the origins of sleeveless
I’ve been writing since I was a wee little kid. Mostly stupid stories, about elephants with human faces and big sisters who rather play with their friends than their little sisters. But as I grew up and went through the inevitable stages of life, I began to realize that my thinking and very much so then, my writing, differentiated itself from others. I went from being a painfully shy first grader, to an all too insecure middle schooler, to a teenager who wants what all teenagers want, to find themselves.
It was not until my four years in college that I really grew into my own person, a person who is confident with herself, and one who would continually question the world around her in search of explanations to things, which she thought, did not make sense. A person who wanted to go against the grain, one who instead of hiding her vulnerabilities, would jump in, swim painfully and honestly through the waves, and somehow come up for air feeling just a little more content than before.
One night alone in my room I picked up a pen and paper and wrote about the loss of a love, and the saying, “in time, you will laugh about ever caring.” That excerpt was the first I had ever read to my friends, later that week. On a cold as hell night in Eugene, we spent about two hours discussing each aspect of what I had written, and really got into the nitty gritty of it all. Seeing my goofy friends really dive in to something I wrote made my heart literally flutter and the little hairs on my arms perk up. I had felt a fire it my soul that I hadn’t for a long time. It was then that I realized that this night of openness and giving in to ones vulnerabilities didn’t have to end there. I could give any audience who wanted to be a part of discussions like these a chance to by starting a blog, so that I did.
The name was a rough one for me as beginnings are often the hardest part of any piece. What one word or phrase would be able to define what I was all about? At first I was thinking “Naked” but I wanted to keep things PG, at least for the beginning. It was then that I thought “Organic” but that was too hipster for me; I didn’t want anyone mistaking my blog for one about the benefits of eating a well balanced diet of quinoa. After a few days being frustrated over finding the perfect name, I was walking to class asking myself why the hell I had chosen to wear a sleeveless shirt on a thirty degree winter day in Eugene. I suddenly remembered my mother’s soothing accented voice in my head say, “It’s so cold outside Nick, why are you wearing sleeveless?”
And that’s when it hit me. Sleeveless. Sleeveless! What could be more perfect?
My very first post on my Tumblr, now titled “Sleeveless” was the post I read to my three friends, on that stoop, in the cold. Since then, I have posted pieces ranging from short little blurbs, longer excerpts responding to both society’s and the individual’s weaknesses, as well as poetry that is very personal to me. I have gotten extremely positive feedback from my followers who have shared their appreciation in regards to my openness and willingness to make public what are at times, my most intimate thoughts. It is because of their support and the positivity they have shed in light of my decision to create my blog that pushes me to continue expressing myself in the most honest ways that I know how.
So now, there’s no need to sugar coat a thing. No need for the differentiation v-neck, t-shirt, spaghetti straps. All you need to know is sleeveless.
