Setting the Scene
What defines a character study?
From what I remember in the sporadic writing classes I took as a child (and helped along by the power of the google), a character study is an opportunity for a writer (and perhaps their audience?) to get to know someone. Their physical appearance and surroundings. A bit about their background. How they talk, how they think, what they think. What relationships they have with others. How their personality shapes them. What values they hold. What motivates them. What central conflicts they grapple with. How they grow.
Is it weird to want to do a character study on yourself?
That's where this idea for a blog arose. A place to write little vignettes of life lived or imagined. A place to try on the character(s) I imagine myself to be, the character(s) I have been, the character(s) I hope I might one day become. An imaginative space to work through the past and try on ideas of the future.
All with the goal of, perhaps, figuring out where I've come from and where I might like to go.
Twelve years ago I started another blog, musing on some of the same questions. Perhaps that is where to start. With the girl who starts blogs when she doesn't know how to figure out what to do.
----
She sits on the wooden chair, one leg tucked under herself, fingers poised on the keyboard. Sun filters in through the streaked window, pooling harsh and bright on the table's surface. She is in her head, circling, musing, chewing on thoughts she can't quite parse, hopeful that organizing words onto a page might help her make sense of things. Organizing things helps her feel in control, whether color-coding file folders to tuck away memories (under headings that mimic those of her parents'), rolling up clothes to store like with like, or pouring out words into the bounded container of paragraphs. She is one year out of college. The world is full of potentials and familiarities, and she lets her fingers tap out the possible futures she might pursue. Ireland. Goat farming. AmeriCorps. Cob house building. Baby making. Career building. She flips these ideas around in her mind, loosely imagining herself in each role. The exercise is exhilarating and hard to grasp. So many possibilities!
Fifteen minutes, 20, 30... she gets lost in enumerating the many paths she could take, a little shot of adrenaline with each avenue and boulevard sketched out. She was always told she could be anything she put her mind to. She could succeed, without a doubt. And at 23, success didn't have to be a solid thing, a certainty, a specific direction. Success just looks like a web of possibilities, the luxury of choice.
----
Twelve years later, a month shy of 35, the girl (girl? woman? person? human?) leans back against the headboard of the bed her partner built by hand. It's the first headboard she's ever had in a place that wasn't a college dorm room (pillows always used to fall through the cracks before). Its solidness feels secure, comforting. It provides a boundary, an edge, a feeling of containment. Organization. Order. She loves the bed, the room, these four walls, the window view of a backyard full of repetition and growth. She likes to know what to expect. She wants to believe the world is still her oyster. That potentials are still out there. That she can still succeed. But the landscape feels different now. Success feels less... expansive. Her knee creaks walking down the stairs. Her physical therapist reminds her that strength takes work to maintain these days. Her friends post smiling photos of babies, toddlers, kids. Or talk in frustrated circles around the choices left to make, the uncertainty of time remaining, the decision to stay or go.
She never wanted to be one of the desperate ones. A feeling that time was running out, that potentials were drying up. She never wanted to feel like she had to settle, to choose before she felt ready to make a decision. She never wanted to feel like things had to be pushed, practiced, picked out in particular. She believed life was supposed to flow, as she swam with the currant, taking in the views along the way, crossing paths with serendipity as choices were chosen (note passive tense) and the path became clear. To actively choose would mean giving up on the thrill of possibility. The garden of cultivated potentials offered a sense of plenty to the observer... even if the fruit shriveled and died after being left for admiration, rather than picked for sustenance.
One time, in the car with her former boss, the two were talking about life's decisions (each on the precipice of changing life direction) and her boss recounted a story about a friend who kept voicing intentions to have a family, to make a baby, to finally settle in to life as a parent, but simultaneously "wondered if it would every happen" and kept living life as she had before. "I was like, Betty, if you want to be a mother, you have to make that happen. You have to make the decision and figure out what you need to do to get there. You don't have all the time in the world and it's not going to just happen to you," the boss mused. And then she turned and said, "I feel like you're a lot like Betty in some ways. You're scared of making choices, scared of making the 'wrong' choice, so you keep moving forward on the same path, and wait for decisions to happen to you. At some point, if you want a change, you need to decide to jump for yourself."
The girl (woman? person? human?) felt her chest tighten. What is worse, deciding poorly? Or not deciding at all?
From what I remember in the sporadic writing classes I took as a child (and helped along by the power of the google), a character study is an opportunity for a writer (and perhaps their audience?) to get to know someone. Their physical appearance and surroundings. A bit about their background. How they talk, how they think, what they think. What relationships they have with others. How their personality shapes them. What values they hold. What motivates them. What central conflicts they grapple with. How they grow.
Is it weird to want to do a character study on yourself?
That's where this idea for a blog arose. A place to write little vignettes of life lived or imagined. A place to try on the character(s) I imagine myself to be, the character(s) I have been, the character(s) I hope I might one day become. An imaginative space to work through the past and try on ideas of the future.
All with the goal of, perhaps, figuring out where I've come from and where I might like to go.
Twelve years ago I started another blog, musing on some of the same questions. Perhaps that is where to start. With the girl who starts blogs when she doesn't know how to figure out what to do.
----
She sits on the wooden chair, one leg tucked under herself, fingers poised on the keyboard. Sun filters in through the streaked window, pooling harsh and bright on the table's surface. She is in her head, circling, musing, chewing on thoughts she can't quite parse, hopeful that organizing words onto a page might help her make sense of things. Organizing things helps her feel in control, whether color-coding file folders to tuck away memories (under headings that mimic those of her parents'), rolling up clothes to store like with like, or pouring out words into the bounded container of paragraphs. She is one year out of college. The world is full of potentials and familiarities, and she lets her fingers tap out the possible futures she might pursue. Ireland. Goat farming. AmeriCorps. Cob house building. Baby making. Career building. She flips these ideas around in her mind, loosely imagining herself in each role. The exercise is exhilarating and hard to grasp. So many possibilities!
Fifteen minutes, 20, 30... she gets lost in enumerating the many paths she could take, a little shot of adrenaline with each avenue and boulevard sketched out. She was always told she could be anything she put her mind to. She could succeed, without a doubt. And at 23, success didn't have to be a solid thing, a certainty, a specific direction. Success just looks like a web of possibilities, the luxury of choice.
----
Twelve years later, a month shy of 35, the girl (girl? woman? person? human?) leans back against the headboard of the bed her partner built by hand. It's the first headboard she's ever had in a place that wasn't a college dorm room (pillows always used to fall through the cracks before). Its solidness feels secure, comforting. It provides a boundary, an edge, a feeling of containment. Organization. Order. She loves the bed, the room, these four walls, the window view of a backyard full of repetition and growth. She likes to know what to expect. She wants to believe the world is still her oyster. That potentials are still out there. That she can still succeed. But the landscape feels different now. Success feels less... expansive. Her knee creaks walking down the stairs. Her physical therapist reminds her that strength takes work to maintain these days. Her friends post smiling photos of babies, toddlers, kids. Or talk in frustrated circles around the choices left to make, the uncertainty of time remaining, the decision to stay or go.
She never wanted to be one of the desperate ones. A feeling that time was running out, that potentials were drying up. She never wanted to feel like she had to settle, to choose before she felt ready to make a decision. She never wanted to feel like things had to be pushed, practiced, picked out in particular. She believed life was supposed to flow, as she swam with the currant, taking in the views along the way, crossing paths with serendipity as choices were chosen (note passive tense) and the path became clear. To actively choose would mean giving up on the thrill of possibility. The garden of cultivated potentials offered a sense of plenty to the observer... even if the fruit shriveled and died after being left for admiration, rather than picked for sustenance.
One time, in the car with her former boss, the two were talking about life's decisions (each on the precipice of changing life direction) and her boss recounted a story about a friend who kept voicing intentions to have a family, to make a baby, to finally settle in to life as a parent, but simultaneously "wondered if it would every happen" and kept living life as she had before. "I was like, Betty, if you want to be a mother, you have to make that happen. You have to make the decision and figure out what you need to do to get there. You don't have all the time in the world and it's not going to just happen to you," the boss mused. And then she turned and said, "I feel like you're a lot like Betty in some ways. You're scared of making choices, scared of making the 'wrong' choice, so you keep moving forward on the same path, and wait for decisions to happen to you. At some point, if you want a change, you need to decide to jump for yourself."
The girl (woman? person? human?) felt her chest tighten. What is worse, deciding poorly? Or not deciding at all?
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