Fit.

I have had so much that I want to write about, I have been writing about none of it. I feel, every time I sit down to begin something, at risk of rambling endlessly. These posts of mine are long anyway.
Anyway...I've gotta start somewhere.

Back in undergrad, when I took a creative nonfiction class, I was surprised by how much fun it was, and the amount of positive feedback I received on a form that I didn't consider my primary. I'm starting to feel like that in my current class run. I've been startled at the ease with which I dove back in. My papers have been strong. Perhaps not "several years of learning to construct academic writing again" strong, but I have had positive comments.
Last night, one of my classmates wrote an on-the-spot poem about my words as I gave my mid-term presentation. He said I was compelling. I probably turned pink with embarrassed pleasure.
There are people around me with bigger vocabularies, and libraries in their minds from which to draw, but I'm doing just fine, and my teacher thinks I have the skills necessary. I find it hard not to wriggle like a rewarded puppy.

One of my classmates asked last night: Has there ever been a time when you felt like you really fit in the story you were living? What did that feel like?
And our talkative class went quiet.

I've had small moments like that, I think. When I learned a dance in a week and performed at Ren Fest, the story fit.
I want so badly for the school story I'm beginning right now to fit. I feel like it does, and I just don't want to mess this up.
The problem is, that's one element. And I know now how much that one element isn't everything. I need to be socially happy as well, and, for good or ill, now that I've experienced a long-term relationship, that's part of the equation as well.
If I could get my intellectual life and my personal life moving in positive directions at the same time...I don't even have a concept of what that would feel like.

Maybe high school. Which is a terribly strange thing to look at as my benchmark for "good" because there was plenty that wasn't, but a lot of it was my own making and living at home.
Has it really been ten years since things fit?
Not that things have been bad, but the question just brought things home for me. What makes a story fit or not fit?

I haven't gotten to the bottom of all this yet anyway. Just throwing stuff out there.

(Sometimes I'm annoyed that the blog is a place of eternal first draft-i-tude. Sometime, I will put something up here that is polished.)