• I am a sleepy, sleepy girl. I kept nodding off while trying to get work done on the book today, enough so that I've broken my “no more caffeine than a cup or two of tea rule,” and may have migraines to look forward to on the morrow. (It doesn't feel like it, though, so maybe I'll be lucky.)

• My bedroom has curtains. Moreover, my bedroom has curtains that don't fall off the windows and are hemmed such that I don't trip and fall over them on my treks to and from bed. (Thank you Mom and Patrick.) They're red. And pretty. But not pretty enough to render me inarticulate, perhaps I might need that sleep thing after all.

• I spoke to my across-the-street neighbor for the first time yesterday. Specifically, I shouted, “I have a 20 foot tall rake!' Which I did, and my roof lacks pine straw and vegetation as a result.

• I wonder if I might need to be more conscious of what I eat. I've felt lethargic and heavy all day, and I'm curious if it might not be because, after not ingesting meat for over a week, every meal I had yesterday involved some form of pork. (Apparently my subconscious had it out for pigs.)

• I need to stop thinking about the fact that I'm behind where I'd like to be on the book. Whenever I feel like I've fallen behind, I get depressed and very little, while constantly feeling like my stomach is a series of knots, as evidenced by my first semester at Guilford.

• In order to diffuse that knotted up, inert state, I'm going to vent my largest insecurity here, in hopes that it'll go away. Now would be the time to stop reading.

What the hell is it that qualifies me to be a writer? I'm certainly not academically qualified. The only courses I've ever outright failed in all my years as a slacker student have been English courses. Family, friends, and mentors have told me that this is my gift from the moment I picked up a pen, and of course, since my family was involved in there, I fought it for a long time. I recall, as a teenager, shouting at my mother that I'd never study literature or writing, that I wanted to DO something, dammit.

Granted, I did stick to my promise – I haven't taken a single English course that I haven't had to take – but I haven't been able to keep my love affair with words under wraps. But I still batter up against my original question. Why am I so special? I read my friends' blogs, and occasionally even their more serious efforts, and while I can offer advice and criticism, I never feel superior. (I've felt a superior writer once, when I critiqued Par's work.) And while humility is a good thing, the fact that it's so natural, when I generally have to fight back snobbery, bothers me.