Pencil in Hand

I feel alive again - in a way that I haven't felt in a long time. Maybe it's this newfound peace I've been given, maybe it's the relative freedom and lack of responsibility of not having a job, maybe it's because I've found who I am and I'm content with it. Does the origin really matter? I don't think so. I just feel good. I want to laugh and sing with friends, I want to lie out on the grass immersed in the warmth of the sun reading or daydreaming or sleeping. I want to write again like I used to. I want to be in love. I want to drive up the coast and smell the ocean while the breeze ruddies my cheeks and tangles my hair. 

I always read with a pencil in hand. Did you know that about me? I suppose it's a habit carried over from analyzing readings in school but now I do it for me. I underline things that strike me or that I like as if to say "yes!" I posit questions in the margins, intending to revisit them, perhaps write on them - though I never do. Sometimes the wise-ass in me likes to add onto statements the author makes. Sometimes I just like to scribble "that's what she said" in the margin. It's a different way of enjoying a work. It's immersion, it's making it personal, it's putting a part of yourself into that work, weaving bits of your life into it and vice versa.

That's how I like to live - with a pencil in hand, fully aware of and observing everything, marking off little bits to remember, to learn from, to meld into my experience and my identity, absorbing while actively participating. Feeling.