my three six five

I'm currently unemployed. Because of that, I hear this question a lot:

"so what do you do all day?"

Ah, knives to my heart. Because, in all reality, I have no answer. So I just stumble through some dumb, incomplete answer, like: "Oh, well, I'm just getting used to being married...housework...learning to cook. I'm terrible!" and pray that someone will change the subject to a cake show on the Food Network.

It always makes me think, though. What am I really doing with my life? I suppose the only answer I can come up with that makes any sense is that I'm healing.

It's hard, because people don't really buy into that, you know. No one accepts that as an occupation. It's not a typical answer you hear from 5 year olds when you ask them, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" You all know the typical answers: firefighter, astronaut, doctor, artist. I can say with confidence that no one, no matter their age, has ever said, "Oh, I'm going to go to college, get married, and then just take a little while to...heal. Then I'll pick up my life again, continue on to be a police officer, and call it a day."

Life deals us the strangest cards sometime. Even though this isn't what I would've chosen, here I am holding my hand of the deck, making the best of it. Because that's how the game works: no matter how much I want to start over to try to land different cards, I can't. So I better learn how to deal with the ones I've got.

When I was a little girl and people asked what I wanted to be, my answer was always the same: a writer. I remember the first short story I wrote when I was in second grade, entitled, "Benny and the Magic Fruit Tree." Even though it was remarkably similar to Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach (Dahl was my favorite author as a child), I'm still impressed with my early ability to recognize a good plot when I saw one.

The answer hasn't changed. I still want to be a writer. But, here I sit, "grown up" in every sense of the word - 22 years old, married, living in an apartment, bringing my own dishes to family potlucks - and all I'm writing is this blog that no one is reading but me. I'm okay with the fact that no one is reading my blog. I'm not okay with the fact that I want to be a professional writer, but I have no clue how to begin. I still tell people that writing is what I really want to do. When I was in college and I told my mom this, she would say, "Well, Rachael, why don't you write something then?" At that point, I gently would try to explain that I was writing - a lot, in fact. It was my major, after all: English with a Creative Writing emphasis. Yet here I am, unemployed, writing this pointless entry, just...healing.

I feel like healing is a noble thing for me right now, though. I know I need it. I can't go on without embracing it, just letting it fold its arms around me for a while until I see some light again. That's what I really want to say when people ask me what I do all day: I sit in a tunnel and strain my eyes for some particle of light to come my way. And when the light comes, I'll hopefully have a more "normal" answer for that question.

My dearest friend wants to be a photographer, and she has an account on flickr. I'm not familiar with blogs enough anymore to know if people do this with writing, but on flickr, a lot of people take on projects entitled "three six five." They take a new picture every day and post it, forcing them to practice their work. One of my professors in college once told me this: "That's the difference between good writers and great writers. Good writers write when they feel an inspiration. Great writers write even when they don't feel like it." So, that being said, here begins my three six five. I'm going to write about a lot of random things, and hopefully use this to work on my character development skills and things. Anyway, I'm going to try my hardest to remain faithful. At any rate, it will be fun to see where I am three hundred and sixty-five days from now.

In my head, I've been creating a character, so I'll close with her. There's not much yet, but it's still enough to write down so I don't forget.

***

Hi there. My name is Tuesday. Tuesday Johnson. Yes, like the day of the week. The ironic thing is that I was actually born on a Wednesday, but my mother didn't want everyone thinking I was a member of the Addams Family for the rest of my life.

I live alone in Nashville, Tennessee, in an apartment that is much too expensive for my measly income. I guess I just keep hoping I'll meet some guy, he'll sweep me off my feet, and he'll move in here and pay for some of this place. If you had asked me 15 years ago if I ever thought this is where I would be at this point in life, the answer would've been Heck, no. I'm a Christian, so it seems funny that I wouldn't have some great moral issue with a random guy moving in. I used to. Four random guys later, though, I've become okay with it. I can't say that I like it, but it's just the way things have become.

Every morning, I wake up, inhale my coffee, drink it, get dressed, and go in for work at Chile's. I'm a waitress. And yes, inhaling and drinking are two different things concerning my coffee. I drink it black. But before it's cool enough to drink, I sit there, with my face in the cup, and breathe it in. I set a timer: 10 minutes. For those 10 minutes, coffee beans feed my soul. Then I look at myself in the mirror, and say aloud, "Tuesday, life is worth living. Now go out there and love somebody."

And that's what I try to do. I'm usually not too successful, but I sure do try.