Out of the blue! (Also, 700th post!)

In my defense, for most of the past week, I didn't have Internet, and yesterday I had nothing to say. No longer!

I watched Harry Potter today (you know which one), and AHHHHUBDCGHYDJGDSQUEEVBGCFNXYDU. Spoiler alert (as if anyone who reads this hasn't already read the book or seen it already): I started crying when Fred died, renewed my tears when Snape found Lily's body, and then kept it up until King's Cross, with an interlude of near-sobbing when Harry used the resurrection stone. Sad sad sad. Hermione and Ron's kiss was fantastic. Now I have the urge to reread all of the Harry Potter books, because, I mean, seriously: they're brilliant. The world, the characters, it's all just brilliant. It's a world that everyone knows and anyone can feel like they have a place in it, you know? Like J. K. Rowling said: Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.

As for other things (yes, surprisingly, there are other things in the world), this is my 700th post! I suppose I should make a speech about how lovely you all are (as if you didn't already know) and how I can't wait for 1,000 or something. You know, I never really do anything for the big round numbers (although big round numbers are my favorite). I usually don't even write a very long post (because my life is boring). My 600th was angsty, and then I talked about Up, and I might've even mentioned grades or something. Usually I include a picture of some celebratory thing, like fireworks.

I've used a surprising amount of parentheses (because I can't form full, coherent sentences in order to describe my meaning).

Before I continue (because the next part is long): I have finished my summer reading, The Once and Future King, and it's my new favorite book. It's beautiful. Also, yesterday I went on an impromptu trip to Great Adventure with Vera! Unfortunately, I still didn't get my phone.

I have to say that I am having a miserably boring summer, with barely any communication with my friends, which is spent inside all day. I'm not really surprised.

After venturing into my old blog archives I realized that my three year blogging anniversary was on June 27. My first actual post on Cloudy was July 8. My first post on here was November 9. All in 2008, when I was in seventh grade and I was over-emotional but couldn't express my emotions properly.

I hope to keep this blog until the Internet ends, even though I don't really read the archives anymore. Some things I don't want to remember, some things I just don't remember, and it doesn't do me any good to remember most things anyway. Writing this isn't about remembering. It's not just so I can look back in twenty years, on the old gravestone of my childhood that I've long since abandoned, and think of all the things which have no impact on me anymore.

But then, asking me why I blog is like asking me why I write. I can't answer; there are a lot of reasons and none of them make any sense to me, so if I wrote them they wouldn't make any sense to you. I guess I just like the people, and I can't stop now that I've started because I'm afraid of endings and I hate change. See, now I don't even know what I'm talking about.

I wonder why I sound so miserable?

Writing frustrates me entirely. It's as if every letter isn't going anywhere; the words are running in place, never moving forward, never bringing me to what I want. I hate everything I write, I really do. Every story I create is wrong, like I'm circling the drain until I find the one thing I'm meant to achieve, the one story which speaks to me and to others, that I can write without looking back, without losing hope. It's like a set of puzzles lined up before me in a row, and if you put them all together they make one splendid, beautiful picture, but every puzzle has been mixed up so that none of the pieces fit together, and I can't sort them out. I feel as if the reason I write is to find that one story which I am meant to tell, the very best thing I can possibly create which I have been given whatever gifts I may possess so that I can create it.

There are obstacles, though. Not obstacles, but one obstacle which I cannot overcome. It's not the puzzle pieces; if I were patient I could sort them out. The trouble is my own disenchantment with the world. I don't hate it but I don't know what to do with it, don't know how to tear myself away from it. The world makes me think that every step I take is wrong. Everything I see is contrived and empty, fake, silly, and my own work is no exception. Everything I write, from the moment I put it on paper, is wrong to me. It's all just plastic; the whole world is plastic, and I can't create something that isn't. I'm no alchemist; I can't turn lead into gold, and I can't discover the elixir of life. I fear for myself, and that when I die, there will be nothing left of me at all.

I want to leave something behind desperately. The desire for recognition has poisoned my work, and I know it; it fills every word with fear. It is in short a desire for approval, but it runs deeper than that. I want the things I create to live on forever; I want them to be classics, to be discussed by professors, to change people's lives. I want people to feel. And this want has made me so focused on recognition that nothing I write is good enough. Nothing I have created makes anyone feel, or weep, or sense for days that there's something missing from them which they weren't even aware of beforehand--these are all the things I have experienced, but cannot make others experience. It's infuriating to believe that there is one story, one thing of beauty which I am meant to create, but I can't see it before me.

I want to capture all things sad and beautiful, to describe heartache and to be subtle. Subtlety is my desire; when I look at the world through my own eyes, I see sadness and I see beauty; I see what is there all around me but the true love I have for the world comes from the things unable to be expressed, the feelings you get when you stand in the wind, the thoughts which break your heart in silence, the things you know without knowing why. You see the light everywhere, but the rays of the sun are subtle, and the warmth or the cold on your skin. I want people to see the beauty I see without having to tell them, so that they can love it and make it apart of themselves.

I want too many things. It all pains me. I feel desperately alone; not because I don't think anyone would understand, but because I can't express my meaning so that they will. It would be so easy if I had the puzzle pieces in a line before me, so that I could put them together and show the world these things I see. I think it's worth something to see the world as beautiful, to feel alive just by standing on the steps and feel the wind through the trees as the sun sets. I think it's worth something to see the difference between the light of the morning and the light of the afternoon. I wish everyone was as fascinated and devestated by the world as I was, because then I wouldn't be tasked with describing it to them, to make them feel it too.

I don't really know what I was originally planning to write here. I suppose this would be Why I Write, Second Edition. I think it's significant that I accidentally deleted a paragraph and I cried, because I couldn't remember what I said, and it felt lost forever.

I think I've been trying to say this for a while.