if you like the idea and aren't tagged, tag yourself!)  I can't wait to see your posts - post a link in the comments if you wish!

On to my post...

My thinking can be pretty loud.

Sometimes I don't hear other people talking because I'm so busy talking to myself.  My family can attest to this.  Whether it's nervous-thinking, deep-thinking, wondering-thinking...it gets in the way of out-loud-talking.

(That animal is almost as adorable as that chinchilla. Eep.)

Real life example:  I was getting lunch at the cafeteria last week and the lady said something and I nodded.  Then my brain went on a tangent while she said something else.  I didn't quite hear, so my brain just told me "oh, she just repeated herself."  So I just said "yeah" and nodded again.  Turns out she was asking for my lunch number and "yeah" wasn't a viable answer.

Ever walked into an elevator and then stood there for a full silent minute after the doors close, forgetting to push the button?  Because you were staring at the inspection certificate and playing out an entire scene in your head?  Because the certificate had expired 12 years ago and what if the elevator crashed and what would I do.  I mean you.  Because this is a totally hypothetically situation.  Who would do that, right?  (Me.)  Wait what?

My Brain when I tell it to stop overthinking, thinking-about imaginary-lands-and-ignoring-this-one, thinking-out-the-box, or even just plain thinking:

Then we're not even going to go into what happens at night.

(Okay, maybe we are.) BUT THERE ARE JUST SO MANY IDEAS!  I know brain, that's what daylight is for.  BUT THE BEST IDEAS COME AT NIGHT!  True, true, you have a point...*wrests mind back into control*  There's one fail-safe way to tell if I haven't been sleeping enough: I fall right to sleep.  Lately, I've been quite sleep deprived, so I haven't had too many night strikes from the Brain.  But I'm aware...I'm quite aware (literally, conscious for longer than I should be), when I have been getting enough sleep.

*cue endless writing sessions at ungodly hours*

I keep multiple notebooks at my bedside, for such occasions.  There's the Big Blue General Ideas Notebook, a five-section, gorgeous hunk of paper.  There's the Small Decorative Prayer Journal.  There's the Secret Notebook, whose contents are not to be named.  There's the Bucket List Notebook...which I think I started like a year ago and then haven't written in since...it's still there though. I think.  There's the Advice Notebook.  There are the multiple "I Want to Learn This Foreign Language So I'm Going to Start a Notebook For It, Use About Ten Pages of It, Then Forget About It" Notebooks.  Greek. Nepalese. French. Penguin.  Notebooks for codes I've learned and invented.

The Current Army of Notebooks

Under the bed are the Endless Archives of Notebooks, dating at least 8 years back.  That box is getting full...I must remind myself to get a bigger box.

Bonus: Fluffly Dog posed in my photo shoot, free of charge!

And not to be forgotten, the Empty Notebooks, whom I stockpile in anticipation of, I don't know, the Upcoming Paper Famine.  Always be prepared, folks.

I shouldn't have to mention the pens that go in hand for these ventures.

Aren't they beautiful? *sobs*

But seriously, to give credit to my Brain, much of my best thinking does happen at night.  And then while I sleep....same story.  Often times I spend hours in the morning trying to separate my dreams from reality.  It gets sticky.  I have to ask people if I actually owe them chocolate, or that was just a dream, etc.  (Not that I plan to give away any chocolate anyway...)

During the day, it doesn't stop.  I'm always thinking.  And sometimes I wonder, is it possible to not think?  Can people turn their thinking off and not analyze everything?  Do some people just go through their days, not having excess thoughts about every Sidewalk Acorn they step on?  (If you are one of these fascinating, hypothetical people, I'd love to hear from you.  What is it like, the silence?)  Any opinions on this?

Sometimes the noise is overpowering, harmful, confusing.  It sucks me into a hurricane of thinking, wherein I go in circles for extended periods of time.

But in the brighter times, when I'm not being dragged in circles or failing to hear what someone's saying to me, my thoughts are my dear friends.  I don't know what I'd do without their counsel.  It's a place to go when I'm bored.  I love thinking deeply, especially on paper.  I love thinking logically, hypothetically.

I love dreaming - both at night and during the day.

What are your thoughts like?  Do you ever get lost in them? 

Who else hoards notebooks and ponders acorns?

(.......who doesn't......??)

:)