Ah, To Be Young Again

I miss writing so much! I miss everything! I miss being young (I am 23 and very old now) and creative and artistic and having so much energy for everything and wanting to stay up doing cutesy artsy things! I teach middle school. And even though I'm 23, I feel some days like I'm 53. I AM SO TIRED. Lately, I've been calling the building in which I teach a "living hell." And it's not because of the kids, or the teachers, or the curriculum, or anything like that. It's because of the heat. It's fucking hot on the second floor. Just like I imagine hell is. It is exhausting. Last year was my first year teaching, and it kicked my ass incredibly. It was the most stressful, most difficult year that I have ever had. That being said, I'm a little insane and decided to go for year two. Here I am. My point is this: I don't write like I used to. In many ways, that's good. I imagine it's healthy and normal for me to grow out of my 18-year-old mentality. There were a lot of really stupid parts about me as an 18-year-old. There were quite a lot of lessons that I hadn't learned, truths that I hadn't yet discovered. But there were some that I had. Just a few. And I wrote them down, and they were beautiful. How shocking. Five years later, I can still say that I wrote beautiful things. What I miss is writing beautiful things. I still write, here and there. It's a habit that I don't think I'll ever be able to break at this point. But I still miss this. Writing for an intended audience. Telling stories. It's different from the journal writing that I usually do. It's nice to censor and edit myself every once in a while. It's nice to have an audience, even if it IS imaginary. I will try to record some stories, here and there. I'll try to pick this blog up again. I don't want recognition; there's a reason I'm writing from this old high school e-mail address and not my current one. I don't need to be noticed, not at all. I just want to be doing something that I love. And keep doing and doing and doing it. Here's to [parts of] being young again.