On the morn’ of New Year’s Eve, I didn’t wanna get up. I did. Not. Want. To. Get Up.
I hated 2013. hated it. There wasn’t much that I cared for except for July and September and I predicted that the former would be good anyway. The latter was my little sweet surprise inside. From the beginning of the year, my life — which I had been building up until then — had slowly started to unravel and fall apart. Since day one….which was the day my laptop decided to die on me. Slowly but surely, aspects of my life as I knew them started to wither away and basically, die. So I travelled the year; picking up the pieces, holding on to what I had and also finding new ones that better fit the giant Richard Scarry puzzle that I call my life. This year, I received twice as many punishments as blessings and as I trekked on, it was getting harder and harder to find my light at the end of the tunnel. How depressing. Well. 2013 was tuff stuff and the time in which I found myself to be and continued to be at my weakest, which is rather horrifying when you realize the gifts I had been bestowed. In short: my life fell apart on its own and everything that was a blessing I somehow ended up tearing apart in some way.
So, we’d think in any case I would just be elated to get on with the new year! Excitement and dancing and not giving a flying. Starting anew. Promising to become a better me? You’ d think. But that didn’t stop me from leaving my bed even though all I wanted to do was get up and be productive.
But. I “sucked it up and did stuff that would make me happy”; starting with laundry, a fun meeting, hanging with friends, hanging with my sister and ending on the only place in my entire village that I like — my rooftop. I carried on into the rest of the day, waking up and seeing friends who I hadn’t seen since last year (and one who just flew in this morning). I did what any normal person would want to do here: beach it with some of the most important people to you (see “Paradisu”), all the while looking for inspiration everywhere I went. I’d been talking about writing all day with the friend who just flew in — Steve LeFeve, btw, he’s extra famous. At the end of our adventure, I showed him a piece that gave me such a high off of writing that it didn’t wear off for days. It’s probably my favorite piece I wrote all year and it’s currently top secret until I say so.
Writing is my artistic medium of nature. I have to do it or I’ll go insane. I don’t know how to not. I want to write prose like painting on a canvas, the words just as vivid as the colors dancing on the fabric. I find hearing eloquently articulated words to be more of a turn on than seeing a tan, tone body coming down the street. However, I don’t write for a living. I can’t. “It is better to write for the self and have no public than write for the public and have no self”. That basically means that this blog will have a very slow flow.
But. At the same time, I feel like this is it. This is my year that my writing will be at its strongest, thus far. I will be the most motivated, most inspired to touch the pen to the paper. I will finally complete the scripts of my 7-year project. I will finally be able to connect the words that flow around my brain. And it will fuel every part of my being, allowing me to quit being such a dum-dum.
So why didn’t I get up yesterday? Because I was scared. I spent the second half of 2013 fearing, a thing that I just don’t do — at least, I don’t allow it to consume me the way I did. I was scared that 2014 would force me to push and at the end of such a year, I was so exhausted of not pushing. I was scared of digging myself out of the hole that I had created because it was so comfy, cozy and coastal. Because it became my norm. But that’s not me.
I’m ready to quit counting the stars and waiting for the streetlights to turn go because I’ve never waited for anything to tell me that it’s okay to do something. A friend told me recently “Ruzelle does what she wants” and I haven’t been doing nearly enough. I’m so ridiculously tired of rolling with the punches and I’m ready to punch back.
A speaker at this ceremony once said “I don’t tell my kids to have a good day. I tell them to make a good day”. So for all of you who are tumblr blogging “2014, please be good to me”. Screw it. You be good to 2014. I know I will.
Ruzelle Almonds 