Riverhed.com

I’ve spent a good deal of time now at Espresso Love, a coffee shop in my home town of Edgartown, pretending to work on writing and editing. The reality is that I got all my copyediting for Blast out of the way this morning at Mocha Motts in Vineyard Haven, and I’ve spent the majority of my time here feeding the birds with crumbs from my muffin. The ice in my coffee has melted, and the pool of water that condensated on the plastic cup is almost all evaporated, and I’m writing this in hopes it’ll kickstart my brain into writing what I need to write about.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do once I finally graduate, and Ivona and I discussed it yesterday. We’re both feeling like this past winter, during which we got into such boring routines, is not how we envisioned these years of our lives and the first years of our marriage. Yes, we’re intensely happy together, but there’s more to life that we feel we’re missing out on.

So, with that in mind, I’m considering renewing my plans of spending a summer riding a bike around the country, camping out along the way. The plan is to go hashing as many places as we can along the way, and I can’t think of anything better to do to make me feel like I’m alive again. I think the last time I really felt that way was in France.

Anyway, whatever I decide to do next, I know it has to be a big change. Any suggestions?

So it’s no surprise that I haven’t been keeping up with this blog, and the truth is that I’ve been in a pretty major slump lately, in just about all aspects of my life. My cousin Isabelle put it nicely when she called it “transition depression” over lunch a few weeks ago. I’m “graduating” in 9 days, though I have to be back here in the fall to finish up the last of my courses. I had tried to take 27 credits this semester and it turned into a train wreck; I have a habit of taking off more than I can chew and then being all surprised when it doesn’t exactly pan out the way I want it to. Read the rest of this entry »

And here’s a piece I wrote more than a few years ago that I just stumbled across in one of my old moleskines.

And so those days of subtle genius gone
Days spent fishing for leaves in the back yard
Full of hammocks and skinned knees, dew at dawn
And the dog has been missing since the sun went down

He bounds into view with the sun at noon
A strange creature with five legs instead of four
One dangles from his mouth, clearly not his own
And it will be used for walking no more

As blood stains the deck and drips from his mouth
It is a strangely beautiful nightmare
One that leaves a wanting for the waking
A curiosity for the mortal

Bent and broken at all the wrong angles
Flesh stripped away in no certain pattern
And no one will touch it save the dog and
Flies begin to materialize and feast

We three sit with our faces against glass
Groaning complaints of the sight and smell
And turning away is not an option

It stays for two days and quickly becomes
An average, common place sight
Like some everyday monstrosity

And when it leaves under cover of night
Reclaimed by some wandering creature
And no longer some scavenger’s bounty
We are forlorn and must look elsewhere for decay

And we are not disappointed, to say the least.

Throughout my college career, several semesters have stood out as having a common theme, as if all my courses seem to be about the same over-arching message. More than likely it’s because I have a certain idea in my brain that I’m thinking about, and that could influence my choice of classes or what I get out of them, but sometimes it seems uncanny how similar the ideas are between the different courses.

The theme of this semester seems to be centered on objectivity and subjectivity. These are ideas I’ve dealt with a lot as a journalist, but lately I’ve really been thinking about it a lot. As I wrote in one of my papers for Covering Race lately, as a journalism student I’ve been told that objectivity is the highest ideal. I’ve pursued it, trying to keep my personal beliefs and opinions out of the discussion. I always had the feeling that perfect objectivity was unnattainable, but lately I’m feeling like even imperfect objectivity doesn’t even exist.

Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of Valentine’s Day (I know, I guess I should have thought of posting this yesterday), I thought I’d throw up this essay I wrote for the New York Times last year for a contest for their Modern Love column in the Style section. No, I don’t read the Style section, but my friend Ben’s mother told me about it and thought it was worth a shot. It was never published, but I really liked the way it came out. Feedback is always welcome.

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After getting a few posts up, I had decided to hold off on working on this blog for a bit until I was really ready to commit to updating every single day, at least once. I’ve never been commitment-shy (well, fuck, I’m married at 24, how could I be?), but I’ve always had a weird relationship with my writing. I’ll go through periods where I write a lot and then don’t write again for months, or years even. I mean, I’ll write papers for class, and make little notes here and there, but nothing serious. This blog is a way for me to try to get over that and live up to the fact that I call myself a writer.

So, since lack of motivation has always been the barrier that keeps me from accomplishing what I should easily be able to, I’ve decided to force myself into it. From now on, if I haven’t made a post by 2 am following any given day, I’ll pay whoever emails me at drew@riverhed.com pointing that out five dollars. Granted, that’s not a lot right now, but it’s incentive to get more people to come here and more importantly more incentive for me to make sure I post.

I had actually told Ivona this yesterday, and insisted that yesterday was going to be the day I kick things off. Which means I owe her five dollars (and believe me, she didn’t waste any time sending off emails and text messages informing me of this).

As far as the specifics go, I did 2 am instead of midnight because sometimes I work late. And it’s for 24-hour period of time, not necessarily calendar day. So if I post at 10 pm on the 12th, and not again until 1 am on the 14th, it doesn’t count (since it resets at 2 am, so it’s still in the 13th’s timeframe). Just wanted to get that out of the way so people don’t try to fuck me over on this. Oh, and you need PayPal to receive the money.

Anyway, it’s late now or I’d post more about what’s going on around here lately. Check back tomorrow for news.

I think I used to be a much more passionate person. I used to care more about a lot of things. I used to get excited and worked up and interested. I feel like I’ve stagnated a lot in the past few years, maybe even since starting college, and I’m hoping I can get back to where I used to be.

Ivona said tonight that she likes when I write blog entries because it’s like a window to my inner thoughts that I don’t normally vocalize or go out of my way to share. I realized that’s largely true, and not necessarily because I don’t want to share things with her, but when I don’t write it’s almost like I don’t even think about things too deeply, or analyze my own feelings. Writing is the only way I know how to figure things out, of being truly introspective. The only time I really felt like that without having to write to get at it was when I was living in France; being in a place where you don’t really speak the language at first forces you to be pretty introspective. Oddly enough, I did some of my best writing (the non-introspective kind) when I was there. It’s part of the reason I want to go back so badly.

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Well, what can I say. Yet another blog.

I’m a little uninspired right now, probably due to the fact that I’m between semesters at UMass and I’ve been sitting around doing absolutely nothing lately, except for looking at job listings for writers for a half hour at a time before becoming hopelessly depressed and writing death threats to the high school teacher who encouraged me to become a writer. At least the death threats will be well-written?

Anyway, I’m planning on forcing myself to write at least a little bit each day, preferably more than one post. One of the results of that plan will inevitably be that not all of the posts will be A+ material. I plan on writing about everything going on in my life and making this a sort of public journal, but I’m digging out some old notebooks with material I’ve put together over the years and I’m hoping to go back to some of my inspired notes and expanding on them and putting them up here. So there might be some short pieces of fiction, or vignettes, or little portraits of some random thought I had. A sentence I come across might send me off in a new direction or tangent, and I’m looking forward to tapping into my creative juices again. I always call myself a writer, but the reality is I just don’t write enough.

I’ll probably start tomorrow with a review of what’s been happening with Ivona and me lately to get any friends and family who are behind on the news caught up. Since I don’t expect this blog to be packed with people any time soon, welcome to those of you I’ve sent the link to to check it out. Thanks for stopping by.