Stop Dreaming and Start Doing

 I live in my own little world.

 Sometimes I have to hide my crazy from John, and I don’t think he thinks my jokes are funny. But it keeps me going, like the coffee (getting a kick and getting my kicks); I have to see the humor in things (and I want to, but it wouldn’t be the first time I confused my needs with my wants (alcohol, case in point)). I don’t watch a lot of tv or movies: I write on this blog. Maybe too much. I’m really into writing my stories, even though I don’t know if I should share my life with the world. Heck, I don’t even know how many people read it; my numbers are skewed because I open my own posts to read them (what do you do in your spare time? Oh, I read my own blog. Lol). I keep trying to correct that on the blogger site, but it doesn’t seem to work (I need tech help). 

My mom has given me some advice about what I write: please don’t write about the psych ward, and stop telling people you’re on medicine, and for gods sake stop telling people you’re “crazy” (yeah but don’t they have a right to know?).

I did listen to my mom at first, but my writing keeps evolving and there is so much i want to say. I like a good story. I love alcoholic memoirs (is that bad?). I want to make people laugh like David Sedaris does. If you got a laugh out of it, did I help you just a little bit? (who am I kidding, you’re watching tv and movies for laughs, you’re not reading (and I’m just helping myself)) Can you relate to anything I wrote? Are you dying to tell your stories, too? But you don’t know how, you don’t even know if you can write, and you don’t think anyone would read it (I once read an entire play this dude wrote that talked about eating dog shit on crackers. So trust me, I would read your story). Maybe writing’s not your thing, maybe you’re very private, maybe you get all the pleasure you need from Netflix (and a little porn on the side? Idk). Then I am preaching to the wrong choir (and misusing an idiom).

This blog just might be proof of just how bored I am. But maybe it is more than that. 

I haven’t tried very hard in life; I’m like water: I take the path of least resistance. My biggest accomplishment was graduating from college (with honors. My mom says I should tell people that (why?)), and right now I am only getting by by the grace of John (I could make a biblical allusion but I won’t). At one time I was Celeste The Trailer Park Drunk (yes I earned that title fair and square), and now I just try to think of creative and clever titles for my posts, still wonder if I’m using commas correctly (while I whimper for the injustice of the Oxford Comma…Use it!), and wish I could incorporate every song lyric I know into my writing. 

And I probably wouldn’t be doing what I love if John didn’t buy me this IPad. So, thank you, John. 

I might use too many parentheses, but like I told Santa Claus, that’s just the way I write. And it’s fun. I surprised myself by writing a “sober poem” about having sex with an undead Jim Morrison (come on, that’s funny. You know you would if you could (and if you didn’t get it, then you’re not very good at rhyming or your mind is not in the gutter)) and taking a shower with John the Baptist (there seems to be a recurring theme here…(if you really want to know, when I was six years old my friend’s dad, John, saved me from drowning in the Shenandoah river, and the John I live with now saved me from drowning in alcohol. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it)). 

I might use too many cliches and tropes, but I’m learning. They say medicine is a practice, but writing really is (only you won’t kill anybody if you screw up. I hope). I owe it to my high school creative writing teacher Mrs. Ehlers to flex my muscle, and to all my college English professors, especially Dr. Trupe (I’m sorry my term paper was so bad (too much procrastination and not enough caffeine)).

I’m afraid my ego is showing, while I trap you in Celeste Land (you are more than free to leave. We take no prisoners!), but what I’m more afraid of is a fire or a total internet meltdown and losing all my work (just like when Carrot Top  lost all his props in a comedy club fire (!)). But that would be okay, because I’d just start over. It’s all up here (pointing to head) anyways. Yeah, that has been the source of most of my problems, but also my biggest asset. 

(I have to resist the urge to heavily edit this (and everything I’ve ever written. “The need to be better is to cease to be good”). Like I’ve said before, titles are subject to change. But I like this one. As Robert Bell said about the word Hell: “ [it] works quite well. Let’s keep it.”)

*****

[My apologies to Annie Dillard for putting a spin on her book title without permission: I just couldn’t resist (and to anyone else who was using it first. Can we share?). And I’m sorry this blog isn’t all about living in a trailer park; sometimes it’s boring here. I wish I could write all trailer park stories (oh I could. There is plenty of material…), but variety is the spice of life.]

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