I doubted my colorblindness...

and then I realized I can't see the number in this image...

Illness

Being sick completely ruins everything. I have no desire to do anything at all. So this day was a complete waste. As was the day before, and likely tomorrow will be too. Being sick isn't even the real issue, although it certainly isn't helping. PetSmart is such a blah job, and even more so now, when I consider that I should have my degree in 2 months, and I am 22. And really, I cant make excuses. I'll just have to go search out in the backyard where I buried my ambition, dig it up, and make use of it. Hopefully it hasn't been too badly tainted by the lack of ambition the other residents of this home exude...

It's Raining and You Could Be Out In It

I absolutely love when it rains. I don't know what exactly it is that attracts me so to the rain, but when it comes down, things just change in my head. Today as my brother and I left the gym, it poured. Despite being soaked straight thru my clothes, and despite my car breaks protesting at every stop sign and light(I had torn thru every puddle on my way home, the way a child would jump from the curb to stomp in a rain puddle. I'm a child with a Jeep), I was loving it. There is just something about the rain that grabs me.

  
 

Sitting on the concrete half-wall, I closed my eyes while the rain came down around me. Half-way across the park I had been soaked thru, so I had surrendered to the elements and decided to just enjoy the downpour. The rain was strong enough that I couldn't quite see the parking structure in the distance where the sanctuary of my car waited, but I didn't mind. Eyes closed and with my head tilted back, the rain ensured that not an inch of my person was dry.

Lost in my thoughts and the sound of rain falling, I didn't hear her approach nor notice her standing there for some time before she finally spoke.

"You're getting wet, you know."

I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was sheltered beneath a black umbrella, its protection the only thing preventing her from emulating my condition; jacket and jeans are hardly waterproof. Her brown hair was put up in some fashion, clearly a hasty solution to the current weather. Thin-rimmed glasses protruded from her breast pocket. I looked back to the sky and closed my eyes again.

"I'd say at this point I am drenched. I was getting wet about five minutes ago when I decided I may as well just commit to this course of action. So here I sit."

She was silent a few moments, just long enough for me to image that she rolled her blue eyes and walked away when she spoke again.

"You don't…care that you are sitting in the middle of a rain storm, in the middle of a park, looking somewhat like a crazy with your arms held out like that? Also, that wall has a 'Wet Paint' sign on it."

I resisted the urge to put my hands in my lap.

"Sign seems kind of redundant, considering the weather. And no, actually, I like sitting in the rain. It feels refreshing, or rejuvenating, or something like that. I think it opens up the senses, or wakes them up, with the rain and water hitting all over the body. Lets my mind wander."

"Your senses are probably wondering if your mind has wandered off somewhere dry.

I could hear her softly giggle, and I was suddenly sure what a "girlish giggle" sounded like. I opened my eyes again to catch her grin, and noticed she was leaning to one side, looking to my left.

"I don't suppose your mind forgot to take that notebook with it when it wandered off too?"

"Alas," I said, picking up the notebook , "this notebook has served its purpose. Apparently, that was to be filled with poorly conceived and inevitably doomed writings. Farewell, my friend." I chucked it into a nearby trashcan, the impact emitting a wet thud.

"Ah, I see," she replied, standing under her umbrella and looking at me. We exchanged looks for a time, and she shifted her weight several times. "Well…" she said, and turned to go. I closed my eyes again and put my hands back out, palms up, to my sides.

Less than a minute passed, and I heard a faint clink. I opened my eyes again to see that rather than leaving, she was now settling herself next to me, her black umbrella abandoned on the ground. She had released her hair at some point, just over shoulder-length, and the rain caused it to stick to her skin and frame her face. She looked at me with eyes that seemed to say "If its good enough for you…", though her cheeks betrayed the faintest of blush.

"At least now you'll have someone to keep you company when you are in the hospital for hypothermia," she said, closing those blue eyes and imitating my posture.

"It seems that I do," I replied, looking at her in profile for several moments before turning back to the sky and closing my eyes.

Sometime later, after the rain had eased but before it stopped, she put her hand in my upturned one, and I was more than pleased when she returned the gentle squeeze I offered.

  
 

  
 

I think it is a sign that the deadline for the creative writing contest for the honors college was extended.

Faucet

I find writing this appropriate, having conceived the idea for the post some days ago and only now getting around to penning it.

I feel like my approach to writing for several years has been all wrong. I've gone about with what I am doing, living in the world, and when an idea strikes me that I like I will try to build a story around it. Or if it has the misfortune of hitting me when I am unable to commit it to paper, it slowly dies. And I've realized how very very wrong this concept is.

Its like trying to get a glass of water from a barely open faucet. Eventually I have a full glass, but my potential is so limited it digs at me. The only method I can think of for fixing this is what I tried in the past, and must find in myself the self-discipline to find again; that being to take time out of each day to produce something that I can be proud of, or at least shape into something worth admiring, from a literary perspective. I have two stories sitting as outlines right now, two that have great potential, as well as the story I launched this blog with, of the self-conversation. I also slowly manifest a web comic out of randomness with a friend of mine; that shifts between being full of random occurrences and being story driven. Perhaps I shall find a nice middle ground on which to balance it.

And in quiet doubt, I wonder if anyone reads this, or if it is simply a place for me to put words on the net.

Have I thrown a message in a bottle out to sea?

Where the tides start to turn...