Annualism

Well I guess there’s this new “trend” of journalists doing things for a year in order to get attention and maybe get a book deal or whatever. Apparently this “trend” has been going on for ages.

Writers will do stuff like “pretend” to be mentally ill (a very difficult feat for most of us) in order to see what it’s like in Mental Hospitals.

Or they will like abstain from like sex for a year or have sex everyday for a year. There is something about the stamina it takes to accomplish a year-long project that intrigues people.

I embarked on my journey of blogging for a year in order to attain some kind of self discovery and it hasn’t even been a full month yet but I’m nervous as to how I’m going to finish this.

It’s hard to come up with bullshit every day that can both entertain and interest the five people or so who are reading this.

But there is something about having a discipline every day that makes the days go by with some sort of meaning. I feel like I’ve accomplished something in these past few weeks. It doesn’t feel like time is just passing me by. It doesn’t feel like I’m just letting my life pass me by.

There is something to be said about documenting your life that makes you want to color within the lines.

It’s like I stopped for a minute, or maybe a year, to digest all that’s happened in my life, or all that’s happening and take it all in.

See we get so caught up in “doing” things like living that we forget sometimes to take stock of why we are doing what we are doing or who we really are in the midst of all this action and circumstance.

It’s like if you had to look in the mirror twenty-four hours a day. You’d finally find the right hair style, I swear, but more than that you’d discover just how meaningless the way you look is.

What I’m trying to say is, after looking inside myself for like a month, I’ve discovered that there ain’t some strange ghosts inside me, but that I quite simple after all.

I require love, a little entertainment, and some goals to accomplish. Besides that I don’t need all the money in the world like I thought I did, or I don’t need to be the thinnest girl on the block, or I don’t need to be even the smartest person I know.

Sure I still relish the idea of one day being on Oprah’s book selection and winning the Nobel Prize in Literature (an ACTUAL goal of mine). But I somehow realize that I don’t need these things in order to be fulfilled.

In the East they call the worldly things we want to acquire MAYA which means the great illusion. Rumor has it that Maya is the thing that is keeping us from attaining peace of mind.

It’s the chase really that holds all the excitement. It may be that after this year is over, I will not know what do with myself. I’m chasing after a dream of self-discovery but it could very well be that after I accomplish this dream, if it’s humanely possible, then I will feel empty without the “desire” for something better burning inside me.

I’m not doing some unimaginable feat like “pretending” to be insane, or living on five dollars a day, I’m just trying to become some kind of human being that I like a little more.

This is fun, you know, ranting and raving about the first thing that comes to my mind and having an audience for it. I’m afraid though, afraid I’ll screw up and saying something I’ll regret. Or bore my readers with mindless jibber jabber.

But if you’re out there and listening, do you think you can follow this stupid heart for a year? I have nothing to give you in return but my gratitude.

nina