How to reinvent yourself in a year.

No sleep last night.

The sun is mocking me through the curtains in the bedroom. I feel like I haven't walked in days as my knees wobble and sway under my weight, as I stumble to the kitchen and put the coffee on.

I hold a quiet balance of animosity and appreciation for mornings. There's always a lack of balance, though, in how I sleep; always too much or too little, never just enough. Never that perfect amount of wakefulness that has you raring to start a new day. I drag my feet from one hour to the next, assigning little tasks. 

Get up, and go make coffee: success.

Now go water your plants so they don't die. You know you have a tendency to kill with neglect. 

Now pick up the scattered papers from last night's craft binge and check that the glue has dried overnight. 

Now add that lone book back to the stack that leans precariously from your overcrowded shelves. 

Now check the fridge, and see if anything's past its expiration date. 

Now dishes. 

Now food. 

Now sit and mull over your life while you poke at a blueberry muffin, and wonder when it became acceptable to have something that's so much like cake for breakfast. 

I hate monotony, even more so as it seems to rule my life of late. Everything is done by rote, each little task falls into a dull gray pallor that settles over every action, makes it less real and makes time pass far quicker than it should. 

Yesterday it was April. I'd only just moved to the big city, equally ecstatic and apprehensive. I'd always been told that nobody 'makes it' as an artist. I'd also been told that nobody 'makes it' as a writer, either. You'd think me either stupid or determined, or maybe a decent mixture of both, to get a dual degree in creative writing and studio art. I knew the odds. I knew that if I wanted to make something of myself I'd have to start from the ground up and work from there, but somewhere along the line my motivation fell off a cliff and I was left hanging from an outstretched root, a few feet below the edge. Still, I made it to the city, and my portfolio grows with each passing day. That's something, at least.

There have been far worse points in my life, but right now I feel more stressed out than during finals week in college. I'm living in a decent apartment with the love of my life, working on art projects and writing the novel I've been writing since I was in elementary school doodling sloppy characters next to hastily-scribbled words in a notebook I'd torn the cover off of to show the 'art' underneath. 

Today, however, I am sitting at an old table, staring out the kitchen window rather than looking at the blank, bright new page, untouched, that beams back at me from my computer screen. It's a hallmark, the fiftieth page, draft two, and I've been working to get to this point for a long time. Far longer than it took for me to reach 50,000 words for draft 1. Yes, it took forever and a day because my idea shifted completely, but I've reached this point once more, and now I'm faced with the insurmountable obstacle that all writers come to heads with at some point in their work. 

I have no idea how to start the next sentence. No idea what to write next. 

Oh yes, of course I know what's coming further down the line, but I've found a lull in the story, one of those moments where it simply isn't interesting, and it leaves me feeling like I want to tear my hair out but too resigned to it to bother, because I feel like there should never be a dull moment in writing. If it's dull, no-one will want to read it, and that frustrates me even more than the fact that I can't form words to this story. I've known it was coming, after so many months of continuously writing each time I sat myself before the computer and said "okay, it's time to put this down on paper". The words that were once gushing from beneath my fingertips have run dry, and I find myself at a complete loss. 

A clean slate lies before me, waiting to be filled, and I find that I just don't want to write right now. There are so many other things to worry about, when you're unsure if you can make rent four months from now. There are more pressing things to concern yourself over, when suddenly more people are asking for commissions, people you've never met before who have just seen your work and say 'hey I like that, could you make something for me', because that's never happened, that never happens to you, getting that validation from people outside of your social circle, your family, your friends, and you just aren't sure where to begin. 

 I suppose I'm doing what I always do when I reach a dead end; channeling my words into another outlet, a different one that's been untouched for a time as my focus was caught by another sparkling little idea just waiting to be expanded, and I am faced with a simple question. 

What do I want? Where do I want to go next?

It's something I'd normally answer with a very simple, direct response, but now I want so many things; I want to be a writer, I want to be an illustrator, I want that vibrancy that I used to possess back in my life. I want to make rent a few months from now, without having to worry about how I'm going to afford to do laundry because it's six dollars to do laundry in the city and that's ridiculous compared to where I grew up, but things are different here and it's only really hitting me now, when I realize that I need to change to keep up with the change in location. 

So that's what it boils down to. I want a change. I want to shed my old skin and find a comfortable niche in this city that I can burrow into and be content with, because I don't think I've ever really been content at any point in my life. It's all I've ever really striven for; love, home, happiness. They come with other little tag-lines, like 'that love has to be unconditional', or 'that home has to be of your own making and has to fit you like you belong there', and 'that happiness has to be something that doesn't disappear at the drop of a pin', but these are things I have to work for, things that will take time and effort and great motivation, which is something that I need to muster up because sometimes I feel like nothing motivates me anymore, and that needs to change immediately. 

Today is as good as any day to start, because I'm waking up to a new morning and there is a whole day stretched out before me that I could do anything with. I could go outside, walk around and apply for jobs with more vigor and a cheery smile (and in person rather than online), talk to people I come across who look like they've got stories to tell as long as one provides an open ear, and find that inspiration to become what I wish to craft myself into, because it's only going to happen if I actively pursue this route. All I can say, as I raise my coffee cup to toast the sunrise glaring at me through the kitchen window, is 'here's to a new year, and new life', and stick with it.