A Picture of Thursday Afternoon in My Room

I read a book by Anne Lamott this year titled Bird by Bird; it was her account of what it means and what it takes to be a writer. Today during my Transitions class, a one credit course required for all first year students, we were given an overview of the library resources. While introducing the writing support center, Vi Dutcher, the director of EMU’s writing program, paraphrased a part of Anne Lamott's book. I remembered the passage. It was one of my favorite parts of the book, partly because it gave me so much hope about writing and partly because Anne and I have a similar sense of humor. The direct quote is:

            "I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can

 even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said that you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)"

I hurried back to my dorm room after class to find that quote. After chuckling and enjoying the creative wit of a woman I don't know, I remembered something else that Anne said in her book. When you sit down to write, it can feel overwhelming. You have a million ideas or no ideas at all; there's nowhere to start and no end in sight, and you’re paralyzed by the fear that you won’t write anything good or worse, you’ll write something absolutely terrible. Anne's advice was to try capturing moments, small snapshots of life at a time. Make a frame with your fingers, hold it out in front of you, describe what you see within the boundaries of that frame, and then grow from there. 

I've been meaning to write something insightful, funny, or witty to publish in The Tribune for a couple of months now, but I couldn’t find the courage or the will power to sit myself down and write until Vi Dutcher pulled Anne Lamott back out of obscurity where I’d been hiding her. I remembered the élan that I had written with in the weeks after I had finished her book, and I realized that sitting around, waiting for inspiration or confidence leads to more waiting and no writing. So I took myself by the shoulders, looked straight into my right eyeball (because if you think about it, you can only ever make eye contact with one eye at a time.), and I told myself that I could do it again. I could make something worth reading.

So I’m starting with snapshots, easing myself back into writing, and taking the time to look, listen, and learn about my new world here at college. I’ve always been very intentional about documenting my life, starting with my pink kitten covered diary from elementary school where I wrote detailed accounts of all the best playground drama in pink sparkly jell pen. These written memories are my most treasured possessions. I routinely pull out my past journals and find stories about people I had forgotten or moments of insight that seem beyond my age. Journaling allows me to save pieces of my past selves and revisit them whenever I please.

Today’s snapshot comes from my dorm room where I am currently working. I’m sitting at my desk; it is wooden, pine I think, stained a golden honey color and decorated with dents, scrapes, and chips from previous semesters. I have a tape dispenser, a stapler, and a small bottle of hand sanitizer sitting to the right of my keyboard. A Band-Aid tin full of pens, markers, pencils, and one pair of purple scissors is standing behind them. To the left of my computers is a desk lamp painted a tropical shade of blue, and fixed to the base is a medium sized pile of Post-it notes pile. The squares change color as the pile gets higher, from blue to purple to pink to orange to yellow. A pocket sized notepad; a sketch book, not much bigger and lonely for use; and a brand new journal that I bought on sale at Borders, are stacked beside the lamp. Binders and folders that I have yet to find a use for are propped up against the shelf that rises over the far end of the desk, holding a few picture frames and the necessaries for tea. A black speaker with the brand name, CREATIVE functions as a makeshift bookend for the binders as well as a paperweight for a sheet of forty-two cent stamps that I purchased at the campus post office. 


I’m not particularly preoccupied with material possessions, and I believe that it is character that defines a person, not the things that they own. But I do think that the contents of a person’s pockets, the arrangement of their room, or the things they keep on their desk say a lot about them. So as I wonder about who I am and who I want to be, I look at the objects that I’ve placed on my desk. I try to listen to what they might be saying, but all I hear is Brittney singing along to Carrie Underwood across the hall and someone sneezing in the lounge, the breeze making the loose and lightweight objects in my room twitch as it comes in my window and the door to the staircase opening and closing. I look up at my shelf to find not an answer itself, but a way to the answer I’m searching for, a mug with the words, “call your mother” in block letters across the front.