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So, today, after a hiatus since 2005, I did a radio show. I was covering for another DJ at the station (www.scadatlantaradio.org) who does a post-punk show, hence all the Pixies, Kinks and Clash. I had a wonderful time and I’m ready to do another one once I figure out a theme. Here’s my playlist so you can delight in my musical tastes!

The Kinks – Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy
The Pixies – Here Comes Your Man
The White Stripes – The Hardest Button to Button
Spoon – Don’t You Evah
The Decemberists – O Valencia
Okkervil River – Lost Coastlines
The Specials – Ghost Town
The English Beat – Save it For Later
The Clash – Rudie Can’t Fail
Madness – One Step Beyond
The Shins – Kissing the Lipless
Pavement – Gold Soundz
The Hold Steady – Stuck Between Stations
The Replacements – Bastards of Young
Built to Spill – Center of the Universe
Neutral Milk Hotel – Holland, 1945
The Mountain Goats – No Children
Belle and Sebastian – If She Wants Me
Modest Mouse – The World at Large
Wolf Parade – I’ll Believe in Anything
The National – Lemonworld
Archers of Loaf – Web in Front
The Clash – Armagideon Time
The Specials – A Message to You, Rudy
The Pixies – Broken Face
Dinosaur Jr. – Start Choppin’
The Kinks – This Time Tomorrow

A few days ago, I started searching for stuff to do with the re-started blog. I read some 365-day projects, looked at a bunch of creativity workbooks I could buy (but didn’t), journaling prompts (Describe the person who has meant the most to you in your life college-admissions essay crap) and stuff like that. I didn’t really find what I was looking for though.

I did find a website called “Every Day is Awesome” which has the subtitle “Because Cynicism is Exhausting.” Well, that’s true.

Today there’s a podcast about moments of kindness, which sounds really cheesy in a “Pay it Forward” schlocky way, but it isn’t. It could easily have gone there, but it didn’t. The writer made better choices and came out with a better end result. The acts of kindness aren’t huge things that would be chronicled in Vanity Fair. Nobody gave anybody a kidney. Nobody was reunited with a long-lost relative or turned their life around because of a chance encounter. Just normal people did something small that they didn’t have to do that made a difference there in the moment. That’s it.

Raising the level of debate doesn’t always mean debate. The quality of media suffers when it always goes straight for the schlocky, the outrageous, the sensational. The real, small truth is nearly always better.

For the last few years, I’ve had trouble working on anything I’d consider a creative project. In college, and later in graduate school (at least before I became an over-focused thesis-writing machine), I could always make some sort of excuse for my creative projects. This is for class. This is something I want to try. This is something I might use later. I did things that were creative, including:

• I built a giant piece of cake costume and then made a 100-second movie about his life.

• I dyed my hair pink, blue, navy blue and purple.

• I painted and did installation art pieces. (I indulged this one big time and was even an MFA painting student for a while. So luxurious. My big responsibility in life during that time was to be creative!)

• I wrote two plays, a feature screenplay, the pilot episode of a tv show and an adaptation for a miniseries of one of my favorite books.

• I painted my bathroom in my college dorm blue with white stars (utilitarian and creative).

• I made a bunch of hand-bound books, and then used them for journals and sketchbooks and collages.

These are just a few things I did, out of hundreds. Thousands maybe. And lately, I just can’t bring myself to do any of these things. I feel like I’m wasting time I should be using to do something more responsible. Like cleaning my apartment or buying furniture (I’ve lived here five months and there’s still nowhere to sit). I even feel wasteful and irresponsible reading a craft blog or looking at art on a website.

I know this is wrong, but mentally it’s hard for me to change my behaviors and guilt-feelings.

I have worked hard and changed a lot about myself over the course of my life. I didn’t like that I was a cynical, negative person so I changed that. I didn’t like that I wasn’t helping people so I changed that. Why is it so difficult for me to indulge myself some creativity lately? Why do I feel unworthy of this somehow? But more important than all those hows and whys and feelings-talk is can I just change it, and worry about the feelings/guilt/whatever stuff later?

I want to try.

Since the Jan. 8 incident in Tucson, Az. I’ve been reading a lot of people’s reactions on the Internet. I use the word “incident” not to downplay the negativity of the event, but because reading words like “tragedy” over and over and over has ruined their meaning for me. When I was in journalism school I was taught never to use words with sensationalist undertones like “tragedy” or “disaster.” My professors also prohibited words that were used just for variety but had implications and connotations (calling a fire a “blaze” or an “inferno,” and I bet if a student had used the term “blazing inferno” my copy editing professor’s eyes would have rolled right out of his head). Beyond that, we were chastised for unnecessary adjectives (saying something was “completely destroyed,” for example, is redundant because “destroyed” means completely decimated).

We were cautioned because these words all have persuasive, emotional or even just suggestive power over readers.

I explain that to say this. Other people apparently either did not go to journalism school, did not pay attention to their professors, don’t care or are intentionally using the language for effect. Something about this feels cheap to me. The same way I feel that artists and architects and graphic designers and the like have a responsibility to raise the aesthetic quality and challenge the average person should apply to every single person who puts pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, leans into a microphone or sits in front of a television camera. And beyond. We all should be charged with the responsibility of raising the level of debate.

This isn’t going to be a political blog, and I’m not saying that I myself have never been nor will ever be guilty of sensationalizing for effect, but I’m aware I should be trying harder.

Hi people.

After a decently long break from blogging, I decided that sometimes, I need to say things someplace. Things that are too complicated to explain on my twitter, or post in image-form to my tumblr. Things that are actual thoughts and commentary and by golly geez, I’m supposed to be a writer and all that, so it makes sense I should be doing some writing of some kind every day.

So I’m going to do that here.

But, to make a fresh start, I made all my old blog posts private. Goodbye teenage histrionics and early-twenties drama.

Look forward to things that I hope are interesting, thoughtful and worthwhile. (Of course, for things that aren’t, you can still visit my twitter or tumblr. Self zing!)