journaling

I spent a lot of time writing in my journal tonight. I killed one pen and one journal, two things that I've literally never done before in a single sitting. It's weird to do things that you've kind of given up hoping would happen.

You know, I don't really know what it's like to be a writer. Writing comes naturally to me, but I literally have no idea what my life would be like if I sat at home and spent hours writing every day. The scariest thing is that I know I could do it. If writing  at home were exactly like the kind of writing that I did in my journal, I could do it, no problem.

I don't, I think, because I struggle to think what the point or purpose of that writing would be. Undriven writing. Actually, all writing sort of strikes me as dangerously superfluous. Superfluous in that I'm afraid I might write too much and not ever be able to go back and read it all.

Sometimes I think that the reason that I don't write more, like actually truly write more, is because I'm afraid that if I do I won't have enough time to go back and read it all.

Twitter is like the journal that I never could bring myself to have.

Does the Twitter tweet for me? I tweet for thee.

Things I've been obsessed with, a list in no particular order:
Werner Herzog. I went so far as to read/watch a good number of the films and books he lists as required reading for his film workshop that he runs from time to time. I wonder how many people actually apply every year. Do you think it's in the hundreds? The thousands? For some reason I find it hard to believe that more than a few hundred people spend enough time and energy making film that they have the requisite raw material to submit to Herzog for a film.  That guy that did the amazing one man screen show. Do you think he even knows who Herzog is? Do you think that film would be enough to get him into the class? These are good questions to ask.

Kelly Wearstler. When I first saw her work, featured in a Architectural Digest issue via the house of a woman she worked with, that she had helped do the interior decorating for, I was out and out horrified. It was really awful, but in a consistent way. For some reason, I found her on instagram and started following her account and I really love it. I love Kelly Wearstler's style. Her weird big, exotic material hands. Geometric forms, sharp black edges. A certain heaviness.  I love it. I love it love it love it.

I once spent an entire year trying to get a picture of the sun either rising or setting. I think I managed to get about 2/3rds of the days.

Richard Feynman. I haven't read all his books, but they're all gems. Did you know he learned Portuguese, like me? His book on light, QED, is one of my all time favorite books. I forget sometimes how much I like thinking about the universe. I told my mom about it once and I think at some level she was surprised that I was able to read it? I don't know it was weird.

The Wizard of Oz. I softcore wanted to be Dorothy for as long as I can remember. I didn't name my dog Toto because she's not a Toto, but she does really look a lot like Toto. I discovered the actual Wizard of Oz books when I was in grade school and read all of them. Like literally as many of them as I could get my hands on. Some summers we used to go and stay at my grandparent's for a few days or a week or two and one time my Grandmother took us to the central library and it was crazy good. I loved it. They had a bunch of Wizard of Oz books that I had never read. Until I had a teacher in the 6th grade who actually really truly loved the Wizard of Oz in this really outwardly obvious way and rather than bond with her over our shared love of Oz, I got really weird about it and realized that I must truly not have loved Oz and Dorothy as much as this woman did so well you know that was that. I spent a lot of time analyzing how my affinity for the Wizard of Oz as a story wasn't as deep or authentic as this woman who taught me English.

Jane Jacobs. I've read almost all of her books. I've currently got her first book, the only one she ever published as a Butzner, in my physical to read stack. It's the only one that she's authored that I haven't read.

Hannah Arendt. She's so incredibly good, her books are worth the energy it takes to get through them. I'm constantly amazed at how much writing she manages to put out that's so incredibly well tied together. I'm not sure I could ever write that much, that coherently.  So far I've read just her big works: Eichmann in Jerusalem, Origins of Totalitarianism, and The Human Condition. They're all incredibly different in terms of style and goals, and it's impressive how wide ranging and insightful they are. I have a short book of hers, On Violence, in my to read stack.

BItcoin and the Lightning network. This is an incredibly recent obsession. I read one book on Bitcoin three months ago and now I'm obsessed. It's embarrassing, how quickly and vocally I feel like I get into things.

Hardware. Like kind of low key, but it feels low key in the way that my Wizard of Oz affinity is low key. I'm incredibly obsessed with it and yet it seems entirely passive, in some weird ways.

House furnishing and decoration and trends. It started with the Kon Mari book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up. I got really into working with space. You know, a lot of things in my life feel cluttered right now. My clothing, the upstairs room that's supposed to be my workspace. Where I keep my keys and Ginger's leash. The shoes downstairs. My career. Personal relationships. How I'm doing in terms of working toward actual life goals, and not imagined ones.