When I was younger I desperately wanted to be noticed by random people around me. If I was out doing something alone, or when I split up from my parents in the grocery store, I found myself strutting through the aisles with my nose up in the air, thinking everyone around me was watching me and I was catching their eye. I would pose a certain way while reading in public, I would tilt my head a little more to the side to fix my side profile if I noticed an attractive stranger passing by.
As I was doing some reading tonight, I was consumed in the world of ink and pages and not once did I care how I appeared in the dim light outside of my window. When the lamps glow, the entire outside world sees in as clear as day, while you could stare at a pane of pitch black and not define a single shape in the darkness of the streets. I counted this as a sign of growth, as I watched the headlights of a car bounce and roll over the sandy road winding past my house. I thought about how insecure and hoping for attention I would've been a few years ago, and how now I sat in my plaid blue pajamas with my mismatched knee high socks propped up on the windowsill where I sat.
My dad constantly told me growing up that life wasn't a runway show, one of his many phrases that have grown with me the way my ankles grew further and further from the bottom of my jeans. When we talked at night over the flamingo covered comforter, he always checked in to make sure that I was still his "humble little girl" and I promised that I was and I would be.
This book I was reading today, Where the Crawdads Sing, brought all of those memories back to life. The woman this book revolves around is this young woman who grew up in the marsh alone, collecting feathers and shells as she could. She learned to cook alone, live off of the land and read the tide and the world around her. She hated crowds of people, but full-heartedly wanted to be apart of them, and for someone to notice her and no longer have herself be lonely. I thought about that idea hard when I was taking notes later.
If there's one thing I learned from the past few months and the ideas of this book, it is that passions drives you to everything. When you're doing something you enjoy, focused on yourself, people who have common passions find you. There's no need to strut through aisles anymore.
As I was painting the post office today, which has been extremely hard seeing as I've never done stenciling before or any kind of calligraphy, I was so involved in my work that I barely even noticed the people buzzing in and out of the building or driving behind me watching me stroke my brushes on the glass. Many people came up to me and thanked me, stating that no one had repainted it for five or so years, and it felt filling to have that recognition being out into place by something that appeared so small to me, but meant so much to these people.
An older man approached me and asked me about my art, calling me a 'real' artist, and asking if I was doing more stenciling and how he wanted the news for the community to come out there and photograph it. Turns out he works at the art school, doing pottery, glass blowing etc. And just like that an entire world opened up for me all because I thought the window needing touching up.
The idea that just because I was minding my own business, doing things I enjoyed being perfectly smitten in my habitat, was new to me. But it's cleared my vision on the world around me just a little bit more and I thought I'd share that.
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