Tag Archives: writing

JustRachel

I have a habit of writing eulogies; this isn’t one

1 Comment

Hey, it’s been a while. For those who’ve forgotten, my name is Rachel, just Rachel. I’m 30 now, fast approaching 31, and this past year has been a bit of a whirlwind, so let me catch you up.

Since last November, I…

Traveled

I took two solo trips (international); first to Ireland to tour schools and explore work opportunities and later to Spain, where I turned 30 and fulfilled all of my Cheetah Girl fantasies.

Ireland

Spain

I visited Tampa, Florida, and Phoenix, Arizona, and I was so fortunate as to make some really special connections in both places.

Tampa

Phoenix

Leaned toward love, rather than away from it

I got extremely done up (2x) and stood alongside two very good friends as a bridesmaid on their respective wedding days.

I went on a couple of dates and proved to myself that I am actually really open to getting my heart broken, for the right person—though I can somewhat confidently say, I don’t think I have met them yet…

Learned

I earned an online certificate from Cornell University in Project Management (my pride in this accomplishment has shifted slightly since the Jane Doe case came to light, but I refuse to discount the work I put in and the sacrifices I made to make it happen).

Leveraged

I applied to two new jobs (that I was qualified for because of the certificate program), both an ocean away; neither panned out, and I’m grateful for that—life had bigger plans.

Lept

I mended some fences (it was time), moved back out of my childhood bedroom, bought a house (unrelated to the fences), and realized on more than one occasion that I am only mortal (very related to the house, among other things).

…and beyond the big stuff I could go on and on about all the “smaller” moments that made this year what it was—but if I dove into that we would be here for quite a while.

So now what? That’s where I should take you, right? What’s next?

I always find it funny that, in the face of hearing about accomplishments or witnessing radical moments of achievement—like winning a gold medal—we are trained to almost immediately move to the next question, the “Now what?” or “What’s next?” We rarely let ourselves sit in it because we are supposed to keep moving, running, chasing—next-ing(?) the next thing.

And to be fair, if you asked me, I could tell you, for me—next is:

Painting my dining room terracotta before I host Thanksgiving (I’m leaning toward the shade that is oddly named Jalapeno—paint colors don’t always make much sense to me), finishing the caulking on the stairs, touching up trim and ceilings and quarter-rounds. Washing the paint brushes that have been hanging out in my basement beer fridge. Hanging pictures, art, and shelves to better organize the ungodly amount of stuff that I have amassed over the years. (All the really sexy, home-owner-y stuff).

…

Or, I could be a bit more honest; I could tell you that next is slowing down:

Building back my bank account and building out my vegan and non-vegan crock pot cookbook repertoire (because I am having so much fun exploring meals with ingredients I have often overlooked and tools I’ve underused).

…

We could shift the conversation to corporate and I could pivot to tell you that from a professional perspective:

I could list the career achievements I am chasing because a raise would be really nice, but selling people on it in this climate is… tricky, to say the least. (Most days I look at the stories surrounding the job market and I am just happy to have a job).

I could tell you about the shows I am watching and rewatching (and rewatching—I might have a slight addiction to one or two storylines out there), the books I can’t seem to settle myself enough at night to read… or write (though I know the time for that is coming soon).

What’s next: a more honest answer…

Look, truth is… I could bury you in my up next because trust me, I have it, I’m in it, I know it is there—but if you looked at me, saw me, and you asked me, genuinely, “what’s next?”—I would tell you with tired eyes that I am far less concerned with “next” than I am with “now”; because for all the projects in the pipeline, all the adventures I have planned, all the weddings and baby showers and birthdays and holidays I have to attend, not everything that is coming next is inherently good. Some of what is next is change and while not all change is bad, some changes require adjustments that I am not eager to attend to quite yet.

Instead of “What’s next?” ask, “what is now?”

When I started AwkwardnAdulting back in 2018-2019 it was never meant to be excessively serious. My staff and I, all in our early 20’s wrote about dating and working and failing to “adult” based on what we were lead to believe “adulting” was about.

And somewhere along the way that shifted, and we all shifted and we fell into versions of adulting that we may have been expected to be? I don’t know, I am rambling a bit—

I have a habit of writing eulogies; this isn’t that, and that’s intentional.

Before this post, eulogies and memorials were, more often than not, what would bring me out of a hiatus. Lost people, lost innocence, lost elections (not anymore), lost composure at yet another headline that made my blood boil. And that much was intentional because, for me, those were the easy things to write. Being loud about loss in one focused moment helped me to quiet it elsewhere. And to my own credit, I guess I am good at memorializing people(?) or maybe I just process grief better on a page than I can in my head—in any event, I could feel myself being drawn back here enough to decide that, instead of my next post being a eulogy, my now post could be a bit of a victory lap. [In short— I realized that I owed it to myself to take a moment and write down all the incredible things that I achieved at the tail end of my 20s into my first year of my 30s].

First now, then next

Right now, today, this week, this month (after a record year), I am making no effort to race into “what’s next,” and I am making every effort to hold on to “what’s now.”

—what’s now is: family, friends, and long drives that vastly shorten long weekends.

What’s now is focusing on me, just Rachel, and on the people I love enjoying the present and holding tight to one another, and beyond that, for now at least, nothing else matters.

So here is to a record year. A future that can wait. And a now that will be worth talking about later.

JustRachel

Empty words – a poem

1 Comment

“What does it mean?” He asked.

“I don’t know” I replied

I just liked how it sounded

Liked how the words tasted

Liked how they rolled off my tongue when I spoke them sweet and soft.

“Does it matter what it means?” I asked

“I suppose it doesn’t,” he answered “since I’m the only one who cares.”

– RM

Photo by Dario Fernandez Ruz on Pexels.com

Reflection

My best friend sends me poems. For a while, he sent one every day, two if he was going through it, three if s*** really hit the fan. In the last month or two, the consistency has slowed. It ebbs and flows with his free time and creative energy, but this week I’ve gotten more poems than there are days.

See, my friend lives in Rhode Island. He works in higher education—not at Brown University, but in a state that small, that kind of violence and fear ripples out—it’s felt everywhere. In New England, there’s a “if you go after one of us, you go after all of us” kind of mentality. Anyway, working in higher ed, my friend is no stranger to the impacts of this kind of violence because it is so common now that many students in college today are likely to have already experienced or been impacted by one school shooting before getting to college.

I think for a lot of us, it’s easier now than it should be—easier than it ever was—to get desensitized to it all. To get complacent. Passive. The commonness and the screaming into the void makes it feel like there’s nothing we can do. But this week my friend has been capital “A” Angry—as he should be. As we all should be, every time this happens, until and even after it stops happening.

The poem above isn’t one of my friends, it’s mine. I wrote it after being inspired by his anger. Inspired by the fire he has. Inspired by the inaction of lawmakers, the dead end prayers of onlookers and Facebook commenters.

The poem above calls out the fact that all the talking some people do has little more meaning than the impressions they are trying to solicit. The facade they are keeping up to maintain popularity in the court of public opinion.

I wrote this poem because if what we say is without action, if what we say is not backed by our beliefs and or desire to change the things that hurt us most, our words are empty. And if our words are empty, what’s the point…

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.,” – the Lorax

The poem in this piece has also been shared by the author on her personal social media.

JustRachel

Touch Grass Little Miss Smart A**

1 Comment

I recently saw a video where this life or acting coach helped people free themselves from trying to “be cool” by acting so foolish that they couldn’t fake being cool anymore. It immediately freed them from their ego and allowed them to get back to being themeselves etc. & I need that. So. That said, the following chaos is 100% intentional. Welcome back.

I have been stuck. For a while. Well, not “me” physically. I’m not stuck. To be clear: I am not stuck physically,

(as an aside: quick sand isn’t as much of a problem as scooby doo led me to believe it would be growing up—I also don’t get offered free drugs to say no to so…)

but, I am in my writing. To reitterate: I am not stuck but my writing is. My writting is dramatically stuck in… Limbo? In editing mode. In drafts. In random word documents and journal entries and notes app notes. Point is…my writing has been stuck. All of it. Everything. For a while.

And even writing this is starting to feel like nails on the chalkboard because the other versions I created were so much more neat and tidy—and incomplete—but thats not the point—and even if it was, they, those neat and tidy, and unfinished versions, wouldn’t help me break the habit I am trying to break so here we are. Here we are, back at it again… *sighs* Hi. What’s up. It’s been a minute. Hi.

Anyway…A couple years back I fell into the terrible habit of writing to “sound smart”—which mostly just makes me feel dumb because no matter how pretty it is or how nicely it rolls off my tongue or tickles my brain, it isn’t me.

I mean it is… but it isn’t.

It is… but it takes forever and it’s too polished. It’s too intentioned and it’s not as fun and at this point it’s honestly kind of annoying. So here we are.

There was a time in my life where I could sit down and write pages of content. Poems and plays and novels in november and I loved it. It was freeing and it was fun. It didn’t feel as hard, it didn’t feel like work…It was just, fun. But I already said that so…

Let me try again…

I used to be a good writer. Self proclaimed, most days, but I guess other people liked it too? Which isn’t the point… the point is—I used to be a good writer, not because people liked it, but because I had something to say. Something to get out. I had stories to tell.

And it didn’t always make sense, it was rarely written for the masses but it meant something to me and it saved me from myself more than once. Then somewhere along the way I got stuck. I got tripped up by wanting to sound smart or not say anything controvercial or… be “good enough.” But doing all that killed my voice and ruined my writing.

So here we are! Rambling… with the intention to publish said ramblings and get out of my own way and get out of this funk. Hopefully.

Fact of the matter is this—Sounding smart or at least wanting to sound smart hasn’t gotten me anywhere. It has only held me back in my writing.

So here I am, trying something new, rolling with the stream of concious, not trying to sound smart, or edit too much and at the end I will hit send and then I’ll do this again and again and again. Or try to. Until I fix myself.

Until I can write as me. Until I can stop trying to just “sound smart” and just be smart. Or at the very least be me. Until I can tell my ego to “suck it,” respectfully, of course.

Wish me luck!

Kevin at a Desk

Letters i Never Sent

Leave a comment

As many of you who have read some of my older post, i like to consider myself old school. Grandpa-ish if you would like to call me so. I like the old ways, things that have value more than 2018 can offer. One of the biggest things is the value of recieveing a hand written letter from someone. It shows that they actually care about you, took the time to write something out and sent it to you via “snail mail”. It always made a difference when i saw a letter show up in my school mailbox or at my home address. What i still like to do is send letters to friends that i havent been in touch with for a while. I sent some to my buddy when he was in boot camp for the Naval Academy all during the summer before college. I sent letters across the sea to cousins that i was surprised i even had in my life. I always make an effort to write to someone i care about.

There are also letters i never sent.

I chose not to send them. The letters to old friends who live half way across the country, or to the ones who live just a quick trip up 95 North. Just something stopped me from sending it. A letter can mean many things but a rejected one has a very clear message. To certain people i was going to send it to, i wouldn’t get a response or honestly it felt as if we grown apart.

Letters on a page wasted away.

The more interesting letters i never sent were the ones i lost. The ones misplaced in a book or drawer that were left to sit and wait. I always read these again, to see what i wrote and what kind of person i was when i wrote them. Love letters, morbid news, a awkward hello, you name it i have written it. These letter i never sent are sometimes hard to swallow the things i wrote down. Its these types of letter i try to get rid of first. Never read those again. Never try to write those again.

i sometimes wish i could re send these letters after re reading them. I sometimes wish i told someone how i felt about them. Now they are just nothing, they are now gone so all i can do is regret the letters i never sent.

Just Post Grad Things, JustRachel

NaNoWriMo and the Realization Why I Have Never Finished a Book

1 Comment

At any given time I am both – the most trustworthy person you will ever meet and the one person who can’t keep her mouth shut or her nose out of it. Call it the writer in me – but in other words, I always have a story to tell, and I am always willing to tell it – but at the same time – if you ask me to say nothing, I will. With one exception – my rules of speech follow those of a therapist. I will not say a word – UNLESS you are a harm to yourself or others. [and I find this to be a fair clause]

But, my friends, I do not come to you today because I have a secret to tell – or a story, but rather to say that I have a secret that I cannot tell. A new project that will take up my free time until the month of November has met its end.

This month, like in the past I am participating in National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo for short. In this, I will attempt to finally finish a book or – at the very least- a draft, in 31 days. In other words, I have 31 days to write 50,000 words – and I am only 11,000 in on day 8 – aka – I am already behind…

So at this point, you may be thinking one of three things:

  1. Rachel, why do I care?
  2. Why are you wasting your word count time on this blog (not a waste)
  3. Get to the point

well to #1 I say – if you’re a writer, a reader or a friend, you love me so shut up – #2 it is not a waste because I have some advice to share that will be seen below – and #3 here it is

The other day I got a piece of Nano Mail and while I never read my messages on there, I decided to change habits. To my most pleasant surprise, there was this quote among the advice and it is something that has both intrigued me and shown me that I need to change the way I treat myself, my dreams and my writing. It read :

Resist the urge to tell friends and family your story. I know it’s hard because you want to talk about it and they’re (sometimes) interested in hearing about it. But writers have a dirty little secret: We are mainly motivated by our desire for people to experience our stories. We want an audience. We need it.

Telling your story to friends verbally satisfies that need for an audience, and it diminishes your motivation to actually write it. So make a rule: The only way for anyone to ever hear about your stories is to read them. You can still give it to them chapter by chapter—so you get the sweet, sweet external validation that you crave during the process. But no telling the story outside the pages. – Andy Weir

The above quote has since inspired me to do something I rarely do with my writing, keep my mouth shut.

I realized that in telling people my stories all these years I have eliminated the need to write it down. Which explained why – despite my only goal in life since sophomore year of high school (other than finding the love of my life because media is a sham that has conned me into thinking my life is a rom com) was publishing the next great American novel. Or at the very least – the next great Rachel Novel.

Anyway – I know I lost my flow but to all you writers out there, I hope this helps and I hope you don’t lose your story. Right now I don’t have time to make the blog pretty but I do have a book to write!

We’ve got 23 days left in this year’s challenge so let’s go for the gold!

 

Capturesage
a sneak peek at the front cover to be