Find exactly what you love and try to not let it go away.

November is the month in which I think about my personal trajectory throughout the year, I get nostalgic even before the year ends, and it’s usually when I think about the people I love the most.

My journal writing prompts for this month are all a huge exercise to work on description since I am in the process of writing my first book (eep!!) and what better way to do it than describing people that I love?! My heart gets so so warm when I remember them and it’s been giving me such joy these last eight days so I hope it gives you as much happiness as it gives me. It also gives me inspiration for characters, since your life is your biggest canvas for your art.

Hope you love them.

Your friend,

Amanda <3

1. Describe someone through a gesture (or the way they make you feel).

His kiss was the best kiss I’ve ever had.

His kiss was like coffee with dulce de leche.

It was only in that kiss that I was completely aware of my existence. I used to spend days not existing until then. I also realize that I only exist within a context for other people. College friend, work friend, classmate. And I feel strangely comfortable like that. I don’t know if I’ve created a palace of self-sufficiency that’s too tall and walled up for the non-psychotic, but rather joyful and satisfied minds I encounter out there.

I couldn’t say.

But I’ve also never found anyone exactly like me. I think if I did, I would hate her deeply. Or perhaps I would feel an admiration bordering on passion. I have many conflicting feelings within myself, about myself, and perhaps that’s why I find it so easy to exist within a pre-defined context. There I have a place. I don’t have a place anywhere else, I don’t fit in properly anywhere. Except for his kiss and his embrace. In them I feel strangely confident. I am someone, even though we both exist in a completely diffuse context. I don’t know what we are, and I love that. I want to exist floating, and learn more from the wind.

He helped me find myself.

He and his kiss.

2. Describe a person you miss without mentioning them directly; let the details reveal who they are.

Despite the various rejections, I still wanted to be near him. Not because I thought about the minuscule possibility of one day having access to his infinite knowledge, or access to his castle built with the fruits of his professional development, or because I envied his ability to abstain from “being” in the workplace (or even in any environment), but because I wanted to be there. I wanted to ‘not be’ alongside him.

Sometimes I reveal too much about myself. Sometimes I cry at romance movies. Sometimes I’m not impressed by the technical knowledge of this great professional that he is. Sometimes I think about the smallness of the being who only exists during the 8 hours of the workday.

Sometimes I think about the greatness he can have despite being. And being a lot. For me, his greatness must be in when he is not. And I wanted to be near him to be able to ascertain that, perhaps, not being is even more important to him. Not being makes him who he is. And who is he, if not a great connoisseur? But a connoisseur of what?

Something he didn’t invent himself, something he didn’t have a say in how it works.