between thoughts and beyond exhaustion.

i feel like much has happened. although, i see even less has changed. i began feeling an extreme change just over a week ago. the pressure was at its most extreme. i woke and felt like my breathing was strained. then over coffee and a novel, i began a long conversation with a stranger at my left. which helped my day and made my mind feel better. the next day, i expressed to a woman that i felt we were led to believe there was such thing as a "platform of perfection"--a point we worked to arrive at, a steady calm, an ease where we existed calmly and unaffectedly. i told her it wasn't what i was going for--that we exist and are affected differently in different environments. maybe in new york i kept myself from behaving freely. maybe here, my mind was always perceiving and translating. maybe in the city, it was in my character to focus and produce. and maybe, i should recognize this and accept the differences. a few days later, i just broke down. i cried because i had not. i said i have been depressed because it was an excuse and it was a jumping off point to excite change. but what mattered most is i acknowledged the necessity to find a balance--a balance i have never had, that i have expected and which is probably not always natural. i also came to terms with still having ideals--interior and exterior ideals that were motivated by reputation, appearance and acceptance from the two. i know i am no different. i fall into extremes, experience those addictions and make judgments for a more normal quality of life because of them. i am just ready to find a balance. a balance that will make living and living in new york city more beneficial and rewarding. i hold back from what i would have written. i am calmer and less eager because of the distance from that temperament.

i think i was also ruminating myself raw. nervous about the month of june, which i am now experiencing at full force. i was and am experiencing emotions from and over it everyday. and this is because i put an irrational amount of pressure on myself to perform perfectly. basically, i am in an intense writing program for fiction. and never have been in a writing craft and workshop class, nor wrote for the genre of fiction. i eat to keep myself alive and awake, energized and in tune for performance. but i am two times the self i was last summer, and it is hard to see myself always changing and never at a constant. sometimes i fear what i will become, and i hate the sound of myself saying that. in the end, i persevere through the absurdity and let the smarter side of myself decide. knowing it is more gratifying to eat to attain mindfulness, than eat disorderly and have no capacity to think at all. let no one fool you, it is a battle everyday. sometimes it exhausts you, other times it excels but you never exist not feeling changed by it. it is an utter waste, and everyday you tell yourself that today you will begin to live without it.

i realized i was kidding myself if i was hoping to be less serious after the month of june. i feel like my seriousness in new york is not pleasurable or attractive, and i have grown insecure because of it.

the writing has begun. and i say begun because it feels different and comes out differently now that it is being made for a story and/or is structured for a novel. now my activity is this: thinking less abstractly in the genre of fiction and being more fluid because of it. there is a difference in thoughts when told in story form and the mind digresses when thinking for the novel. i am not sure where i sound smarter. although, i am learning that fiction may not be the space for it. i was told my philosophy should be eliminated in the edit and that logic bending sentences are no way to open a story and invite your reader to stay. and then i was told that my writing resembled margurite duras' the lover, which made me smile even though i didn't expose it.

i believe i feel differently. i think my thinking is different than theirs. then who changes here?