Then I get a little paranoid and nothing terribly productive happens. My last few attempts at writing a post have gone something like this:

I’ll sit down, put on some music to match the mood, stretch my fingers, and wrack my brain for interesting content. I might jot down a few high points. I’ll write one sentence, want to start somewhere else, and then delete everything. At least five times so far I have thought of closing the browser window already. At this point, if I have a half of a paragraph done, it’s a good day. Things spiral when I want to put a link in, or disengage long enough to grab a drink or a bite to eat. Three hours later, when I come stumbling back past my computer, I’ll notice the browser up, and I’ll wonder what I was doing. Then everything just looks ridiculous and I erase it all again. Then I sit and rack my brain, and I realize I have no clue what the hell I’m doing. After sobbing and throwing a fit, I’ll brood on my insufficient grasp of the language I just give up and read a book, or watch a movie, or call a friend…or nap.

But something has changed, and more change is on the horizon!

I promise you, all three of the people that read this, that I will start writing here more frequently. I am aiming for more frequent posts, and once of actual substance. You know, really meaty content.  And, to be perfectly honest, I am thinking of a change of venue from Tumblr all together.

I’ve been so busy fearing getting my life in order that I never made time for the personal projects I wanted to do just because I want to do them. And as I make more and more time for those things, I’m getting more and more of my shit together. This is a good feeling. I should have thought of this years ago.

Pandora and a good book are going to lull me to sleep.

Directive?

When did liking a guy become a competition?

I’m not backing down because I’m interested, but I swear, why do girls feel like they need to pounce on an attractive guy or call “DIBS!” on it?

I don’t get it. The whole “game” is beyond me.

(Maybe that’s why I don’t play it too well…)

This is off the top of my head and from the bottom of my heart. Please forgive the semi-disjointed style in which this entry was written. I couldn’t dwell on this long enough to organize any thoughts.

At first, I wasn’t going to write this post. Partially because it has been eight years, partially because I hope that we could move forward instead of dwelling on the past, but mostly, I just didn’t know what to say.

But I spent some time with my father, tonight, watching the documentaries, witnessing evidence that the world was a different place. Perhaps not safer, but at least we could perceive it that way. We talked about how New York city was, and how things are now. We talked about what would have been if we had stayed in Brooklyn, and my father would have been on the island at work.

When I was younger, during one of countless trips to Brooklyn, we made a trip to Manhattan, so that I could see the city properly. We went to Times Square, and we went to the Empire State Building. From the observation deck, I remember pointing and saying “Mommy, can we go to the Twin Towers?” She checked her watch and said “Later honey, it’s late and it’s just a business building. We’ll come back.”

I was in 8^th grade, and I don’t remember the class. I remember the panic, and then immediately, I remember the numbness. The quiet shroud I wrapped myself in because I refused to lose it in front of everyone at my school. My cousin Jonathan worked in the North Tower. My aunt was on the island. My family routinely visited Manhattan. And, by the grace of God, all of them were safe. My father was telling me that his sister called, and was describing the first plane crash and then there was a scream, and that was when the second plane hit. He told her to run. “We’re getting ready to leave,” she said. “No!” he said, “get out of there NOW!” I remember him and my mother tense all night. I remember not sleeping.

“We’ll come back.”

It was a full year before I made it back up to New York. Most of the debris was gone, but even a year later the horrible scar in my beautiful city was there, cut jagged into the skyline, into the earth, and into the psyche of New York City.

But, as the years go on, and we reflect on all of this to ensure that those who died during this tragedy do not go forgotten, invariably I move toward the positive. All of the GOOD that we saw come about that day, all of the stories that inspired hope. Because if you can hold on to hope, living through something like that, you can survive anything. It might sound cheesy, but I have hope that our country will remember that day when black or white, Republican or Democrat, Christian or atheist, we united. Perhaps I’m a dreamer, but I believe we can be that again without a national tragedy.

That’s all.

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