My Autumn

I never know what it is, but it happens every autumn.

It starts in my toes and rises up through my body, tickling and pulling and poking:  a profound restlessness that makes me feel young. Not the wild, powerful kind of "young," but the nostalgic, vaguely uncomfortable sensation of being a child trapped in a nineteen-year-old's body.

Every year.

It's the air, crisp and charged with promise. Great, obscure secrets ride the cool breeze. All the edges are sharper; all the lights are clearer; all the impressions are warmer. The sky is bluer than it's ever been.

There's a creative urgency. Beauty so thick that inspiration can't quite break through. Ideas pulse beneath the surface of the world, giving the air its own heartbeat.

Everything whispers.

Childhood whispers. Remember leaf piles? Remember running? Remember dark woods? Remember notebooks? Remember heart friends? Remember tears? Remember stories?

It feels like chilly fingers and smoke-scented sweatshirts. It feels like hiding. It feels like spying. It feels like being chased.

It's a lens through which the present seems abrupt and irrelevant. The urgency drains from school and flows to old thoughts and old fears and old worries.

Remember learning Gaelic? Remember researching drugs? Remember refusing to get your ears pierced?

Remember needing Him in your soul? Remember Sunny? Remember staying at Gr'anne's house?

Remember losing your imagination? Remember outgrowing your fire fairy costume? Remember exceeding your texting limit?

Things that have nothing to do with autumn drift across my mind. Summer memories and spring pains. Christmas woes and birthday adventures. Something in the air brings them back.

Every year.

And then, like smoke, the feeling tints and twists and dissipates into the air.

That's my autumn, every year.

~Stephanie

Staying Creative: Collaborate and Don't Give Up

Alright, I'll be honest: I didn't collaborate on Friday. But, the idea is great and it's inspired me to ask my friend Jesse if she wants to try to write a book together. We tried doing this in sixth or seventh grade with another girl.

The idea was good. The story would be about three girls, each written by one of us, from three different worlds. The first round of chapters, switching between characters, introduced the reader to the characters, their situations, and the culture. In the second round of chapters, things would start to fall apart for each girl, and for one reason or another, she would make a wish to be anywhere but where she was.

The three wishes all came true, with the girls being transported to earth. They meet each other and as they go through their strange new lives, learn to solve the problems they were running from at home.

Honestly, not a bad plot line for a bunch of twelve-year-olds, although it was completely Jesse's and my idea. And that was the holdup. While Jesse and I wrote our chapters and COLLABORATED, the third girl did not. Instead of improvising or whatever, Jesse and I just let the story fade into oblivion. *sigh*

But the POINT of that realquick sob story was to say I think I may ask Jesse if she wants to give the collaboration thing another shot.

I've also been considering telling her about Pandora, AKA telling her about my problems with erotica etc.. I've always gotten the feeling that she'd understand. We rarely see each other and she's never been my CLOSEST friend, but she has an absolutely freaky way of knowing when something is wrong with me, even if she hasn't seen me. I can't tell you how many times she's emailed me out of the blue asking if I was okay when I wasn't.

She would be the first girl to know. Four guys do, only three of which I told when I was in my right mind. I don't wanna talk about the fourth XD

Don't Give Up:

Today has been pretty good. Cassidy slept over because we were out late seeing the new Footloose last night. {LOVED IT. LOVED IT. Possibly more on that later.} Today we hung out at the soccer field for like three hours.

{Soccer field = the one and only place to be in my town on Saturdays. You always see six jillion people you know and the games can be really intensely awesome. At least they were when I was playing. Now all the good people have graduated, leaving only their second-rate younger siblings XD}

Then I came home and walked down to the lake with the Norwegian exchange student girl, who's great, because she wanted to take pictures of someone on this GORGEOUS day.

Honestly, there were not really opportunities to either give or not give up. It's been a fairly take-things-as-they-come day. Nothing particularly challenging, nothing particularly heinous {besides me family}.

But I promise, if I feel like giving up on something this evening, I will not.

~Stephanie

Staying Creative: Quit Beating Yourself Up

I go through phases of beating myself up. Sometimes it's over little things that seem big at the time, sometimes it's over the same things that plague me time and time again.

For instance, I'll beat myself up that I chose to stay home and relax instead of go out to dinner with my family.

I'll beat myself up about the time I told a really hot guy that I was homeschooled at an inopportune moment and did not even get his name. {Yeahh, there's a story with that one. Click here.}

I'll beat myself up for eating three brownies when I was full at two.

And little stuff like that. {Although, I'm pretty sure losing Mr. Hot Beach Guy qualifies as at least a MEDIUM-sized thing.}

Then I'll beat myself up about the same, like, three things all the time.

"Jeez, you have such a big mouth. Why can't you just, like, NOT TALK? Huh? Would that be so hard? To just shut it for like ten minutes and be a normal human being??"

"Your mind is a sad, disgusting place. You will never conquer erotica, because it's already conquered you like six jillion times."

"You never keep up with math. You never will. You just suck. You fail."

Etc.

But today, none of that. Nope. None. NO BEATING MYSELF UP.

Today we went to the fair, and it was AWESOME. I love people. Did you know that? I didn't. I mostly don't, actually, and I've actually said that to Cassidy. {Actually.} I just do not like people in general. But today, I did.

I liked the lady in the bathroom who stopped to make sure my sunglasses were okay when I dropped them.

I liked the funnel cake guy who told me where I could buy bottled water, then let me go get it while he made my funnel cake.

I liked the ferris wheel ticket guy who told me to take my time and not to worry when I couldn't actually locate my ticket right away.

I liked the soft pretzel guy who asked Sarah if she wanted a lot or a little bit of salt on her pretzel.

I liked the sleep number bed lady who told us that we could get this cover to put on mattresses that would make our bed like the sleep number one we wanted.

I also love the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the fair.

I love the lights on the ferries wheel, spinning and flashing and making you smile.

I love the floppy-eared bunnies in the animal barn.

I love the candy-apple faces of the little kids.

I love the sheep baa-ing.

I love the venders begging to guess your age.

I love the live music, country or not.

I love the smell of sticky, sweet funnel cake.

I love the friendly, smokey smell of wood burning in Yester Year.

I love the head-turning scent of buttered popcorn.

I love the taste of freshly squeezed lemonade.

I love the taste of a perfectly crafted cheese pizza slice.

I love the playful, fleeting sweetness of cotton candy.

Basically, guys, I just love the fair.

And I love not beating myself up.

Well, at least for today.

~Stephanie

Staying Creative: Make Lists

What are you waiting for? Click here to get in on this Staying Creative action.

Okay, we all know how much I love to do this anyway. I have roughly six jillion lists running at any given time. However, I feel like posting lists I've already made is cheating. If I'm going to stay creative, I have to actually do this stuff, like, on-goingly. {'Cause thaaat's a word.}

So, in honor of it being fall, I give you these autumn lists I made today:

Words To Describe Outside:

1. Crisp

2. Bright

3. Clear

4. Cold

5. Sharp

6. Alive

7. Mischievous

8. New

Things To Do This Fall:

1. Read

2. Drink tea

3. Go on walks

4. WRITE

5. Do my best in school

6. Love

7. Laugh

8. Learn

Things I'm Glad About:

1. My senior pictures went well.*

2. The SAT is behind me {until November 5th. *sigh*}

3. I can wear my "I <3 Roma" sweatshirt.

4. I'm doing better in math.

5. Thanksgiving is only a couple of months away.

6. I'm becoming great friends with my Norwegian exchange student neighbor.

7. I saw an R-rated movie in the theater.**

8. I love "The Illiad."

* I'll post the three sneak preview pictures the photographer put up on Facebook this week. I actually LOVE them. It's amazing what good camera can do!

** Yeah. Cassidy and I saw 50/50 this weekend, and it was awesome. I've seen plenty of R-rated movies at home, but this was the first one I had seen in the theater. I could pretend that I was really chill and nonchalant about it, but there are no secrets or lies on Pandora, so I have to confess that I felt like a six-year-old getting to stay up late.

I was kind of disappointed that they didn't card me though. I wanted to be like "BAAM. SEVENTEEN."

Of course, what I REALLY wanted to do was go see an R-rated movie ten months ago, when I was actually sixteen, and see if I could sneak in. But that never happened, and I'll probably be disappointed about it for the rest of my life. I thought you should know.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when I will be carrying a notebook with me everywhere.

~Stephanie