I decided that this would be the summer I read Anna Karenina. A couple years ago I'd gotten about a hundred pages in before getting confused by the Russian nicknames and surnames and giving up. Plus, for Christmas my mom got me a novel called Tolstoy Lied (referencing the famous "Happy families" first line of Anna Karenina) so I wanted to read the original before finding out if/how he was wrong. On my last trip to Myopic, I found a cheap copy and knew that the time had come. I've been working on it for maybe two weeks and am halfway through. The names have been much easier, possibly due to the way this is translated (the famous first line was different than I'd ever heard it, for starters). But there is one problem that I really did not expect.

I don't like the book.

Reading it feels like a chore. I was expecting a sweeping epic about love and life, and although I do find the romance plotlines compelling, overall the book is falling flat. I don't want to abandon it again, but there are so many other books I'd rather delve into. Somehow I haven't gotten pulled past the surface, to really sympathize with the characters and their dilemmas.
These are just my midpoint thoughts. If there are any Tolstoy fans or scholars in the audience who can give me advice on finishing, please speak up. Just don't give anything away!

This morning I was suddenly and completely taken with the idea that I should move to Philadelphia. I have no idea where this compulsion came from. It isn't going to happen, seeing as Jenny and I are bound to the Pirate Den for another year. But since coming back from Europe I've been more and more skeptical about staying in Chicago for the long term. I don't think I would leave the States, but there are still a whole lot of possible places within this one country. I've never been to California and I think I might like to live there for awhile. And I'm oddly curious about Virginia or North Carolina, somewhere near the ocean maybe. 

After graduation, I knew I wanted to stay in Chicago and figured I would let the job hunt fall around that. I'm hoping that by next summer I'll have a better idea of what I want in a job, and I'll make that the priority. But rest assured, I will not be moving to the boonies, or to the deep south. Well, deep south isn't totally out of the question (hey, I could move to Atlanta and meet Ludacris!), but I do know that I want to be in a city. I just don't know which one.

I was talking with Jasmine a week or two ago, and she said that she thought writing was the only creative endeavor that is painful. "You never hear an actor say 'Oh god, I have to go act now,' or a dancer say 'Dammit, I have to go dance.' But any time you talk to a writer, they're like 'Ugggghhhh!'" (Rough paraphrasing of her words, but you get the point.)

I thought about this on my walk home today, and came to the conclusion that there are two types of artists: creators and interpreters. The interpreters include the aforementioned actors and dancers, and also musicians. Their craft is physically demanding and requires practice and rehearsal, then usually is performed live for an audience. It's an art that you turn on and off. Now you're performing. Now you're not.

And then there are the creators: the writers, the composers, the singer-songwriters, the painters. The ones who tend to be depressed or mildly insane. The ones who lock themselves away with the tools of their trade, often groaning "I hate my life! I hate doing this!" as they force themselves to make something concrete out of the ideas in their mind. The pressure on a creator is different than on an interpreter. The creator has a steady steam of stress rather than the short, impassioned bursts of a live performer. That's not to say that I envy what the performers go through. They, poor souls, have to try to get into our heads and figure out what the hell we were trying to communicate.

As you might guess, I've had a rough couple days for writing. Because the actual process of writing is just as frustrating as the not writing, the thinking and planning, the desperation for inspiration. It's infuriating. So why do it? Sadly, this is the question I ask myself, more often than I'd like, every time I can't come up with an idea or receive another rejection. What's the point of doing something that is such a bloody pain?

I don't know.