existential security questions

I always have quite the existential crisis when filling out online forms involving security questions.

• What is the last name of your first boyfriend or girlfriend?

• What is the first name of your closest childhood friend?

• What is your hobby?

The questions look simple. The answers should be simple. But spending more than five minutes wondering what memorable answer to put in that blank box, I’m starting to think some essential things are missing from my life.

a moleskine for the new decade

I now own a beautiful new Moleskine notebook.

5×8.5 inches of hardcover black faux leather, 240 pages of off-white paper their corners rounded off, snappable elastic band, thoughtful expandable folder, the smell that can only be described as “new car smell”, minimalist, professional, classic, it’s like the Apple product of the pulp notebook world. Many times have I wandered past the Moleskine stand at a big-chain bookstore touting its wares as the “legendary notebook of Hemingway, Picasso, Chatwin,” its ridiculous prices issuing an aura of exclusivity.

For years I have relied on plain old spiral bound school notebooks and sheaves of recycled computer paper. I am now simultaneously yearning to use this Moleskine, yet afraid. Deathly afraid. I know I’m making too much of a plain notebook, but it’s like an attractive stranger you’ve met at a bar. There’s the inevitable smalltalk and “Hi, can I buy you a drink.” And only after a several shots or fifty pages in will I divulge anything interesting.

I have long been ruined by the likes of easily disposable ratty spiralbounds and word processing software. They encourage from me incoherent thoughts, snippets of sentences, disjointed words, syllables, syntax sans punctuation. Even if I don’t do anything particularly original with my Moleskine (plain and unlined in case I want to sketch or paste clippings or photos; no embryonic novel to coax into inken existence; no cross-country trek to write an ode to) it will at least discipline me with its silent strictness into writing complete and coherent sentences.

Here’s to the new decade. A page a day, fingers crossed.

a writing blog for the new decade

Three years after I created this account, I think I finally know what to do with it.

Having been released into the hinterlands of post-grad life for a few months, I figured my extra free time (between job hunting, of course) would unlock a dam of creativity, to mix metaphors. But, if you’re anyone like me with a penchant for daytime talkshows, marathons of No Reservations, America’s Next Top Model, and Project Runway, and baking sprees, sometimes you need some structure in your life to get things done.

In November I participated in my third NaNoWriMo with a fellow writing pal. I’ve attemped NaNo before, but I’d never gotten beyond a few thousand words mostly due to the rigors of schoolwork–which prompts me to ask, Why oh why must NaNo occur right before finals!

Jumping into the fray without a plan, despite the many story outlines I’ve scribbled in the past, a new story with new characters emerged on my computer screen. Thirty-three pages–19,000 words–of aimless writing and finally I was getting somewhere. Unfortunately the month ran out before I could get over a sudden case of writer’s block.

So, as an experiment and test for myself, I’m planning to explore this new story and see where it takes me. I am tentatively giving myself another month to complete the task. It might reach 50,000 words, it might not.

Then again I’m feeling inspired. So, we’ll see : )