Needing External Validation

So I keep thinking that if I could just evolve psychologically and spiritually beyond the need for external validation I could be so much happier. But instead I am having one of those days where things that are normally pleasure-giving sort of hurt, brilliant and clever blogs and the soundtrack to Juno which is my favorite soundtrack ever I think only I keep thinking “I’ll never be so quirky and creative” and, worse, “I don’t even have the compensatory doggedness and focus to make up for it.” How can one be lonely with this many voices in one’s head? Especially when one is so versed in the use of the third person to distance oneself from uncomfortable thoughts, contributing to the sense of there being more people there...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Feb 27, 2008 | 11 comments

Disaffected

You know the blog is neglected when the phone starts ringing, people checking, since you haven’t posted in a while, that you’re ok. I am. Ok, I mean. It’s just — February. It’s rawness and in this week when spring seems almost within reach, you want to tread carefully. February is so brief, so fast, that all life seems much too much of a flash, and I find myself reducing life to what absolutely has to be done. Like making Valentine’s day cards. I apparently have recovered sufficiently from two years ago when Xander’s first grade teacher assigned as his homework in December a handmade card for each classmate and in February a handmade valentine for each classmate, with a cheery note about cocoa and craftiness and...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Feb 20, 2008 | 3 comments

Brevity Redux (the long version)

I hate when I finish a blog entry and get a couple comments and then realize what I didn’t mention, what I didn’t say and I am tempted to go back in my comments only that would really prove my long-windedness, no? The disc jockey Raven was interviewed by before Ignite called the event “Attention Deficit Theater” and I noticed that line has been picked up, and what’s funny about that is that when Raven started to use Twitter I thought it was “Attention Deficit Blogging.” But I’ve since realized that it isn’t, any more than Haiku is “Attention Deficit Poetry.” What it is the theater, the communicating, the poetry of the essential. Which brings me back to my current preoccupation with Twitter, and how...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Feb 9, 2008 | 3 comments

Brevity

I hate starting a post with “so I was listening to NPR” but maybe that is a little better than starting it with “I hate starting a post with…” because that’s so disingenuous, and I really, really mean to become more ingenuous, ingenius? I cannot think, my husband is out of town and somebody wants to tell me something awful that his brother has done every ten seconds which means that I keep re-composing the same sentence in my head over and over again, only it’s worse every time. And I wonder if I should give up and try to write after they’re all in bed when my brain is officially melted, or what order things must logically happen in for this to be an ok evening, only there is no logic left because it’s a giant...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Feb 8, 2008 | 5 comments

About Last (ig)nite…

I’d love to write something about how inspiring it is to see people stand up last night at Ignite and talk about what they’re passionate about, about how inspired I am by the diversity of interests and the way people come together and support one another, but it’s being done really well in a bunch of other places, and besides my eyes are crossed this morning from having gotten up two or three times during the night with Rainer, at first feverish and then, an hour or two later (it’s best not to take a disheartening glance at the clock) for no (apparent to us) reason, screaming “No!” (and at this point he was sleeping in our bed) and now I am rushing, getting ready to take Raven to the airport and do the parenting thing solo again...

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Posted by Mara Collins on Feb 6, 2008 | 4 comments