Oh, Eve 6...

A personal problem of mine has been growing ever present in my mind. I believe it is a product of my “plugged in” generation. To describe it, the 1990’s band Eve 6 lyric pops into mind and I will diagnose that I think words in clips and phrases. I’ll have to abandon that train of thought for a moment though, despite my fabulous pop culture tie-in, because thinking about Eve 6, the 90’s, and lyrics gets my mind off on a whole other tangent.

Some try to say this is the “perfect Tweet” syndrome, but I know that just as much thought and silent musings are given to concise but hilarious Facebook status updates to condemn this symptom to Twitter users alone. I try to “play it cool” on Facebook and Twitter, not update too often in case I look like I’m trying too hard. Inevitably, this leads to back log and in a week’s time I’m stuck debating whether to use the old update I thought of or the great one-liner I came up with yesterday. Then the never ending debate of what to write in Twitter and what to write in Facebook. I try not to duplicate my material, and while Facebook has a bigger audience, I feel like my dry sarcasm is more appreciated to a Twitter-like audience. All of this stifles my stand-up comedy acts because I can’t develop a joke, it’s got to be contained in a sentence or two!

I reminded myself last week how much I utterly adore reading and how sick I was from missing it. I’ve read four books in the past two days like I’m trying to catch up on my sleep which scientists have already proven to be impossible. That’s how I feel with reading. The time lost can never be made up and more good books are always being published. My standby when I looked longingly at the library was that I had no time for pleasure reading. But, wise words echoed in my mind that “you make time for what’s important”. Is leisure reading a priority? At one point I obviously thought not. I’m trying to pretend that I’ve always been meaning to make this change of heart, and that I’m not changing simply because I’m now, officially, and English major, but I think I must acknowledge that the title has bent me back to a more literary root.

With a resounding YES from the rooftops, I declare that reading for pleasure, for the escape, for the life of it, is in fact a priority! Or can be, anyway. A guilt-free priority that is required to live life to the fullest, if only through the characters in books. Fiction gets knocked a little in that category. “Don’t get too carried away or else you won’t live your own life” is a criticism I’ve heard from non-fiction purist readers. Not personally of course…but I can imagine. Wordsmiths craft their elegant prose and through that I feel emotion I never could have articulated so well. I see colors in metaphors that my mind could never have created. And it makes me see things differently, through those different metaphors.

This brings me to the conclusion that I’ve been musing about today. Are my thoughts in clips and phrases really a problem? I don’t feel more scatterbrained that usual. I don’t feel less connected to my associates than I usually do. Coupled with my latest book devouring, I feel my short bursts of similes about driving down the road are springboards for great writing to come. Or, at times like these, I just feel overwhelmed and write the feeling instead of the words. I haven’t yet forced myself to stop mid-conversation or action to scribble down thoughts yet, but I can imagine that I’m destined to do so in the near future. Life is too beautiful to be seen without flourishing adjectives.