Little Weird Offshoots
Jenny Slate’s book “Little Weirds” makes me feel essential, alive, and bright. It reminds me of my innate wonder, delicacy, and enthusiasm. It makes me feel safe, infinite, loved, and full of potential. I will read regularly to retrace steps back to myself. There is so much out there to feel, wonder, create. This book is a reminder. I feel powerful, untouched, and apart from what weighs me down. I am made for more. My soul, my creativity yearns for expansion, exploration, fulfillment.
Maybe writing is meant to memorialize sensation, transfer it to another. Through art we can implant ideas, feelings, thoughts, sensations into another. Does that not unite us all by focusing consciousness into one center, one being? Remind us who we are and where we really come from? Resume our divine oneness, the universe experiencing itself in fragments and unity?
Jenny Slate reminds me I’m not alone in my admiration and wonder. That its form is adequate, mature already. The song of my soul is heard by others, can be at least. There is so much to look forward to. To be alive is a gift.
My writing flows and is self-conscious. That can be worked through. I want to self-express. Whatever else is the point? I want to dance and dress and cry and laugh and write and walk whenever I want, honestly wherever I want too. I want to do myself a service, commit to knowing I’ll be okay because I am out here doing my best as myself. What an honor really.
Have I ever been inspired by a writer before? Inspired to come into my own? Usually my inspirators are didactic, telling me how to be, change, grow into a better mold. No, I am not doing that. Let me follow someone who lives and shows. Stop with the restraint, the stoicism, the emotional control. Show me the wonders of life, the beauty instead. The silliness of being alive and knowing it. Life will pan out. How can it not.
If Jenny has shown me anything so far, it’s that I am creative and notable and have things I want to express and share and they will be heard and received, at least by some. Those who are soft and open and warm and deep and knowing.
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I aspire to wonder. I am tired of restriction, structure for its own sake. Follow my heart, trust it, understand it. Ignore definitions of success on the internet. Learn more, return to silly, fascinating topics of youth. Go down rabbit holes, stay focused. Ignore the domineering, conscious voice in my head that evaluates, prescribes, sits still (but everywhere at the same time). I learned to be this way. It has proven helpful at times, but is often a security blanket. I was successful, proud without it.
I am writing in purple, wearing purple (light), and see purple flowers. Oh, also, the Coffee Bean straws are purple. Why is purple so lovely. Inherently pretty; powerful enough to capture the obsession of purple people. Other colors that do that: teal, pink. Pink conveys a personality & character identity. It communicates something. But purple. Why? Just nice.
I will get lunch soon — The Habit on this summer Saturday. I don’t want to leave though. I feel dialed in and flowing. This experience is new, creative, flourishing, and I feel grippy — don’t leave me! But as with all revelations, I’m now knowledgable of what’s possible. I can suspend disbelief in myself and stumble upon the right concoction of inspiration, mood, and caffeine again. I am tender enough to remember and love and dream of what really is. I can be so much. I want to unlock it, adventure through life.
To be inspired by a writer, to write, makes me feel part of a club. Who else writes of wonders and happy things? Enough of the morose, the Plaths, the Scanlons. They’re all obsessed with each other. I am obsessed with the joyful, the committed. Where else are they? The world needs these in balance! Feeling joyful, wondered, needs communal recognition too. I will seek them out and contribute myself, someone will hear me. Those that I want to connect with.
So much has pointed to writing lately. Memoirs, external urges to be creative and write, a desire to express myself, a yearning to connect over what’s important to me, what’s important in general. The topics will come to me; I trust. My life experiences, explorations and risks have only expanded my capacity to relate and be and live. I have felt small lately, constricted. I will, am, breaking out of self-imposed stricture.
I am hungry but do not want to part. What will happen? I am scared I’ll never feel this again. That is okay. It’s not true and I am strong anyway. I feel hopeful; Jenny Slate is hosting talks soon. I will try to go. I am a literary community member now.
I think I really should eat now. I am starting to feel a little shaky and also blessed I made it so long. The cheeseburger with grilled onions will be nice. I have so much to look forward to, and I have loved this Spotify playlist: Instrumental Happy Music for Working. Things came together today, but don’t they always? It’s the default way.
P.S. Jenny mentioned Gaudí in her book, whom I knew nothing about until buying my journal. It makes sense and the triangulated energies match.
Can I be an eccentric. Am I? Has the energy just been funneled in a weird way somewhere else? Yes, I will explore. Do eccentrics lose their status when they self-proclaim? Like classy people or self-aware people or humble people, whether fair or not. I do not know.
