Half-formed thought.

I can't quite touch my toes to my nose right now but I do spend a lot of time and energy standing in the same place, trying to make shapes with my body. This practice, which I'm ever grateful for, still doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's been a bit more than three years and the effort I've been able or willing to dedicate to it has fluctuated over that time. But even when I've been a negligent student, I've always continued to think of myself as merely a lapsed student, but a student nonetheless. Yoga philosophy teaches us not to be attached but I'm hopelessly attached to the practice. Perhaps it's not very yogic of me; when I'm away from the practice I tend to become anxious about it. 

Touching your toes is enlightenment.

Given that writing makes me happy (or at least having written makes me happy), why do I do so little of it? Thinking fluid thoughts used to feel like it was easy. Now, of course, I’m not sure if it truly was easy or if I was so un-self-conscious that I didn’t realize how hard I was actually working. Growing older has had a lot of benefits, including more self-confidence (not total self-confidence, but at least more than the flimsy amount I had before). But with a lot more self-reflection has also come a lot more anxiety and fear and over-thinking. I used to be insecure around people but secure in my thoughts; now I’m insecure in my thoughts but can fake security around people. To an extent this is useful: it’s easier to exist in the work world when one is secure around others. But I also feel a profound disconnect from something that feels innate to me: I can’t quite say why or how, but I feel removed from my own thoughts, as if I don’t have any opinions or deeply held beliefs anymore.

Today at the grocery store I was looking at some pre-made meals and one of them was vegan except for it had honey; ten years ago I’d have immediately put it down and walked away, my convictions were that strong. But today I made the calculation that I had a lot of work to do and didn’t have the time to read every ingredients list and made myself accept eating honey today at least. But now I feel mad at that version of me for having sold out my true convictions: I truly believe that honey is a byproduct of animal cruelty and I don’t want to participate in such practices. Yet, here we are.

Maybe the story can be considered from a more charitable perspective, one where I recognize that it is perhaps better to have a flexible set of ideals that can deal with a range of situations, including one where I make the determination that the cruelty of the practice of beekeeping weighed against not eating should be resolved in favor of eating. But I still resolve tomorrow to try again and to try harder to have convictions and to abide by them. Of course I have opinions, about the easy things, though: like, climate change and sexual assault. What I wish for myself, on this the 30th anniversary of my birth, is that in the next year I think more critically and feel more deeply. May it be a year of learning and forgiveness.

What You Won't Have

In another tab open in my browser is a pair of shoes in an online shopping cart. The shoes tab has been open for several months. I'll occasionally refresh it, just to see if the shoes are still there. So far, they are. I haven't bought the shoes; if things go to plan, I'll never buy the shoes.

The shoes are not inordinately expensive and I could afford them, if by afford I mean I could charge them to my credit card and probably pay it off in a month, leaving me with nothing moved to savings for yet another month in a row. But I'm trying hard not to buy them out of a slightly different principle: I want them but I want to not want them; or no, maybe I want them but I want to want them without needing to have them. 

It's okay to desire to have things. But it's a lifelong struggle to become comfortable with both having a desire and knowing it will never be fulfilled. You're not getting the shoes because you've wanted them too much, I'm trying to tell myself. You've become obsessed with having these shoes, daily going through a ritual of checking your bank balance and trying to rationalize being able to afford them. You can't have them; I won't let you have them.

Today I went to the groccery store and impulse bought a water bottle for way too much. When I got home I looked it up on amazon, where it was listed for $10 less than I spent. See, if you hadn't bought that bottle, you could have had the shoes, my inner critic said. What I'm struggling with is so much more than the $70 shoes, though. I'm struggling with wanting to not want. I want to be able to go more than a few hours without wanting to buy something, to own something that, in a few months, when I have to clean around it in my tiny apartment, I'll curse ever having bought. 

So for tonight at least the tab with the shoes will remain open, shoes un-bought. But tomorrow will be another battle between a toxic consumer culture, natural human desire and willpower. A toxic culture where the things you want can be yours now, tomorrow, by the end of the week, brought to your door for a price we call free because we don't know just how much it actually costs us, emotionally and environmentally. 

The Shame of the Books You'll Never Read

Chicago has been my home for all of my adult life. While school and jobs and friends were some compelling reasons not to leave it, the biggest anchor keeping me in the city was my books. When friends would ask if I planned on ever moving, trying out someplace else, even for only a little while, I’ve shrugged away their questions. “Not until I can afford to move my books,” I would answer.

Hundreds of books sit on my bookshelves and a few hundred more are stacked in corners. At least a few hundred more are being stored uncomplainingly by my parents. Last time I counted the complete haul it came out to 988 books; but that count was many years ago and I’m too afraid to do another.

A few weeks ago I wanted to quote a Baudelaire poem so I scanned the spines, looking for my copy of Flowers of Evil. What I found instead are hundreds of books I’ve owned but never read. Books I’d forgotten I’d even ever bought. Embarrassingly, there were a handful of duplicate books, some where I hadn’t read even one of the copies.

The books I’ve kept but haven’t read have been somewhat of an embarrassment for me. For someone who talks about books as much as I do, it’s always been a bit of a shameful secret that I haven’t read most of the books on my shelves. This isn’t to say, of course, that I haven’t read many books because I’ve read a lot. It’s just, I’ve read lots of books but own lots and lots more.

I’m finally leaving Chicago. After many years of avoiding it, I’ve finally managed to get enough boxes and enough time off to pack up my books and figure out a way to get them across the country.

As I’ve been dusting off volumes, I’ve had to make some choices about what to take and what to leave behind. More often than not, I’ve chosen to take each book with me. In my to-haul-to-Boston pile I’ve included many a book I haven’t read and, honestly, will likely never read. Remember that time I decided that I need to learn about meteorology and that I need ten books to do so? Or how about the time I thought I’d learn about materials science and bought four books to get started?

I’ve spent a lot of hours in the last few days paging through these books I haven’t read, will never read, but am yet for some reason taking across the country with me. And I’ve decided to stop feeling shame for carrying so many unread and will-never-be-read books with me. Because those books, the ones that will keep collecting dust, are just as much a part of my life education as the ones I’ve half finished or almost finished or didn’t finish but read enough reviews to confidently pretend like I’ve finished when discussing them with friends.

For every unread book I’m keeping, there was a time in my life when I thought that book would help me somehow. I thought it may give me knowledge or nourish me emotionally. Just because I haven’t read it doesn’t mean it’s not serving a purpose. And I don’t mean only that it served a purpose, in the past tense; I mean that its continued existence, nudging itself between other books I’ve actually read, is still contributing to my emotional education.

There sit the books on the myriad of topics I was once interested in, proving that I can have interests, no matter how fleeting. Proving that I can care enough to expend energy and dollars in pursuit of my interests. And showing that, if I stop caring about one thing, there are ten more things to be curious about. The world is a big, glorious, complicated place and we needn’t feel guilty for trying to take in as much of it as possible, even if that means hundreds of unread volumes on our bookshelves.

Words have been scaring me lately. Maybe it's becaues I have such infrequent contact with them at my current job and time outside of work I've been using for more tactile pursuits (yoga, running). Maybe I've intentionally distanced myself from words, suspecting that I'm inadaqute for them, for their grace and beauty when chosen by more capable craftsman. During my most vulnerable moments, when I've just shut the curtains and turned off the light and tucked myself under an army of blankets, burrowing my head into the dark, they find a way in. I can't see them but I feel them, revving to life in my skull, zipping around and causing a commotion, so loud and so hard to ignore as they shatter the still night.