The Blankets of Familiarity

      Here I sit, perched on the edge of my bed, listening to some indie band's new song, while quotes from my favourite authors and books are written in chalk on the white walls around me. I'm sure my neighbour's are appreciating the repetitious music I've been playing all day. There is this strange feeling about spending all day on your bed. Reading, watching movies, eating dinner. It's not that I'm lazy or don't enjoy being outside, but the coziness that begins to surround you is like a friend or a lover. The blankets are always warm, and there is always someone to talk to, even if the voice you hear answering is your own. Spending all day on your bed is like going back to the town where you grew up. There is no street you don't know, and no coffee shop you haven't tried. You know exactly how the pillows feel beneath your head, and which way to lie so that the light from your nightstand won't cast the shadow of your face across the book you're reading.
     It's been two days since I've done something productive with my life aside from the short venture downtown to buy chalk and an iced latte. I woke up yesterday with this strange urge to watch Harry Potter. And not just one, but all of them. So I did it, with the exception of the first two, and the final movie. Those ones I know by heart. At the time I deemed this as an act of a personal day. I would do nothing. I would order pizza for dinner and I would watch five movies back to back. I ended up watching the last of my marathon first thing when I woke up today. Some marathon huh? None of this seemed productive to me. It wasn't until I remembered that I had paused Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to scribble something in a notebook I keep by my bed. Rereading it today, curled up with the blankets of familiarity, did I realize that while this wasn't the greatest piece of writing to ever touch a page, it was the direction I wanted to take with my writing. It was something that wasn't specific. I don't know who I was writing about, and I don't know who it was that was thinking the words I wrote. But there they are, staring back at me like some prophecy that maybe my degree in English could be of some use one day.
     It's not that I've never liked my writing style, but it reminds me so much of what I used to write when I was younger that I find it hard to see growth. Sure, the content is more mature, but the way that I write, and the characters I create have been given such little dimension that the lines of my writing in grade eight, versus now, going into third year university, have blurred. I just finished a booked today called The Opposite of Loneliness. If you haven't read it, I strongly recommend it. This book is a collection of short stories and essays by a young woman named Marina Keegan. She passed away shortly after her Yale convocation. One of the greatest, and saddest things about Marina's writing is that she talks of a future with her friends and family and possible children. She shows hope for a future that she will never get. Though this tragic fact is one of the reasons why Marina's work is published in this collection, her writing is by far some of the best I have ever read. It could be because she was writing all of these things at my age, or it could be because she simply knows how to perfectly combine 26 letters to create something beautiful. She was a few years older than I am now, and she had a job waiting for her post-graduation. She had been in plays, and had poems published, and done so much with her life, and here I am, watching movies and listening to the same four songs on repeat.
    I dream of days where curling up in bed leads to something purposeful. Where I have a break through and write the next great novel. Days that I can tell my friends and family about, where they will smile and tell me that they are proud, and mean it. I dream of days spent with a lover who will encourage me and tell me that watching Harry Potter for eight hours is not a productive thing to do, but will crawl into bed with me and watch them anyway. I write for my parents, so that they can see that I am going to do something great. I write for people like Marina whose lives were taken far too soon. And I write for myself. I write so that I can leave my mark on this great and vast world that has given me so much to live for. So much, that I must remember it all.