One month from now is now one week from now.

Oh, Pacific Northwest.  Save me from today’s forecast.

I thought that maybe – maybe – my second Nashville summer might feel a bit more manageable than my first.  But to be frank, it’s hellacious.  I feel angry all the time.

I DO enjoy the fireflies, though.  They don’t get old.

I’m REALLY loving white wine this year, for the first time ever.

And… well, unless you can give me more, those are the only reasons I can think of to look on the bright side of the summer.

Music is never going to pay my bills – and I have no expectation that it should.  So why is it important that I dedicate any time, energy, or effort to it?

Because I believe that we simply must do what we love.

But in the last 6 months, I’ve really stopped pursuing musical endeavors.  I am not writing.  I rarely go to shows.  I feel depleted, and uninspired, and checked out.  I work long days, and have my evenings booked up with various commitments and responsibilities.  So many other things have taken the place of writing.  Silence is a rarity, imagination seemingly an impossibility.

How do we keep the thing that we love a priority?  In the midst of work and relationships and laundry and grocery shopping and getting a zit INSIDE ONE’S NOSTRIL, how do we stay focused on what we were created to love?

I am grateful for my very full life.  But these days, all I want to do is drive away.

I don’t know where to go, though.

And so I stay.

I can blame my lack of creativity on this exhaustion and depletion, thinking that I just need to change something about my day-to-day reality.  It’s so easy to live a guilt-based existence, assuming that if only I did this or that differently, I could dig myself out of this hole.

But to think that “success” or “failure” – in any area of my life – is up to ME?  That is giving myself far too much credit.

I have to remember that the only true source of life and inspiration is in Christ.

I don’t know where else to go.

And so I stay.

Itchy ankle, itchy ankle,
You’re the cause of all my rankle.

Damn mosquito, found my vein,
Your existence is my bane.

Can’t think clearly, can’t think straight,
Since my blood was made the bait.

All I want to do is itch,
Throw my body in a ditch

Of hydrocortisone.

Confession: I haven’t written a song since November.

GAH.  I don’t want anyone to know that!  I am such a fraud.

I feel like a snail – one that has been left out in the brutal sunshine, shriveled up inside its flimsy shell.  I feel no inspiration.  I have no ideas.

Oh, sure.  One might argue that I’ve had a few other things going on in recent months, taking a lot of my time and energy.  But still.  When I’m not writing – not outputting in some way – something important inside of me feels dead.

All I feel is tired.  Craving time alone, or maybe just an old dog, or a little toddler to snuggle.  I don’t want to have to explain myself to anyone.  I don’t want to have to find words to voice anything – because how can I possibly express what I’m feeling?

Huh.  This is an inconvenient stance for a so-called songwriter to take.

But I’ve been here before.  Remember?  And so I’m taking the same approach as last time, and giving myself the grace of filling up my mind with other stories, other songs, other ideas.  It worked last time – I wound up writing some new songs that I’m quite fond of, a few of which you HAVEN’T EVEN HEARD YET.

(Annie Parsons’ EP, coming soon someday to a website near you.)

So I need your help again.  What should I fill my mind with?  It can be a song, a book, an essay, a website, an article, a movie… what do you feel inspired by, or just plain enjoy?

I just finished season 1 of “Heroes,” and in spite of a ridiculous plotline and an often painful script, that was some good entertainment.  Destiny!  Purpose!  Exploding humans!  I’ve been listening to some great songs – Julie Miller’s “Give Me an Ocean,” and Kasey Chambers’ “Nothing At All,” and Vienna Teng’s “City Hall.”  And it is difficult to make me much happier than to turn on “This American Life” or “The Moth.”

On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve been reading “The Catcher in the Rye” for TWO WHOLE MONTHS, and have recently decided not to finish it – because it is depressing as hell and let’s be honest: if I haven’t finished it by now, then I really don’t care at all about Holden Caulfield (case in point – I had to Google the book just now to remember his name).

Let’s all kick-start our hearts, shall we?  What do you love?

On Saturday, I had an idea: “I should go to Forever 21!”  This always sounds like a good idea – cheap clothes, cute ruffles, trends that will go out of style tomorrow but you must have them today, etc.  However, upon my arrival at the front doors, I was reminded of the cold, hard truth – a truth that I already knew, since I have learned it many times before, but I always forget when I get swept up in the moment.

I HATE Forever 21.

It is my own personal hell.

First of all, is there any rhyme or reason to the way that the clothes are arranged?  It is impossible to find anything in that store.  Racks of magenta clubbing attire next to bins of mesh t-shirts beside half-clothed mannequins on top of tables piled high with plastic belted cardigans…  It’s like the cast of “High School Musical” set off a dirty bomb.

Secondly, the music is unbelievably obnoxious.  I can’t decide if it makes me want to curl into the fetal position or open fire.  Must shoppers be subjected to songs that include panting?  Panting?

And finally, do any of the clothes even fit me?   I mean, I know that technically, these items are made for pre-pubescent, hipless anorexics, but I have plenty of curvy lady friends who find treasures there.  I don’t expect that a Forever 21 medium will fit me like an Actual Normal Sized Woman medium might, so I have no problem looking at the larges, and even extra-larges.  But honestly?  Extra-extra-large?

That’s just rude.

I bought nothing.

The first call came at 12:45am.

“Hi, I’m wondering if you still have the cat mailbox?”

Um, what?

“The cat mailbox! I just saw the ad on Craigslist.”

Excuse me?

“Posted about a half hour ago – it’s darling.”

Lady, it’s the middle of the night, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Do you have any idea how many people in Middle Tennessee have been waiting their entire lives for a free mailbox in the shape of a yellow tabby cat? 27. TWENTY-SEVEN PEOPLE have called me in the past 15 hours, responding to an ad on Craigslist that I did not post – but that clearly stated my name and phone number.

This is worse than a “Call for a good time” scrawled in a bathroom stall.

I write every day.  For me, it’s like drinking water, or breathing air – I have to do it, or I feel like I’m going to fade away.  Sometimes the things that I write get posted here, sometimes they turn into songs – or scraps of songs, sometimes they exist for my eyes only.  And for the past 10 days, I have the beginnings of Word documents that I cannot take past the first 3 lines.

I’m pretty sure that this is writer’s block.

Why did I say “pretty sure”?  I am POSITIVE that this is writer’s block.

And I’m not even TRYING to write anything!  I mean, this is just me, sitting down, ready to express something – anything – not working on a book, not working on an article, not having a deadline… just wanting to have something to say.

I could write a list of what I did this weekend.

I could write a list of what I would have tweeted HAD I been a Twitterer (which I am not, and will not ever be).

I could write a list of my motivations to keep running (except at this point, totally discouraged and tired and OVER IT, there is only one: calories burned).

I could write a list of the various havocs wrought on my body from running (sore muscles, difficulty bending knees, callouses, both pinky toenails working their way off, and as of yesterday, sports bra chafing on the rib cage)

I could write a list of why I want a miniature pig.

But instead, I’m going to take my post-running-10-miles, broken-down body outside on a slow walk.  I’m going to see what I see, and pray, and trust that inspiration is going to hit me again one day.  In the meantime, just read this.  Because ladies, we’ve all been there, right?

After being sent home at 1:30 yesterday afternoon, I put on my sweats and made a cheesecake. Then I fell asleep around 5:30, not waking up until 9pm. I felt like hell and looked like death, all sweaty and splotchy-faced. Then I took 3 doses of nighttime cold medicine and slept from 11pm until 10am.

When I woke up this morning, I made some coffee and walked around the house, looking at things. “Oh, look. There are my books. And there is the coffee table. I will start the dishwasher. It is sunny outside. The floor is dirty.” Then I went to Wal-Mart and bought some paper plates and plastic forks, and came home and made this sign:

Yes, I free-handed those fancy recycle arrows. I clearly have time on my hands.

We are having our long-awaited housewarming party tonight, and so I’ve been busy preparing for 100 people to descend. Mostly, that means walking around and looking at things and thinking thoughts.

It’s been sort of a pathetic day.

And so, I, Annie, hereby swear that, until I find a job again, I will:
- Wake up at a decent hour every day.
- Take showers, even though I might not need to.
- Diligently search for work.
- Keep on blogging. A girl needs SOME kind of purpose to her days.
- Do whatever it takes to pay my rent, even if it means taking a job at an extermination company. I probably won’t work for a sewage company, though. I have to draw the line somewhere.
- Hope and hope and hope, and not get mad at everyone who has income, and smile every day, even when I feel like kicking The Man in the balls.

Um. Happy weekend, jolly readers.

Yesterday was a day when my panties were in a twist. Figuratively. And, come to think of it, literally.

I am once again AT THAT POINT. The point where the house is a disaster, the dishes have piled up for days, I sleep curled in the only corner of my bed that isn’t strewn with clothes and water bottles and books, and wake up after a 5-hour tooth-grinding slumber only to hear my neighbors engaging in… an “extracurricular activity”… and to find that I am out of clean underwear. But not completely out – just down to the ones I don’t like. The ones I keep around just in case I find myself AT THAT POINT. The ones that are uncomfortable, and leave me going about the tasks of the day with the screaming knowledge that I HATE MY UNDERWEAR RIGHT NOW.

Also, I went to work without realizing how low-cut my shirt was, and so I spent the entire day tugging it up, and feeling self-conscious, and altogether embarrassed.

The phone rang incessantly, and while in the past I have complained about the mind-numbingly quiet hours at work, I found myself feeling insulted and indignant that people are calling? SHEESH. This isn’t my JOB. (Yes, I do realize that it is, in fact, my job.) It gave me a newfound gratitude for the silence I typically spend my days cocooned in – even when the cocoon is more like a sealed Ziploc bag in which I am slowly suffocating.

My jaw hurt. My back hurt. My brain felt spiky and hung-over for no reason. My eyes were tired of the computer screen glare, my mind was tired of post-election Twittering, my feet were tired of high heels. And most of all, my heart was, and still is, devastated about Ben.*

The weight of it all came crashing in at lunchtime when I mindlessly wandered through Target only to spend $17.99 that I don’t have on a tiny tube of eye cream that I know won’t work. But at 26, I am looking in the mirror and seeing wrinkles and an age spot. AGE + SPOT. Now, there are two words you never want to see together. Like shoulder + pad, or skin + flap.

And, speaking of eye cream, I interrupt this blog to bring you the three biggest lies I have ever fallen for:
1) Hemorrhoid cream gets rid of puffy eyes,
2) Stop signs rimmed in white are optional, and
3) Vodka has no calories

Anyway, back to Target. I forked over the cash for the “anti-aging,” “wonder-working” concoction, and went on my merry way. Congratulations, Annie. You’ve just been had.

Today is a classic case of “second verse, same as the first,” with the exception that I am not taking a lunch break, peacing out at 4pm, and flying to San Diego for a wedding – in which I am both a bridesmaid AND the musical act. Except: I’m not packed, I have no idea how to fit this floor-length bridesmaid dress into my suitcase, I haven’t practiced the song, I know that I’m going to forget something imperative like my phone charger or my guitar capo or my underwear…

Oh wait. None left.

LOOK OUT, CALIFORNIA.

* Last night, my old church in Seattle held a prayer vigil for Ben Towne. And Greta wrote some (not surprisingly) beautiful and meaningful words about the service. Please continue to cradle the Townes in your prayers.

Yesterday, I was this close to writing about Twitter, and calling it “N is for NOBODY CARES.” But I figured that all of you Tweety Birds would be hurt. And when I’m honest, isn’t this blog just one big, festering, narcissistic Twit? Or whatever.

So instead of ranting about our culture’s obsession with broadcasting the minutia and detritus of our lives, I figured that I would just go ahead and continue broadcasting the minutia and detritus of MY life. But I’ll try to do it using words like “minutia” and “detritus.”

When my friend Aaron Chan started med school, a professor drew an iceberg on the board. “This is your brain,” he said. He began to add tiny penguins on top of the iceberg, saying, “These are the things that you know.” Eventually, the iceberg was so crowded with penguins that “at some point, inevitably, penguins start to fall off.”

Twitter is pushing my penguins off the ledge.

To be fair, it’s not just Twitter: Facebook, MySpace, blog updates, text messages, email, and all sorts of other technological “ways of knowing” are cramming and jostling their way onto my iceberg. I can’t keep up – but more than that, I don’t WANT to keep up. I honestly do not care where my 922 Facebook friends are at all times (brushing your teeth, in line at Starbucks, reading CNN.com, going to church, at a bookstore, grocery shopping, sitting at your desk, eating potato chips, what-have-you). It doesn’t mean that I don’t care ABOUT these people, that I don’t care about YOU – it’s just that for the first time, we humble laymen have the capability and the technology to mass-inform… and we, myself included, have gotten a bit slaphappy about it.

So. What to do? Give up the internet? Erase my online footprint? Boycott status updates? Feel more and more aggravated as my brain is cluttered by people’s Twittery Tweets, crowding out important information like birthdays and bible verses and when was the last time I changed my Brita water filter? I can’t hide from the internet – it’s unstoppable, like… like a train that… can’t be stopped.

Whoops. There went my simile penguin.

Please. For the love of flightless, aquatic birds. Let’s attempt to be more responsible, intelligent, and discerning with what we are unwittingly forcing upon each other’s icebergs. I’ll try if you will.