Day Eighteen: What's That? My Name is Written on the Ceiling? I Scoff At You!

I think the time has come to tell a little story about myself, that will potentially put me in serious jeopardy with anyone with a sick sense of humor. Unfortunately, I was born with the almost complete inability to sense when someone is screwing with me. I am, and always have been, extremely, painfully gullible.

The story I always tell to exemplify my extremely gullible nature is a story of my childhood (I was about ten), and one that to this day I still consider with a sense of incredulity that I could actually be as gullible as I was. When I was young, my cousins and I decided to play hide and seek in the dark outside on a warm, dry summer night. My aunt and uncle's property is small, but well-lined with trees, bushes, and old stone fireplace, and a garage in the back corner. So although there weren't many hiding places, the suitable ones were excellent. So as I wandered around looking for my cousins, one older than me by about two years, the other older than me by a week, I heard noises that sounded suspiciously like the cracking of twigs under foot, or the rustle of leaves in the bushes. But no matter where I looked, I couldn't find the source of the noise. A little spooked and confused, I wandered away, to find my other cousin.

Not long later, after the game ended and one cousin was found and her brother gave himself up out of boredom, my uncle entertained us by bringing out a small telescope and pointing it at the moon. "Look!," he suddenly shouted, "there are little green men jumping off the moon! Look look!". So, I looked, but I saw nothing. "I don't see anything," I said. "Look again!". So I looked again. And already still a little spooked from the noises in the bushes, I was already on guard. Then, I heard the noises again, as the leaves on a bush rustled to my left. "They're landing! they're landing over there!", my uncle yelled. So fueled by my gullibility and my unfounded terror regarding all things extra-terrestrial, I ran inside crying. Yup, I believed him. Sure, I was a kid, but I was definitely old enough to know better.

As it turns out, my cousin was throwing M&Ms into the bushes, and it took me about ten minutes to calm me down. Personally, I'm not bitter about it at all, although my mother wasn't (and still isn't) very happy. I think it's a great story. And if anything, it taught me to be a little more cautious when it comes to believing everything someone says. I'm still extremely gullible, but I've trained myself to be ten times better. I only occasionally embarrass myself now, fourteen years later. I'll still momentarily forget and turn around with a swift motion when someone says "Hey, look at that!," and points behind me, only to turn back around and find that my jellybeans are missing, but for the most part I'm not-so-easily fooled.

So, now I realize that I have definitely made myself victim (to at least one person) to being messed with at an increased rate, all because I wanted to do something nice and share a funny story about myself. But guess what? I'm ready for it. I have learned a lot over the years, and I have trained and worked hard to be able to stare at someone dead in the eye with a look of contempt when they tell me my name is written on the ceiling. Sure, I might glance up after they leave, but I like to trust people and give them the benefit of the doubt, too.

Day Seventeen: Code Red, The Writer's Block Has Begun

This is the first day in seventeen days that I have sat down to write and stared blankly at a blinking cursor on the vast, empty whiteness of a stupid, taunting text box. Seventeen days have gone by and there has always been an idea in my head. They haven't all been very fascinating or interesting ideas, but they were ideas just the same. They gave me the opportunity to put some kind of words together to keep this project going. But today, I tugged and poked at my brain all day, and nothing came to mind. So here I sit, writing about having nothing to write about. But then again, if I'm writing about it, I suppose I do have an idea, and thus I'm doing okay. But still, it's a little frightening that only a little over two weeks into this commitment I'm already pulling out the "writer's block" card. I need to come up with some more inspiration, and fast.

In response, my boyfriend planted an interesting nugget of thought into my head last night. I was complaining that I was finding it difficult to find interesting topics to write about, to which he replied with something to the effect of "You get ideas from life experiences. If you don't go out and have stories to tell, it's no wonder you're having trouble." So maybe, it's possible, that I don't have enough to write about because I sit around wondering what to write about far too often. Perhaps it would be more effective if I lived my life and wrote around it, rather than making this project and my writing the most interesting part of my life. What's to write about if you're only living writing? So, I'm going to do a little experiment to see if I can create some inspiration for myself.

For more reasons than one, I'm going to make more of an effort to go out and immerse myself in groups of people I don't normally surround myself with. I'll do as other twenty-three-year-olds do and go to the redneck dance club on Saturday. I'll stay up past 9:30 AM. Please excuse me if this seems lame; that I appear to be doing this purely for the one reason that it will give me something to write about. I actually want to start going out more, seeing my friends more, and being more social. While I'm not home all that often anymore (I hardly ever see my house on weekends), I really don't see many people.

So while I'm growing a small, green set of wings to become a tiny social butterfly, I'm going to see if it makes this writing thing any easier. Then maybe I'll at the very least have enough material to write about for two or three days, instead of miraculously coming up with something an hour or two before it comes time for me to write. I'm waiting, inspiration. I'm listening.