OPERATION: GET LINDSEY INTO GRADUATE SCHOOL, A STEP BY STEP GUIDE BY THE OLSEN TWINS.

please help me welcome myself back from a very long absence. hello, self. welcome back to your blog. you've left all of your followers out to fend for themselves, hunt for food, and explore the online-reiterations of other people. 

over the past weeks, i have ONLY BEEN DOING THINGS THAT ARE NECESSARY TO MY GROWTH. It's true. Soon, I will develop a database to chart my progress. I will have pie charts (and pie!) & timelines, because as we can all guess, charting progress is a great way to boost self-confidence and it is a terrific way to remember important things and unimportant things. Charting progress is the best and only way to make important and unimportant events carry equal weight. 

More to come, later. Tyler and I have begun Operation: Get Lindsey Into Graduate School. It is as follows:

Step One: BELIEVE, BELIEVE, BELIEVE THAT I COULD WRITE MYSELF OUT OF A PAPER BAG IF THE OPPORTUNITY PRESENTED ITSELF.

Step Two: Resolve all issues that exist within my craft. Along with fulfilling the self-confidence requirement as issued by Step One, I must assure all of my creative shortcomings become invisible in a matter of months. Specifically, I must go through all of my work and circle (in bright ink!) all of the times I may be speaking/thinking in circles. I have to bookmark the word: COHESION. I will wake up and think of COHESION and dream of COHESION at night. From here on out, if I stall in conversation, it is because I am silently asking myself this question: "Is my thinking linear today?" 

Step Three: Personalize my personal statement. This has proven to be harder than I expected. To achieve this, I must revise until I am telling the truth. Because I'm having difficulty, Tyler & I have developed a scenario. We are the Olsen Twins. We are both Mary-Kate and both Ashley and we have chosen to be these twins because these twins are always on a mission. They're dedicated and aren't shy about it. Channeling the Olsen Twins will, without a doubt, give me persistence. 

Step Four: Do real-world things that motivate me. Yes, this involves caffeine and it may include double-digit hour rest, but I also must read books I love and only speak with people who inspire me and trek around the neighborhood. I must talk to Cory and Lia almost every day and of course, my Operation guide, Tyra Sparks. 

Step Five: Put all of my materials in an envelope, pick the prettiest stamp at the post office, and kiss it before I put it in the mailbox. This will look peculiar to onlookers, but it will give me the good luck I need. 

Step Six: Wait and try not to kill myself or my family or my friends. Maybe I will go on a trip or two. BELIEVE BELIEVE BELIEVE THAT I COULD WRITE MYSELF OUT OF A PAPER BAG IF THE OPPORTUNITY PRESENTED ITSELF.

morningtime.

across the street, i am making a new friend. he's roughly seventy-two, has a dog that is too old to have puppies. we will always be friends, because he is the first person who sees me in the morning. 

lately, i have been going into work very very early, which is strangely satisfying without soft drinks and breakfast and other people, besides myself, my old-man neighbor and his old-man dog.  sometimes i wave, but mostly i smile at him and smirk at his dog. i wonder if it affects them in the same way. on the days that i wave, he waves back with one or two fingers. not all. it is much too early for that. it is then that i wonder what his voice sounded like when he was young like i am. if it was raspy, like a late night radio dj or baritone like a pulpit preacher. i wonder if there are words that make him nervous the way that "ointment" and "moist" make me shudder. i wonder if he says "commode" rather than toilet, if he has many geriatric tendencies at all. 

my new friend always wears white. he either has one morning shirt or many morning shirts that all look the same. either way, i am SURE his friends never give him a hard time about it. old people hate change, don't they? his wife maybe turns him away from bed if he's not wearing white, saying, "I don't know you in purple!"

in the mornings, because he's always pulling the same weeds out of the same flower bed, with the same ribcaged-dog, it makes me excited for the day--about all of the things that will go as smoothly as the day before, all of the events that will replay themselves, all of the people i will get to love again. this is the foundation of my day.  i always forget to thank him or speak, even.