Awkward that this is going to be dramatic.

Greetings.

Not a lot has happened recently.

For the most part, I do the things I always complain about doing: studying, complaining (it is a vicious cycle), wishing I was better at doing human things, enduring the countless intrusions of existential crises (I have a problem, and it is the universe), and in the thick of those things, eating a lot of vegetables and going through a horde of tea bags. Ever so slowly proceeds the transformation that will one day have me waking up as a mom.

Until then, I have a few projects (that makes things sound way more official than they are; I mean actual school projects that were assigned to me by responsible adults dictating what makes up my education, and then maybe one teeny tiny lifelong dream) that I’m cranking out; one is a Wikipedia article on an obscure virus (SO FUN, RIGHT?), two are art projects due next week that I have yet to start or visualize, and…oh. Well I guess another is the planning of THE ULTIMATE GAP YEAR that will begin next May. And then I should probably decide which graduate schools I’m applying to, and for what field of study, and why I care about science so much. I’m going to assume I also have papers to write. And finals. And eager preparations for Christmas.

The primary thing that I am allowing to dance around in my brain that isn’t necessarily constructive is the idea of starting another blog, which makes me…less sad than I thought I’d be, but still sad. (Posting this here is really the ultimate betrayal. What is wrong with me.) I’m considering it for a variety of reasons, which…do you care enough for me to talk about this? Should I list them? I’ll list them. I’m sorry if this is a self-absorbed thing to do, but I guess a blog kind of is in general, so…what the heck.

REASONS RELATED TO BLOG-SWITCHING

The primary reason that fuels my consideration for this switch is that as much as I love the washing machines and the freedom that comes with this space, this blog is not professional. And if I’m ever going to write things that are, you know, worthy of publishing, or profound, or even rant-y or frilly or ridiculous, word on the street is you need a blog, and you need blog traffic—basically, you need establishment—and this isn’t going to get me to a place where I would be able to write a book, or poetry, or…movie reviews…or…I don’t know? Contribute to society, maybe? Perhaps it’s a lofty assumption to say that me blogging would be able to do something like that, but I figured I’d give it a shot, because (this is where the teeny tiny lifelong dream part comes in) I’ve never been 100% sure of what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I’ve always wanted to write a book.

And darn it, I want it to be a good one.

So I need practice. And establishment.

The secondary reason is that as freeing as it is to be vicious and dorky like I am here, when I am here, I also feel weird about being the rest of me, who, despite how it may seem, is usually a pretty nice person. Not that people need to absorb every facet of my personality; that’s really not a concern. I do not do that thing where I present the pure essence of my spirit over the internet. Bits and pieces of it, I guess. I just think, I don’t know, it could be cool to be able to try to say something of a different tone than what usually is here (verbose leakings of frustration; leakings cannot be pluralized, so take note, English speakers), maybe? I don’t know. The mumblings are definitely a favorite form of verbal expression but I think it would be the good kind of challenging to try to branch out.

The tertiary reason (yeah, I went all the way, watch out) is more of what this post is about in a holistic sense (sorry for the long weird personal diversion—although, again, I guess that’s JUST WHAT A BLOG IS), and that is that the title, as…catchy? (it’s not catchy) as it is, it is also…mildly self-deprecating. And I’ve been wondering about this for a while, and while I love that it is a familiar entity (ish) and my friends know what it’s called, the more…that I am learning about myself, the more I am thinking questioningly about this, which I think means it’s not a weird burst of self-assertion (which can be good, just not right now), but…like, an actual thing. And while I think honesty about yourself, even when it means making fun of yourself, is not necessarily bad, I’m not sure anymore how healthy it is to write and write and write out the ideations of my soul and all of my vulnerable venting—read: this is the only place I really feel comfortable expressing anger—and then plastering them under a title that says, “None of this actually matters.”

You know?

Because if I’m writing as much as I am and ignoring as much homework as I usually am to do so (thanks college), I think that means I want it to matter.

So that, in a not-so-short way, is the gist of that.

And honestly, that makes things harder, because I can’t just shift to a new space under the same pretense. Like, how am I supposed to name another blog? Especially one that I want to encapsulate at least the first few years of my adulthood, but hopefully the entire scope of humanity. (That is a joke to express the concept that I have too many elaborate plans fueled by obsessive planning; also, I am building it up so much. Watch this all fall very flat. How embarrassing.) But honestly. That is a frazzlement (not a real word) in and of itself. It has to bear some representation of my involvement, and it has to explain what I want to do with it, but then it has to be artsy and vague. It can’t just be “Lydia’s blog. Proceed for fun jokes.” No one would read it.

Well. I would read it. And I would laugh a lot.

This is kind of a useless wad of information for anyone who isn’t myself, but all of that basically comes down to the sentiments that have been drawn out for this search for a new name for my blog, or a name for my new blog, or whatever the crud is happening. I have found that all of the names that have been popping into my head have implied one very specific characteristic, and that characteristic is unsurety, and that is…not a word? Really? Today is rough. The lack of surety. Is that better, SpellCheck? Oh now it’s a fragment. Of course it is.

Anyway. I realized this in conjunction with the blog-name-research I did, comparisons of my ideas, or my fragments of potential maybe-ideas, with very famous blogs as well as the blogs of people who go to my school and are more popular and inspiring than I am. And all of those titles had a lot of surety. Even blogs like “A Beautiful Mess” are saying conclusively that the mess is beautiful. My mess is a mess because it is not beautiful. It’s fine that yours is, but I’m guessing that it is beautiful because it’s a pile of craft supplies and food scraps. My messes involve uncontrollable emotions and dirty laundry. (I don’t really read that blog, so I have no idea what their messes are, but I do know they blog a lot about crafting and cooking, so I thought it was a solid guess.) And then there are all these blogs that involve the term or idea of “adventure,” a perfectly good word and a perfectly normal obsession that is dominating my age group at this second; I don’t make snap judgments about millennials as a whole because I am not a sociologist, but I will tell you that as a group, I would guess that a goal of ours would be to inspire people. And that is fine, and one of the ways we want to do this is through “adventures” and living in a way that makes everything seem like an “adventure.” I for one think that is good and useful and lovely, but that is not what I want to pool my writing under. You know? (For reference, I know someone who has the world “adventure” in her blog title, and I blog about school, and she blogs about social injustice. There is an obvious disparity. So of course I admire her and her writing and her attitude, but I’m not going to start a blog that says, “Everything I do is cool!” because I think it is unlikely that I will do a whole horde of cool things and then only blog about those, and even if I do, I don’t want that pressure.)

And I know “life is an adventure” or something but it’s really not. It’s not right now. I am in my pajamas before 11:30. Life is not an adventure. If I am blogging, it’s because life is short on pizzazz. From a comparative perspective (a.k.a., almost always a bad one) my life just isn’t as fancy as some people’s. But I like it.

So I take the lack of surety and I’m going to run with it, because I think that’s just what Lydia does. I appreciate beauty and boldness, but I thrive in tension and complications and awkward situations. Not that I always do the right thing, but…I try. For some people life is a big, bursting, bubbling buffet (I did not mean to make that alliteration and am kind of embarrassed), but for me, life is a constant search to find food to make a meal out of. Sometimes you have well-crafted stories that are really precisely measured and zesty, and sometimes you have beautiful poems with frosting on top and cream in the middle. But for me, a lot more of life happens  during the weeks you forget to go grocery shopping and all you have is Ramen, or the evenings when you try to make something new and it ends up a little too spicy and weirdly crunchy. Occasionally, it happens on the days when you’re aimlessly searching for something to snack on and find something molding in the back corner of a cupboard.

And if there’s anything I learned here, it’s that none of those days are meaningless.

fin.