Most of us are awkward teenagers; it's a class feature that stays with us until we level up to our twenties.

But most of you didn't have your awkward teenage years play out in front of the world, preserved for future generations to enjoy, thusly:

Talk about deer in the headlights! Everything about my awkward teenage years is captured in that photo: I'm nervous, self-conscious, and forcing a smile so whoever is taking this picture will please just go away as quickly as possible. I haven't looked in a teen magazine since I was, well, in them, (and I don't know if non-Bieber-specific ones ever exist) but I wonder if the people who are in them today (Bieber and otherwise) are photographed in the same harsh flash and unflattering awkwardness that seemed to be endemic to the teen magazines in the late 80s.

(Thanks … I think … to @jennabryson, who says, "Look what my mom found, @wilw – she cleaned out & sold my childhood dresser & this was inside" for sharing that photo.)

Two days in a row, in two different places, twenty miles apart, I’ve seen two hawks circle in the sky above me.

I know it’s simple coincidence, but I like to believe that they’re the same pair, soaring gracefully and beautifully on thermal currents just for me, so I don’t forget to appreciate the simple beauty of the world around me.

(Of course, it's also possible that they are stalking me, waiting for me to fall to the ground dead, because they’re from the future and know something that I don’t.)

I suppose the moral is: Don't forget to appreciate the simple beauty of the world around you, because you never know when deathhawks from the future will show up and ruin your day.

I did a bunch of writing this morning, but I still don't have a monster to unleash on the villagers. I'm not going to lie to you, Marge, it's kind of frustrating, and my goddamn inner critic is screaming at me that I'm terrible and it's stupid and they're all going to laugh at me, which doesn't help even a tiny bit. Don't worry, I'll get over it.

Still, it was enough that I felt like I'd earned the right to make an X on the calendar in the "Creative" box, which is kind of the whole point right now. To continue the running comparison, I'm still just trying to make it around the track without throwing up, which is fine. 

I also got a stupid idea for a stupid cell phone video, and made this:

Context, for the seven of you who don't know what the Alot is.

I also customized my band in Rock Band 3 (I bet you didn't know that a large part of writing is not actually writing, but doing all sorts of other things when you should be writing and calling it "letting my mind wander" or something like that), which could also be considered creative. We're three hot girls and me, and we're called Abby Nermal. Our logo is a cute cat who has swallowed a fish that glows inside its tummy.

Today's effort to do something creative didn't result in anything I can actually publish (yet), but was still enjoyable and worthwhile, and I wanted to share something about the experience that I hope some of you find useful.

I'm disappointed that I don't have anything to point to and say, "hey, I made this", because even though I think it's an unreasonable expectation, I still hoped that I'd be able to pull together a 100-300 word story, like some of my friends do. 

Yeah, it turns out that making something up and giving it life, as opposed to remembering it and recreating it, is hard enough without trying to cram it all into a very small space. Being seriously out of practice after spending months focused on acting didn't help, and the ideas I had just couldn't be assembled into a monster from their individual parts. (They looked lovely, though, spread out all over the lab, and the thrumming of all my mad scientist electrical equipment was … energizing, to say the least.)

But this doesn't mean that it wasn't worthwhile. I don't have something to show off today, but one or both of them may be available soon … and even if they aren't, I still spent a considerable amount of time today working at it. I spent a lot of time and energy today being a writer, being a creator, and that goes down as a good day in my log book.

I guess this could be compared to a runner working really hard and logging a lot of miles trying to get a faster time, or greater distance than before: even if that specific goal isn't met, she still got a whole lot of good exercise.