Here I am, alongside a half-empty coffee cup, full of thoughts and regretting my lack of a morning run.
The clouds were able to stave off the rain for a record-breaking few days but as I peeked outside this morning it returned unannounced, like bad company. What else to do with bad company than drink coffee? Certainly you wouldn't go on a run with bad company. That would be a disaster. So I stayed.
The Ann conspiracy is something that struck me while trying to work. More like thinking about work, not actively working. Because at 7:30am, not much occupies this hour other than that which I expressly want to do. Because mornings are God's gift to men and women and to the little children who wake up with screaming voices at an hour when most adults are just doing their best to retain consciousness.
The Ann conspiracy is an indestructable trio of writers, the kind that inspire me: Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, Ann Voskamp. Trying to write like the Anns' only aids me in looking goofy and amateur for even thinking I could use words like "grandiosity" and "inchoate" correctly.
But I want to. I especially want to fascinate others with my stream-of-consciousness, as if I were responsible for the most witty, downright compelling thoughts ever thunk in the universe. Anne Lamott is responsible for at least a few.
She is a “ likable narrator" and in her own words:
Having a likable narrator is like having a
great friend whose company you love, whose mind you love to pick, whose running
commentary totally holds your attention, who makes you laugh out loud, whose
lines you always want to steal.
Airing my secret fears of being an annoying narrator, it is easiest to subvert this whole conspiracy by just changing my name from Lauren to Ann. Or maybe Laur-Ann, one friend suggested. Maybe Ann is too drastic, but Laur really sounds like Thor and I'm not going for that.
Let's face it, I've always been a little more like Anne of Green Gables, running wild with imagination in preference to having real conversations and friends. Well, isn't that just like an Anne would do. I'm starting to convince you aren't I?
 |
| Let's change our names. |
My best friend (who is not imaginary) always wanted to change her name, from Brittney to something else. Her mom laughed at this suggestion and so did I, until the moment my very own name crisis struck. Names appoint futures, they loom like self-fulfilling prophecies that we have no control over.
Was mine spoken at the wrong moment? Did my parents simply take the easy way out and name me after my surgeon's daughter who is also a Lauren? What is the surgeon's daughter doing? Is she successful and are our fates interlinked because I was destined to become an Ann or even an Anne but fell off the wagon and became a Lauren for the sake of convenience?
I really hope not.
I think I’ll use Ann as a penname, until I'm part of the Ann Conspiracy bringing forth literary greatness: until I'm published. For then, I will be the paranoid blogger whose thoughts, strangely enough, you are reading.
