Apparently

I try to be creative in the way that I write, using what little literary technique I know to attempt to make what I write not only interesting but thoughtful. But showing is much harder than telling, and I write the way I speak. But written words do not have the same effect as spoken words in my usage and what I end up writing either becomes too sappy, too cheesy, or simply uncreative. So I'm stuck writing what I ought to say, not what I feel, and that leaves what few readers I have unable to fully grasp what I'm feeling and what I want them to understand.

Last night I wanted so desperately to write about my feelings about Princeton, about my struggles, joys, worries about my acceptance, but each time I tried to start a paragraph I looked at it, rearranged a word here or there, looked down in disappointment, and erased it. I sit here again trying to do the same thing, this time just writing rather than editing.

I read Buechner or Billy Collins, Steinbeck or Fitzgerald, or even a certain Taylor I know, and I wish I could write like that. There is such a simplicity to the words and yet such a complexity that I don't know how to replicate. And when I read something, though it's difficult at times to understand or even be motivated to read it, I am invited into a realm where I can only sit like a child and stare at the images being drawn on the canvas. And I wish I could invite other people into that place rather than just show you what they've shown me. So I find myself stuck being blunt, telling rather than showing, and unable to say what I want to convey. They're simply words.


There were questions I thought would be answered when that packet arrived in the mail yesterday, and yet I'm stuck with those stupid questions sitting in my mind with so few answers being provided. Work isn't provided by knowing my future, financial problems haven't been solved, and as I have criticized so many in my mind for doing, I feel my departure is merely an escape from troubles I don't know how to solve here.

The truth is I'm not sure if I want to leave yet. I plan on leaving in the Fall and I don't anticipate that changing. But I'm not sure I want to go yet. Granted, what I want has very little to do with this. There are a lot of things I wanted and expected for myself by this point that simply haven't worked out. But even though we're told we can't always have what we want, it doesn't change the pain of not getting whatever it might be.

And there is only one reason I don't want to go though it is perhaps the reason I need to go. I'm risking my future on something that has no guarantee and is not set to be the best option for me. My mind and the world don't always synchronize, and chances are I'm fooling myself. But that 'what if' lingers. Holding off a year risks a wasted year, leaving in the fall risks a missed opportunity. But who knows if that opportunity even exists, or ever did? And so what if it turns out? What then? What does a year gain? Is it worth it?