Thought Catalog

As natural as winter feels for the concept of "hibernation", it's taken me a few years to understand what that means for me, as a human. If I were a bear I'd be curled into a ball underneath tree branches in a cave somewhere, unaffected by weather reports and taunting thaws-before-the-storm. Instead, my mind fills itself with visions: replacing foliage with a blanket my great grandmother knitted and a dank floor with my nice, warm bed. Other such added amenities include a cup of coffee and good book. And, rather than spending several months confined from the outside world, I am delighted with a day or two a week.

The past two winters have seemed more laborious. In my first Ferndale apartment, an inexplicable decision to read Sons And Lovers left me disillusioned to the affects of literature. It took Kurt Vonnegut to pull me out of that regrettable rut, and happily I haven't looked back. This year, I made much more of an effort to place myself in front of a book on a regular basis. My usually hectic social schedule was trimmed in favor of "mental health nights" at home. I've read seven books since Thanksgiving, without wasting a single second on any of them. The outpouring of inspired storytelling I attribute to the summer has been curtailed in favor of a pensive approach to my thoughts; marinating ideas a little longer before sending them out into the world. Taking in outside energies and attitudes rather than expounding on my own. It's a cycle of creative growth that I'm learning to embrace rather than scorn, when January and February find me updating my blog all of nine times.

In addition to the conventional novels and collections of short stories, I have discovered some fascinating internet-based reading. If you take anything anyway from this entry, I hope that it's a bookmarking of the website Thought Catalog. The site's frequent updates provide a very provocative sampling of creative writing in the form of articles, commentaries and fictional stories. For anyone grasping for the pulse on the drug-addled, sex-driven, disaffected twenty-something culture of modern America: you'll certainly find it there. As the bottom of each page proudly declares, "You should follow Thought Catalog on Twitter".

Need a place to start? Here's a sampling of some great "instructional" essays.

How To Figure Out if You're Happy
How To Write “How To Shit on LSD”
How To Be Sober
How To Get Married in Las Vegas