squint and it'll be clearer

many wise men and probably far more stupid ones have said that the best way to get to sleep when your mind seems determined not to let you is to stop trying. and so here i am, not by any means attempting sleep. although i suppose that by even exposing my motivation to you this early on i may as well be. i promise not to keep writing after i've run out of steam simply because i'm still not tired. and if nothing else, i am a man of my word. selectively. when it counts.

i've been reading again lately. i think i stopped reading habitually for pleasure when i was a freshman in college, when there was so much positively miserable reading that needed to be done that i couldn't justify reading what i wanted to when i was so busy concentrating on ways not to read what i didn't want to and still perform as if i had. that was going on 6 years ago now. i suppose it's time to get back on the old horse.

it's got me thinking extensively about my own writing (most of which you read right here on this non-page). specifically, why it is that i do it. this site began in earnest as a place to put things pertaining to my musical aspirations (which i assure you are as strong or as weak as they have always been). but it's become something else at the same time. maybe it's just matured. but now this website (i'm so uncomfortable with calling it exactly what it is because it is so temporary and so permanent. what i mean is that you can't touch it, i suppose, and i've always trusted things more when i've been able to paw at them. but you can't touch me either (most of you, not that you'd want to) and i am pretty sure i trust myself and i'm pretty sure i've just rambled myself nonsensical.) --now this website is more than what it was.

it makes me extremely happy for the most part to sit here most days and just babble about what's on my mind. i could do it privately and i assure you that if i did i would go into much greater detail and probably talk about entirely different things. but nothing would be at stake then and an anonymous audience (if indeed one exists) is good for instilling a sense of sustained urgency in the writer if it's good for anything. is this making sense? let me try another way.

this is an excercise in expressing myself in a way i can be proud of. it's to make me a better (song)writer but also just to make me better. when i sit in my apartment i'm happy to sit around in my underpants but when i go out i like to have real clothes on. when i write on here knowing anyone or everyone or noone could read it, it's like putting clothes on my thoughts. and you may think they're better off naked. maybe. but they can't stay naked forever, because they're always insisting on being let out. so this is me practicing getting them dressed in the morning, until they're old and savvy enough to be able to dress themselves properly. i was the kid who kept wearing sweatpants to school a little too long. i don't wish the same fate upon my oft-immature ideas.

i wrote a little before the new year about growing up. this is part of that, on its good days. and that's not to say i may never be guilty again of speaking in ambiguously broad terms and abstracts on purpose to code a message to one specific person who may or may not read it. or that i may just tell you stories about my friends for no greater purpose than a good story.

i can feel the point drifting away from me. all i meant to say was this: i really do enjoy writing this thing, and though i'm clearly grappling with the precise reason, i'm sure when i figure it out it'll seem very intuitive. and if you enjoy reading that which i write, i thank you categorically. if you don't, well then i can't imagine you'd be reading this very sentence at all unless you have some masochistic tendencies, join the club.

i'm tired now, i'm going to give bedtime another shot. but this has been fun. i'll see you again soon.

ps: i'm going to try to use a higher concentration of awesome words on here going forward. like "coquettish." tell me you wouldn't smile at least a half smile if you read that on here in a sentence.