PUBLIC ENEMIES made me want to wear suits.

33.

Ballgame.

Quick video about books.

The Push-Up Pro.

Closet case.

I don't know why I'm showing the blog so much love today. OK, maybe it's because I've barely shown it any written love in a while and didn't want those of you who care enough to come here to think that I'd stopped, you know, writing. I have not given up on the whole writing thing, even though I've become a vlogger, even though newspapers I used to read are dying slow deaths all around, even though I have a boyfriend and such a phenomenon is usually accompanied by me going blog silent.

The boyfriend and I have been dating for five months now, and I think we're in a good place. The roommate situation - warts and all - is going mostly well. I want to go back to improv, and I've made that desire known - or, at least, I think I have - to the people who can make those kinds of calls.

I thought about HOW TO WIN FRIENDS again, picking up and finishing that project. I thought about starting different projects.

For a variety of reasons, I've started reading and writing (and occasionally napping) behind the closed door of my large bathroom closet every night. The close, confined space, the time to be alone with my thoughts with a specific focus and specific goal and the throw pillow I rest my head on while I'm in there have made for a nice, writing-with-the-door-closed sort of creative space. I like it a lot.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and used to find comfort by hiding under beds or reading in closets.

My bathroom closet helps me to feel more like myself. So every night, I take a novel, a suede journal that snaps shut and a copy of WRITING DOWN THE BONES in there, and I have fun with some or all of those things until I get tired. And Stephen, if he's in the bedroom, can surf on the Internet or watch TV. (Some guys wouldn't be OK with a boyfriend who spends time in the closet - a literal closet, which is just a sign that I'm lucky to have found the person that I've found.)

Who knows what might come of the closet time, whether I'll ever write something significant or just make a dent in all the books I own but have never read?

It just feels important to have the time, the space and someone who cares enough not to mock you on the other side of the door.

I'm in the middle of this book and love it.

I've recommended books some of you have liked before, so take this recommendation into consideration. Part of me just wants to have someone to talk about it with when I'm done.

Anyway, Elizabeth Strout's OLIVE KITTERIDGE won the Pulitzer for fiction this year, and it was in paperback already, so I figured I would just pick it up and read it eventually. But it's a novel written as a collection of stories about one gruff, difficult retired schoolteacher named Olive Kitteridge and her whole entire town. Sometimes she's a major character in the stories, sometimes she's on the periphery. Every time, though, she makes an impact on the larger scope. Each story has been individually satisfying, which means that I've gotten the sense of closure and relief at having finished something profound and beautiful every time I pick it up, and I'm only 100 pages in. It's really, really good.

What I want.

I want one of these Kindle devices. I really, really want one. I've been trying to save up money for months in order to get one, and I've been talking and talking and talking about getting one.



Has anyone who reads this blog gotten a Kindle, seen a Kindle, used a Kindle? I want some feedback on them.

The Tate Modern shirt.

Before and after.

The boyfriend snores.

JOB APPLICANT CHALLENGE: Riley.

My friend Will sent me this challenge:

I challenge you to film a response to a job application. It can be a real one or one you make up; you may answer truthfully as yourself or create a persona.

I answered it three times.

JOB APPLICANT CHALLENGE: Daishwalla.

JOB APPLICANT CHALLENGE: John.

Learning from MANHATTAN.

Condolences.

State of relationship.

Challenge me.

Thank you, Zombie Sitcom.

I know I've got a bad reputation, and it isn't just talk talk talk ...

Stephen's in bed, and I'd not blogged in a while. I feel like I've barely written anything in a while. I've been so consumed with my webcam and making quality videos everytime I sit here at the computer - which now resides in this cute alcove in the corner of my bedroom with its own tray, lamp and photogenic bookshelves - that I forgot that the main reason I bought the computer, created the alcove and live my day-to-day existence is because I want to write. I'm good at it. I should do it more often.

(See how weak that previous paragraph is? That's how much I'm out of practice.)

So maybe I'll just take a photo of myself with the webcam everytime I sit down to write, and that'll get me out of the habit of strictly using this computer for webcamming (badly) and Facebook games.

Maybe I should revert to HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE for further inspiration, for I got a lot of good essays out of that - some of which may be published elsewhere soon. If I could return to improv a better, saner, easygoing person who was capable of keeping his emotional outbursts onstage and didn't constantly seek approval and trusting relationships, I would use that outlet to become more prolific. For a time, I even sought out details of my family's past in the hope that I would find inspiration to write stories there. In high school, I created a whole town of melodramatic, fictional characters and impossible circumstances, and I escaped into that. (The words came so easily then.) Sometimes I write for an audience, and my writing works out well for that.

So the pattern is that I seek inspiration, then I get so caught up in and obsessed with the inspiration that I forget to use it much to write about it. Or I tire of the inspiration.

But to get to the emotional core of the stories - the ones I feel most, the ones I most enjoy telling, the ones where I manage to mock myself the most - I think I need to trust myself and trust that I already know what I'm doing.

What do I have when I've been stripped of everything outside of myself that I think I need to be able to write? I have myself. And that's enough.

OK, cool. I've psyched myself into giving this writing thing a shot again. It's just me and the screen, the keyboard, the pen, the page. And it's all I need.