i am not a failure

i won't consider myself a failure - but - i am a shoddy success.

i set goals that i rarely complete. i make lists that never get entirely crossed out. instead, the to-do turns into the to-do-later becomes the will-do-tomorrow.
my desk is cleaned, each paper stacked or filed, pens put in drawers, post-its stuck in a pile. then it fills, necklaces draped over thank-you cards, scissors dropped onto newspaper clippings, pens and papers strewn unceremoniously over its once-blank surface.
my closet is organized - hanging clothes are arranged in rainbow order; shoe boxes are stacked underneath; t-shirts on the shelves are each folded the same direction and stacked by color. then mess ensues, jeans tumbling onto discarded tops, sweaters spilling out of drawers, belts thrown from their rightful hooks to rest like stiff reminders on the floor.

i expect better of myself, but that is not the truth of the matter. truth is balance, and the balance here is perfection and imperfection, clean and not clean, blank and cluttered. the balance here is my own way of vacillating between extremes, and that is where i belong. so i am not a failure. i am not a success. i am just so, just right, just in between.

I believe

I believe in an overstocked fridge, all things beautiful, and a moment of divine transcendence
I believe in homemade pizza, yoga, and friends
I believe in routine and spontaneity
I believe in books, and
I believe in balance.

Looking Back

As I begin to sort through the photos of graduation, of prom, of all these landmark events - milestones, as they call them - that have come to litter my desk, I find I need a safe place to store them. A photo album.
I have one photo album of childhood pictures. It is thick and oversized, with extra leaves, and pink with hearts and ballet slippers dancing on the cover - which matches the early theme of the photos: dusky flash pictures of me in pale tights and leotard, shiny dark hair pinned in a flyaway bun, at a ballet recital, on the stage, with red-eyed friends as we bare our small white teeth to the camera and turn up our noses.
Then there are a few baby pictures, toddler pictures, preschool pictures, birthday pictures - sun-drenched, happy, sweet. My hair was dark and stick-straight then; my freckles dusted my nose; I played dress-up on a daily basis and had very vivid, very wonderful imaginary friends.
That album is full. Those pages are pasted with my memories and my childhood. It was lovely, but prom does not - can not - fit on those pages.

Yet I've never been a good scrapbooker. I can't even keep a proper journal. My best journal, which I kept religiously in Egypt, was lost on the plane to Prague (I cried for a while over that, as it was filled with ticket stubs and musings on the Middle East that I really couldn't replace). But the careful patience to look over my photos, to prettify and position my past into a way that's appealing to reminisce with - no, I'm too lazy for that.

So I settle for half-making iPhoto picture books that never get published and stacking the physical, glossy copies into neat squares and shutting them in my bottom drawer. I don't mean to relegate memories to the dark corners like this - I have plenty of framed photographs lining my bookshelves and my fireplace mantle - so I wonder what this lack of drive says about me. That I don't care enough to make an effort to add borders to important moments? That I can't make the time to chronologically order my pictures and decorate with stickers?

Maybe it's that I'm a forward-thinker. I take things, accept them, move on. My mantra this year has been to embrace the forward momentum, the next thing, to avoid dwelling, to live in motion. That conflicts with celebrating minute details of moments long gone, this is true. So maybe it's time for me to make an effort to embrace the photographs and the memories and all of it and to live in them, for once, instead of looking forward. This is perhaps an ideal thing to do with a lazy summer. I'll buy a photo album and I'll make a high school picture book and I'll have something to be nostalgic with.

For once, looking back might be the right thing.