The Mirror Does Too Much

There's this thing that happens when I'm getting ready where I think I'm just doing mascara and then fifteen minutes pass and I've apparently been standing at the mirror solving problems I didn't know I had. April does this to me. The light comes through the frosted window at this particular soft angle and it makes everything feel slow in a good way, and I end up just... pausing.

I've been in a strange mood this week, not bad, just that quiet restless kind. I think it's the season changing. I keep wanting to go somewhere I haven't been before, take a different road, see a different neighborhood while I'm running. The blog has been on my mind too, what it actually is right now versus what I started it as back in 2007. I was seventeen and I thought I knew exactly what I was doing. I did not know what I was doing.

The shelf moment, the one where she's definitely not just standing there thinking about everything at once.

The getting-ready ritual has always been where I do my best thinking, which is maybe why I take so long and come out looking approximately the same as when I went in. Tinted lip balm, mascara, the gold cross from my grandmother that I never take off. That's basically the whole routine. The rest is just standing in front of the mirror being a person with thoughts.

The lip balm face. Always the lip balm face.

Somewhere between the lip balm and deciding what the blog is for, spring is happening outside. I registered for creative writing this fall, I said it so casually in a post last week that I almost forgot I'd said it at all, which is maybe the only way I know how to do anything brave. The mirror doesn't care either way. It just shows you your face and waits.