Sacred Sundays posts are journals, polished just okay enough for my small group of readers in which I call the public eye. This is a place where reflection and anticipation come together in a period of stillness on the last Sunday of every month, before life gets too hectic again to stop and take a breath. It is now Monday because I overbooked my weekend and last night my words had trouble flowing, despite for a journal entry meant to be informal. I do a lot of writing now, as a double English major, and I think this fact might be working against me at the current moment. I do not need to write a polished short story to review in a one-on-one workshop with my professor today, I need to write a simple blog post like I have been doing at the end of every month since March. I have a two hour period to write this morning, on paid time of course, but instead I am reading a PDF for class called "Shitty First Drafts." Call it divine timing, but now all of the pressure of the public eye is gone because I can write a shitty first draft and that is okay as long as I get what I want to say onto paper.
As of late, I am a sponge, saturated until my pores excrete written words and wrung out enough to be filled back up again. This process repeats every day although with new knowledge. I read roughly 150 pages of text per week in a combination of all my coursework and then another 200 pages leisurely. That is a lot to process especially when their contents range from fictional short stories to textbooks to 19th Century African texts. Given my courses and my majors, this is to be expected and I am happy to do so. I always knew I loved to learn but it was not until now that I am learning about what I love, so I keep absorbing every ounce of knowledge that comes my way to one day turn it into something beautiful.
I always thought I would be something one day, but it was not until starting college that I believe it matter-of-factly. Writing has always been my driving force in this world, but for the first time, I am being pushed to enhance these skills. I was never taught how to write creatively but now my homework assignments over the weekends are to write short stories. I workshop my writing to learn how to make it better and I share it with my peers because for the first time I am surrounded by like-minded people. I have a friend who I meet up with in the basement of the library where we sit between the tall shelves and share our writing, our music, and many laughs. It is friendships like these that I value so much because if it weren't for writing we never would have met.
Everything here seems poetic as I walk to class in a plaid skirt and boots on the first day of fall alongside brick buildings that line the lane with a coffee and book in hand. Routine has started to settle into the cracks of my life, hardening into a structure I secretly crave. I dedicate my mornings to writing and stay up all night to squeeze in time for a book that I pick out after one of my shifts at the library. Sunday shifts are nice because I have to get out of bed by at least lunch and then I chip away at my homework all afternoon sitting at the front desk swivel chair. Monday shifts put my week on a good tone before I even make it to my first class.
The hardest part of my newfound independence is creating a routine for the things in between my obligations like school and work. After class, I try to pick up my guitar to keep the creativity flowing because my other usual methods are now occupied by coursework. I have learned that while my mind is still swimming around the unconscious, I write well in the mornings and that has resulted in allowing fantasy to rule during the hours of the night when I finally have time for leisure reading. This writing/reading routine has inspired me so much and I find myself reaching for my journal tenfold what I used to. There is always something going on in my head these days.
Yesterday, the actual Sacred Sunday, was a new moon in libra. This represents balance and the start of a new cycle which fits kind of perfectly with what I have been saying this whole time somewhere between the nonsense. In this new cycle I, for the first time in this series, do not want to change too much from the last. I want to keep absorbing as much as I can around me from the stories I read for class, the author readings I attend in the evenings, and hopefully a lot from the Brooklyn Book Festival I am going to this weekend. I still can't believe I just said all of that in one sentence, but it validates that the path I have taken is the right one for me.
Well, I said what I wanted to say so consider this a shitty first draft, although I am not sure it is necessary to polish what is supposed to be a raw reflection to the extent of the short story I need to complete for workshop this week. On that note I will say thank you for reading this mess of a Sacred Sundays, but as long as somebody got something out of it I call it a success (even if that 'somebody' is myself).