Sing in me, Muse

This is my fourth, or fifth, or somethingth attempt at blogging, but I'm feeling good about this one. Each time I make a new blog, and it's all shiny, and I tweak it, and I'm happy, and then I do a few posts, and then I realize I'm a horrible writer and no one would want to read anything I wrote so why put it out there and why take the time when I could be watching West Wing?

My last attempt is extant here. I thought I didn't start writing really until I studied in Paris last winter, but upon reading that old blog for the first time in a long time, I realized I did write before that. And some of it's not even that crappy.

But this one, this one is going to work. I'm doing it now because:

a) Procrastination - homework sucks, even when you like it

b) I'm supposed to write every day for Nonfiction anyway, so I might as well do it online.

c) As Megan said, you can write pages and pages and pages of amazing prose in your journal, and put it in a shoebox under your bed, and hide it away from the world. That's fine. But you're not being a writer. So, here's my stuff, revealed naked, warts and boils and stuff included.

To explain the title: I like walking around in the summer with sunglasses on because people can't tell when you're staring at them. And not in a creepy way, just people watching, just looking at the people you pass every day, the girl wearing the ridiculous hat (fur in June!) and the guy with a limp and the woman scolding her child. I try (and usually fail) not to stare in a judging way. At the very least, I always feel guilty when I do judge. Or, mostly. And I like taking public transportation while wearing headphones, since people assume you can't hear them, so they talk as if you're not there. Nosy? Maybe. But that's what life is, it's conversations people didn't want you to hear. And it's little weird hats and the way a woman pokes a little boy in the chest to emphasize his sin and the throaty cough of a old woman on the El. So, as I have learned to do (and it is quite possibly the most important lesson I have learned in my life), instead of hating myself for doing these things and wanting to do these things, I will accept them, and channel them, and move on.

Here we go...