mirror mirror

(Today anyway) I accept the fact that I'm in an in-between stage of life when I'm more unemployed than employed, more sad than happy, and apparently inclined to write poetry. I used to be more of a novel girl, which evolved to short stories, and now I keep fiddling with this poem. It's based on an image I see while running, and inspired by Jack Gilbert's "Rain." Some of the most fun shit I've written has been inspired by my experiences alone in nature, but I don't know anything about the act of writing poetry. I mean, I've studied writing it and reading it on an intellectual level, and I've done it before, but it felt like pretending to be a poet. This also feels like pretending, but I'll write the same poem until it feels like something else. I don't need to identify as a poet to write a poem.

I'm sipping on coconut chai tea and reveling in the new exercise clothes I got today. For Christmas, Mom got me four pairs of workout pants, but 2 were yoga pants, so I exchanged them for running tights and a teal sports bra. I also got gas (went up 10¢ - ouch!), and covertly stared at myself in the store's floor length mirrors. Tell me I'm not the only one who does that. Why was the active wear section full of yoga pants? I don't know one woman who does yoga.

Mirror mirror, on the wall, watch me strut up and down the hall.

I ran yesterday in the cold, but fully bundled up. Still forgot to bring a tissue. I wound up blowing my nose on  a biodegradable doggie pooper-scooper bag from a stand in the park (My finest hour?).  Running in the cold is demoralizing because I'm so freaking slow. It now takes me 50 minutes to go 4 miles. I think I need to go to the gym instead tomorrow. I like when the machines lie to me and tell me I've burned 700 calories in one hour.

A low-ish day on the roller coaster. I may have teared up at an old Avril Lavigne song on the radio, but it might have been Michelle Branch. I shake my head at me. Still having unsettling dreams about being in grade school or about lots of (various) bugs, all of them after me.