Where's My Voice?

Sometimes I wonder if my words mean anything. If I were silent would anyone be able to tell the difference? Would anyone notice that this voice had ceased to exist? I often wonder why part of me desires so greatly to be heard, but the other part of me is so scared that once my voice is out there, it will not be the voice I wish to be known for. This is my biggest struggle in writing. I love to write. It is my greatest passion, but I often find myself second guessing where my writing will take me. I am scared that if I start writing I will be stuck in one place...and I guess...I just don't want to be stuck in the wrong place.

I know that the thing I love to write about the most is the dynamics of family. I love how what we do can totally change the lives of the people we love. I love to explore the fact that most of us are not thinking of the consequences of our reactions. It is intriguing to delve into how typically unselfish people can turn selfish in the blink of an eye when they are faced with certain decisions. I also love to explore the relationships as they pertain to each person in the family. Is the father closer to one child, or the oldest particularly disgusted with her mother? These are things that we see on a daily basis in real life, but to be able to explore them from a literary perspective gives me great joy.

My struggle then becomes, do I write for an adult audience? Do I write for a teen audience? Do I write for a Christian audience? Do I chuck it all and write children's books? This is my greatest dilemma when it comes to my writing. The other, slightly smaller dilemma that I face is my need to self edit. I wish that I could just sit down and write, like I do here. I wish I could let my characters take over and not think so much about making it perfect. I need to just sit down and let it all unfold. I want a story to take over and dance upon the pages. Alas, I get stuck re-reading and re-writing everything before my characters have even had the chance to become more than two dimensional.

I guess I am now going to go and motivate myself to write without self editing. Hopefully my characters won't mind if I just let them live their lives...and I just sit back and watch.

My Biggest Struggle

If you know me, or if you've ever read my blog, you would probably know the thing I struggle with the most. It always seems as though I am on a roller coaster when it comes to this subject and it is the thing that I have the hardest time with.

Being Single.

It's not that I dislike being single. In fact, I would even say that I enjoy being single on a regular basis. It is the every now and then that I begin to think about my single status that wears me down. The last couple of days have been like that for me. It's not that I don't believe God has the right person out there for me, it's that I don't understand (and I know I will one day) why I'm having to wait so long. The older I get, the harder this is to understand.

Some days it feels as though everyone around me has found someone and then I look around and I realize that a lot of my friends are still single, just not the friends that I'm around on a regular basis. I generally find myself stuck between the people who are married, or the college students who are not. I sometimes feel like I've failed a little in life by not finding someone who loves me enough to want to spend the rest of their life with me. Then I have to remind myself NOT to think negatively. It doesn't always work though.

I wish, more than anything, that there was a way to have a glimpse in to the future. I don't have to know who, but if I could have a rough estimate of when??? That would be helpful. I just get tired of the waiting sometimes. I know that the best thing comes for those who wait, and I don't want to settle for something less than that, but seriously, I don't know how much more I can handle before I just throw the towel in.

Maybe my expectations are too high. Maybe I want more than what is realistically available out there. All I know that when the day ends I feel like I'm missing out. I'm about to do just that. But I probably won't...

What am I thinking?

I wonder what would happen if I told you everything that was on my mind. Some of you would be shocked, some would be scared and others wouldn't even think twice about the words that come out of my mouth. There are so many things up there in my head, bouncing around without any clear destination. Sometimes I don't know what to do with my thoughts. I don't know if I should share them or if I should put them away, locked in some secret place that is cold and dark where no one can find them.

Sometimes my thoughts are too negative. I don't know exactly when it happened, when I decided that negative thinking was acceptable, or when I began to realize it was negative...but at some point it really began to hit me. I wish I thought more positively. I wish there were a way I could paint roses where I see nothing but gray clouds. I am that person who is completely alone even when I am surrounded by people. There is something about this loneliness that brings out my negativity. Take last night for instance...I never quite understand why it is that God allows other people to find "the right person" and why I always feel like it's never going to be my turn, but last night that's exactly how I felt. And I always go to the negative. If I were smaller than maybe someone would want to be with me, or maybe if I were prettier then I could find someone who would love me. I hate that I have those thoughts. I am beautiful. I have a great personality. I am funny and intelligent. Honestly, any guy would be lucky to have me by his side. I tend to forget those things though. I always go to the negative first and then remind myself of the positives later.

Sometimes my mind spends too much time in the gutter. My sister once sent me something that said "If it weren't for the gutter, my mind would be homeless." The saddest thing about that statement is the truth in it. I don't even know why my thoughts slip into the gutter so often. My friend Merri once said that it's not that I have a dirty mind, it's that I think like a guy and people don't expect that from a girl. This is true, but so is the fact that I have a dirty mind. I don't always spend my time in the gutter, but I think I spend more time there then I should as a Christian. With "That's What She Said" jokes, and sexual innuendos, I am constantly having to remind myself that dirty thinking is NOT something I should be doing.

I guess I've just been thinking a lot recently. And my thoughts sometimes overtake me and I never quite know what to do with them. So I write them down so that you can read them. Not that anyone ever does...but if they happen to...this is what they would see.

Thinking in status updates...

Jessica Buchanan is taking a break from Facebook.

Jessica Buchanan is headed to Orlando with Mercy, Merri and Casey.

Jessica Buchanan just made a fool of herself.

Jessica Buchanan is having a REALLY hard time NOT being on Facebook.

A few weeks ago I decided that for the first 21 days of October I would take a fast and stay off of Facebook. I thought...I've done it before...I can do it again! I can't remember it ever being THIS hard to stay away from something. I guess I really needed to let it go for a while. It's been three days and I feel like I'm counting down the hours until I can get back on. It's been good for me though. I've been able to really allow this to impact me the way a fast is supposed to.

But it's made me wonder, are we able to actually have REAL connections with people even when we don't have social networking sites to keep us together. Don't get me wrong, I will be the first to tell you how amazing I think sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are, but forcing myself away from it has made me realize how dependent I am on it to keep me connected. Instead of having actual conversations, I now resort to referring to people's status updates.

"Hey, Merri, I see that you moved out of buttercup."

"Casey, how was the ghost tour?"

"Amanda, did you guys get the tattoos this weekend?"

I know when couples get together, when they break up. I know who's been hanging out with each other, and what they've been talking about recently. I can tell you which people are bored on a constant basis due to the amount of quizzes they've taken (I'm one of those people). I can tell you all about who's playing Mafia Wars and what's been going on in most of my friend's lives. Yet...besides a small percentage of people and my immediate family, I don't really hang out with a lot of my "friends" and I rarely ever talk to them. I "like" their status updates, but I have no clue how they are REALLY doing.

On the other hand it gives me an amazing opportunity to pray for people and situations I wouldn't know about otherwise. I can tell people Happy Birthday because I want them to know they are loved. I can say hi to a friend from college just because they were on my mind. It opens a lot of doors. I just can't help but feeling that it has become a crutch for social interaction. It's easier to get on facebook than it is to pick up the phone. I don't want to be that disconnected from the people I love. I want to be able to have actual conversations, to be able to go out and have dinner, or play Apples to Apples and interact with actual humans, instead of a computer screen that happens to have their newest profile picture attached to it.

I hope that this fast allows me to let God be God in my life and to help me reconnect to the humans in my life. Until then...

Jessica Buchanan is done with this blog.