Playing catch up: Writing, Renting, and so on.

So much has been going on lately!  I never realized how hard it is to sit in front of this computer.  Normally, I'll have so many ideas.  I'll think to myself a thousand times a day, "I have to write that down!"  But I never do, and then I forget.  

A couple weeks ago, a professor of mine died.  He was so young, and so incredibly smart and talented.  I did not make it to his memorial service.  Instead, I vowed to honor him by taking some advice that he gave to my graduate class a year ago.  He told us to take fifteen minutes out of everyday and write.  It doesn't matter what it is, just as long as you write.  It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be something.  

So I've been trying to do that.  I figured that it shouldn't be that hard.  I've always loved writing.  I'm starting to feel like I've lost it, though.  For the past year, I've been suffering from the most intense writer's block.  I have these really dope thought processes about really random things, and I just want to share them, but as soon as I sit down to type, they vanish.  I guess I just need to do it.  Just follow Chet's advice.  Just write.  You can't get better unless you do it, right?

Here's my five-pronged strategy for becoming a better writer in the new year: 

1. Blog regularly
2. Write poetry
3. Work on my thesis
4. Pitch articles for CR10
5. Review books

Hopefully that will work out well.

We've been looking for a new place to stay.  In the past 3 days, we've looked at 12 houses.  I think we've seen maybe four we liked.  I feel good about it all, though, because we've given ourselves a nice cushion.  The last thing that I want is to be stressed out and not know where we're moving a few weeks before the lease ends.  I'm so ridiculously happy to be moving out of this house that I can't express it with words.  

The only thing I'll miss about living here, I think, is Amani's room.  I gave birth in that room.  There's a lot of emotion attached to that room.  There is definitely some sadness connected to leaving that room.  That's really the biggest downside to renting.  There will always be some memory, some part of you, that you leave behind when your lease is up.  So many things happen in six months, or a year.  You live, you love, you grow.  And then you leave.  I've lived so many places in the past few years, moved so many times.  I've left pieces of me all over.  I'm hoping that soon we'll have a place that is ours.  Someplace to gather up all the pieces that are left and rearrange them, reassemble them, admire them, make a better me.  Someplace to live, love, grow, and stick around for a while.  

(From time to time I realize that I've left a big chunk of me in New Orleans.  Hopefully I can go back and get it soon.  And maybe bring a big piece of the Crescent back with me.)