Category: me

Gall

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I interrupt wedding updates to bring you this:

I was just reading an article from NYMag on MTV music videos, and came across this quote:

“Madonna came into our office on a skateboard, all sweaty and dirty. She went to see Bob Regehr—a big product manager at Warner Bros.—and left a note on his bulletin board that said, ‘Sorry I missed you, because I’m gonna be a star.'”-Susan Silverman, Warner Bros. Exec.

This was before Borderline, before Like a Virgin, before the cone bra. She started out with one name. She started out knowing she’d be huge. She had the gall to tell a major manager that she’d be huge.

I love it.

I wish I had that much faith, that much belief in myself.I wish I had the brashness and gall to be able to tell people that I’m going to be great.

Perhaps I do.

Perhaps that’s what I should work on. Developing not an ego, not a superiority complex, but instead, well, cajones. Yes, I’m going there.

I so badly want to believe in myself enough that I can scream from the rooftops. Tell the world that I’m going to make it. And perhaps, if I believe in myself enough, it’ll all come true.

LiveJournal

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I looked back at my old LiveJournal tonight for various reasons. It was embarrassing and hilarious. But mostly, it was sweet. I didn’t filter anything. I wrote what I wanted. I had run-on sentences, and frequently mentioned situations and inside jokes no one else would care about. But it made me smile. It was a great journal, after all.

After LJ was HDS with blogger. It started the same, really, perhaps a bit better. But then HDS got a bit of a following, and while the public was appreciated, it also attributed to my – for lack of better words – downfall. I started trying too hard. Concentrating too much on writing the perfect piece. I wanted everyone to continue reading, I wanted them to love me.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved what I wrote. I think some of my favorite blog posts are on HDS. But some posts also felt empty, like I was writing a story, and not about myself.

Anyway, I started Lauren Writes because I wanted to find a way to blend the two. Write what I want, but better. I don’t know how well i’ve accomplished that, really. But I’m making it my goal now to try harder. I miss blogging, I do. I want to look back on this blog and remember myself, not an image of myself that I wanted to portray.

So expect some new things here. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, here’s something I wrote on my LJ. It says a lot about me, I think:

The past few months I’ve felt like I was dating the library. Seriously. It started out back in August, when I remembered how useful the local library was. I remembered old times we had together back in high school, those days of reading plays in the small cramped aisles. I started visiting it every now and then, jogging down the street, and that’s when the library flirting started. Quite quickly, it became serious. Since I was jobless, I was there quite often. The days I wasn’t, I typically received a phone call informing me that a book came in. Swoon. But just as quickly as we got together, things started slipping. Phone calls were less frequent. I started missing those automated, “Hello, Hello…this is the Seminole County Public Library System with a message for…” phone calls. Was it because of the one 5 cents late fee? I started visiting less often. I even had my mom drop off a book for me–i couldn’t face the library myself. But then yesterday…yesterday it called. I had a book in! I triumphantly picked up that book, smirking as I walked in. I knew it would come back to me…I always knew.

Where I Write

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A year before he passed away, my grandfather gave me his desk. It’s old, solid and sturdy, like he was – stubborn to the point that it refuses to fit through certain doors. It’s a darker brown, with carvings crawling up the ornate legs that twist and turn at the bottom. The drawers, of which there are many, have gold handles that often fall off. But what makes the desk most special are the hidden spots, many of which my grandfather never knew about. If you take the drawer on the right out, there’s a smaller drawer pressed at the back, hidden from view. I can picture pirates hiding precious pearls in the small compartment. The columns that stand in the back actually open at the top, fitting nothing more than a handful of pencils.

I pile everything atop the desk, knowing it won’t buckle under the pressure. A teal and gold mask from Venice, an old fold-out Kodak camera taken from a model apartment long ago. An Ikea clock that never once worked, shells glued together to make a turtle. Papers. Files. Photos. Memos.

Despite the mess, it’s where I feel like myself. It didn’t take long to connect with the desk; we just meshed well, despite its heaviness and my desire to be light. My writings are now part of the markings, laying deep inside the wood. For my grandfather, it was a place to pay bills; for me it’s my place to be me.

My…Last Purchase

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Going back to the 30 little things because it makes me happy.

My last purchase was cornmeal. Honestly. Last weekend, I went to make muffins, but sadly realized we had no muffin mix in the house. Samir suggested making them from scratch, so I pulled out the trusty cookbook and found that we had nothing to make muffins. We had your flour and eggs and whatnot, but no blueberries, no cornmeal.

Two days ago, I went to Publix to grab some lunch and thought I’d pick up a box of muffin mix. To my surprise (and disgust) I realized the mix has…some not great ingredients. Putting it down, I turned around and picked up some cornmeal.

Homemade corn muffins this weekend!

My…Blog Name

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If it wasn’t 11:39 p.m. and I didn’t just battle with Microsoft Word for two hours, I’d come up with something incredibly witty to answer the question of what my blog name means.

But instead, I leave you with this: My name is Lauren. Sometimes I write. (Often I procrastinate.)

(By the way, hello to my new readers, including those who came over here from HDS! So happy to see you all!)