I have a horrible habit of really only ever writing about writing. Every Voices piece that I write somehow incorporates some part of my love for literature, and my characteristic diction bleeds into every aspect of my life.
From research papers to endless pieces for The News-Letter, I couldn’t imagine my life without putting pen to paper. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make for as exciting a headline as some of my other articles — everyone already knows about my obsession with reading over what I write again and again. But, it does hold a place in my heart different from everything else.
I was sitting in my two hour and 30 minute long philosophy class the other day, listening to my professor talk about God, essence and Spinoza — the usual Monday afternoon fuel for an existential crisis — when I realized that I’ve spent so much time writing about writing that I’ve forgotten to write about the things that interrupt it.
If I’m being honest, my greatest rival as a writer isn’t writer’s block — it’s my social calendar. I can wax poetic about metaphysics and narrative structure all I want, but come Friday night, I’m sprinting to finish a paragraph of my novel I’ve been working on before someone texts “downtown in 30?” And suddenly, my pen becomes a mascara wand, I forgo my document and I’m arguing not about if the heist in my novel is realistic, but whether or not “No Hands” is the greatest song ever written (it is).
To me, balance is writing about essence in the morning, but then losing mine to music at night. There’s something strangely poetic about how the girl who spends her afternoons dissecting texts about virtue is the same one that spends her evenings spinning under strobe lights and screaming lyrics that she only half-remembers.
And when I stumble home, shoes in hand and a stomach full of dinner and delight, the world still humming around me, I always end up doing what I do best: writing it all down. Sometimes, I even convince myself that I’m capable of capturing genius in those late-night notes app entries with half-sentences typed with one eye open and riddled with typos and misplaced metaphors. In the morning, I’ll read them back and wonder if I was attempting poetry or confessing to a mozzarella stick.
Because even in the haze of a 2 a.m. cheesy snack from Uni Mini, I find myself narrating my day and tracing the outlines of fleeting joy, trying to capture what it means to feel everything so fully. And that’s why I keep writing about writing: It’s the one thing that ties every part of me together.
The lecture halls, the late-night strolls along Inner Harbor and sunrise in my room, they’re all different drafts of the same story. Some are scribbled in the margins of my notebook and others are written in the glitter that riddles the dance floor. Each version of me, the over-caffeinated student, the girl laughing too loudly in the Gatehouse during The News-Letter section meetings and the quiet observer of the silence on the walk home, is a sentence in an unfinished paragraph.
That’s the real beauty in being Kaylee Nguyen. I don’t have to choose between aspects of who I am. The same pen that underlines Spinoza also signs the receipt for karaoke at Kong Pocha. The same mind that critiques R.F. Kuang also finds meaning in the blur of streetlights. They make my life legible.
So yes, I’ll always keep writing about writing. But I will also keep dancing, wandering and spilling mozzarella stick crumbs over my drafts. Because if writing is how I make sense of the world, living wildly is how I give it something worth writing about.
Kaylee Nguyen is a sophomore studying Medicine, Science, and the Humanities and Writing Seminars from Pensacola, Fla. She is a News and Features Editor for The News-Letter.