February 1, 2011

Post #9: Posting on a Whim

"I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it."

- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I don't really have anything in particular that I plan on writing about; I'm just glad that I'm feeling the compulsion to write again! I've been reading other people's blogs tonight and just feel inspired to start transforming mine into something worth reading. I used to share short stories, poetry, pseudo-intellectual observations, etc., on my Xanga blog in high school. I even had another blogspot blog in college, but I left it in the dust.

Interestingly enough, I stopped writing right around the time I started dating my husband. This kind of makes sense because a lot of my writing stemmed from the pain of unrequited love or just general teen angst. I met him just before my 19th birthday and started dating him about eight months later. So it might just all be a coincidence, but who knows?

That also ties in my quote that I used at the beginning of this post. I chose it because I felt like posting for the heck of it, and The Catcher in the Rye is my all-time favorite book. It all makes sense now though because I gave my husband a copy of it for Christmas; he had never read it before! Can you believe that? Anyway, I think he read it within a day or two of my giving it to him. I felt like I was sharing a part of my past with him because I fell in love with that book when I was 12 and then again at 16. The first time I read it, I remembered feeling like I wasn't alone in this world. That might give you the impression that I was a really cynical, frustrated young girl. I wasn't. Quite the opposite, actually.

I was always optimistic and outgoing, but I still related to something about Holden on this deeper level. Salinger really knew how to get to our age group, I suppose. I wasn't as unique as I thought, which I guess is part of the irony of the whole story. We think we're alone and special in some dark, tragic way when, in reality, we're just in the middle of a phase that everyone goes through at that age. We just haven't lived long enough to be objective and realize it isn't the end of the world.

For a while, I was worried that I had outgrown blogging. It seemed like its only purpose for me must have been to get out all that angst I mentioned earlier. Without it, I felt like I wasn't creative or interesting; it was my drug. Now that I'm in what I think may be a state of full recovery, I'm starting to realize that life can be just as deep and meaningful in a simpler way. Being happier and more content need not mean that life is boring.

Oh, and I may be a married woman, but my husband won't deny me my handful of celebrity crushes. Here is my all-time favorite, James McAvoy:

6 comments:

  1. Keep writing! No matter the reason!

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  2. Thanks, Sam! I'm running behind on my third week, but it's coming! : )

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. I can't believe I only just discovered this blog! Thanks to a link from "Kathleen Kelly" :)I just wanted to say thank you--for your honesty, and for your heart, which truly shows through in your writing, Cate. It makes me miss home--the talks we'd all have about society, and spirituality, and the meaning of life...I also wanted to say that I've met so many women who have said that once they started dating their current husbands, their writing stopped. It's like what we used to put on the page now goes directly from the heart to language, or some inarticulate connection that we don't know how to write down. Anyway, you're not alone in that--and I feel the need to start writing (this type of writing) more, too.

    Keep writing, Cate--at least I can get a glimpse of home through this! :)

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  5. I'm being incredibly anal and re-posting my comment because, when I re-read it, I realized there was a problem with verb tense agreement:

    It's interesting how we feel so fervently about the books that we read during adolescence. I remember crying over The Crucible...I mean, come on, it was his name!! We probably just felt fervently about everything back then because our hormones were running out of control.

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  6. Pam and Maggie, I love you both so much! I miss both of you and can't wait to see you soon!

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