My problem with writing? I’m not doing it.
After my last post I ran to my computer files and started to write. The inspiration was there, little foreign fingers digging into my brain, clawing their way sown synapses, off my finger, and onto the page. Only somewhere along the way, the journey went wrong. My brain seized, with no idea what came next. My fingers faltered, and the words that poured forth onto the page were the scribblings of a nine year old child. I don’t mean that I felt my writing was trite, bad, underinspired, or that I was frustrated with the trouble I was having, though all of this is true; I mean I literally wrote better when I was nine years old.
This is not writer’s block. I have suffered writer’s block in the past, sometimes for long stretches, and this feel nothing like that. It’s more like a form of giving up, on myself, on life, on everything. I have good reason to, it’s been a hard year, one where I have worried more often and more legitimately about keeping food in my belly and a roof over my head than I have in many, many years, perhaps ever. Things have never physically been this bad before, and I have been in some Very, Very Bad Places ™.
And the constant, constant, constant rejections and the seemingly deliberate attempts to slaughter my self esteem by the one company who did hire me have about ended me. I find my day to day struggles are very basic anymore–getting out of bed before noon is a triumph, and getting to sleep before dawn is a miracle achieved only through use of drugs. I never thought motivating myself to get dressed would be a Thing, but it is. Call it depression if you want; I call it just not seeing the point.
I suppose it’s no shock that, mentally crippled as I am, that disability has affected everything, even my one sanity release that costs me nothing but time. And gods know on sleepless nights, Time is a commodity I have to spare.
So, I’m going to try something. Maybe it’ll help and maybe it won’t, and maybe I’ll finish and maybe I won’t, but it’s worth a try. I am going to undergo the 30 day blog challenge. I’m going to write bits and spurts of nonessential data about myself just for practice. Just to get back in the groove. Just to see where it takes me.
One caveat–I hate pictures. I will fudge every demand for photos. You, my readership of three-or-less, will deal. However, I will promise to make what I do give in photos worth your while. You’re welcome.
Sharp-eyed folks may notice the time stamps getting a little fudged, but the posting on the right days. I make no apologies. If I get a job interview, have to take a cross-country flight (which I do soon), or simply have a nervous breakdown, I will be in no position or possibly frame of mind to post. I’ll make it up.
I hope.
I haven’t much faith in anything recently, so asking me to have faith in me is a little much. I will do this without faith, and see where it gets me. Hopefully writing better than the ghost of my nine year old self. That’s all I really ask for.
For those who want to know, this is how 30 Days of Me will go:
Day 01- A recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself.
Day 02- The meaning behind your blog name.
Day 03- A picture of you and your friends.
Day 04- A habit that you wish you didn’t have.
Day 05- A picture of somewhere you’ve been to.
Day 06- Favorite super hero and why.
Day 07- A picture of someone/something that has the biggest impact on you.
Day 08- Short term goals for this month and why.
Day 09- Something you’re proud of in the past few days.
Day 10- Songs you listen to when you are Happy, Sad, Bored, Hyped, Mad.
Day 11- Another picture of you and your friends.
Day 12- How you found out about blogging and why you made one.
Day 13- A letter to someone who has hurt you recently.
Day 14- A picture of you and your family.
Day 15- Put your iPod on shuffle: First 10 songs that play.
Day 16- Another picture of yourself.
Day 17- Someone you would want to switch lives with for one day and why.
Day 18- Plans/dreams/goals you have.
Day 19- Nicknames you have; why do you have them.
Day 20- Someone you see yourself marrying/being with in the future.
Day 21- A picture of something that makes you happy.
Day 22- What makes you different from everyone else.
Day 23- Something you crave a lot.
Day 24- A letter to your parents.
Day 25- What I would find in your bag.
Day 26- What you think about your friends.
Day 27- Why are you doing this 30 day challenge.
Day 28- A picture of you last year and now, how have you changed since then?
Day 29- Your favorite song.
Day 30- In this past month, what have you learned
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
When Practicality IS the Dream
It’s two weeks until Christmas and my blog is snowing. No, seriously, there is a snow GIF on my blog. I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’ll all melt off by January 4th–about the time that, I am told, snow will fall for real in my neck of the woods. Maybe by then I’ll have a job, so I can buy snow boots. Otherwise I’ll have to trust to thick socks and flimsy cloth sneakers.
I am looking once again down the barrel of my writing. The strange creatures that haunted the pages of my comics are calling to me again, wanting to give birth to themselves from the corners of my mind.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, either.
In the midst of a crisis of confidence--or perhaps a four-on-the-floor depression, who the hell knows?–I decided my writing was…well…bupkus. Utter, total, and complete bupkus. I was a hack, a wannabe, with all the writing talent of a squid, and I’d be better off investigating a real line of work, like, say, my local 7-11.
So I stopped. Completely.
But the ideas won’t go away. They flirt on the outskirts of my mind; tiny black-winged figures in the distance, soaring over the trees, somewhere between threatening and begging, waiting to be brought screaming to life beneath my typing fingertips. I find no joy in creating them, no joy in the process of making them coherent in the plot-line, and some pain in that they won’t tell me what they’re up to! I only have the vaguest, most frustrating idea.
But there is a perfect beauty to their flight, their menace, the way they can destroy and mutilate lives, then disappear without a trace. There is a terrible wonder in the way they devour others, and something inspirational in the heroes that oppose them, though they barely know what it is they’re up against. There are so many story threads here that I need a chart to map them–brother to sister, brother to friend, sister to friend, friend to friend, friend to lover, lover to lover, lives blown apart by the deepest connections, ties severed and wounds flayed as only the closest of friends can do, now in desperate need of mending before the darkness comes for them all.
And still, I’m writing a blog post instead, putting off the damned struggle of herding and wrestling all these ephemeral cats down onto the paper and pinning them in place, my collection of feral, furry little butterflies. I’m dodging the scratches to my psyche, the claw marks in my hopes and dreams, the little teeth biting viciously through my self confidence and tearing it away in chunks. I avoid the specter of my own failure by failing to try, and while that accomplishes nothing, at least I still hold the dream that I could have succeeded. You know, if I really wanted to.
You ever wonder how it is we can so easily lie to ourselves, even when we know what we’re doing is a lie?
These days I sometimes wonder if that’s all any of it is, a lie. I will never get a job or unemployment, but run out of money and be kicked out of my home. I will lose everything I own and roam the streets begging for a little compassion from a cash-strapped and increasingly hostile country, hoping not to be raped or murdered by people who see how vulnerable I am. I will never go overseas to meet my one true love, but break his heart and my own with false promises I can never keep. I will never see my son again. I’ll be seen as a shameful influence and a fuck-up by his parents. And I will never, ever, not in a million years, write my bestselling novel.
So why even try?
Sometimes the answer “because I need to eat and maybe keep warm” is the only one that keeps any of us going. It’s certainly a good enough one for me. So I will try again, for god and country and a desperate need to eat.
And who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.
I am looking once again down the barrel of my writing. The strange creatures that haunted the pages of my comics are calling to me again, wanting to give birth to themselves from the corners of my mind.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, either.
In the midst of a crisis of confidence--or perhaps a four-on-the-floor depression, who the hell knows?–I decided my writing was…well…bupkus. Utter, total, and complete bupkus. I was a hack, a wannabe, with all the writing talent of a squid, and I’d be better off investigating a real line of work, like, say, my local 7-11.
So I stopped. Completely.
But the ideas won’t go away. They flirt on the outskirts of my mind; tiny black-winged figures in the distance, soaring over the trees, somewhere between threatening and begging, waiting to be brought screaming to life beneath my typing fingertips. I find no joy in creating them, no joy in the process of making them coherent in the plot-line, and some pain in that they won’t tell me what they’re up to! I only have the vaguest, most frustrating idea.
But there is a perfect beauty to their flight, their menace, the way they can destroy and mutilate lives, then disappear without a trace. There is a terrible wonder in the way they devour others, and something inspirational in the heroes that oppose them, though they barely know what it is they’re up against. There are so many story threads here that I need a chart to map them–brother to sister, brother to friend, sister to friend, friend to friend, friend to lover, lover to lover, lives blown apart by the deepest connections, ties severed and wounds flayed as only the closest of friends can do, now in desperate need of mending before the darkness comes for them all.
And still, I’m writing a blog post instead, putting off the damned struggle of herding and wrestling all these ephemeral cats down onto the paper and pinning them in place, my collection of feral, furry little butterflies. I’m dodging the scratches to my psyche, the claw marks in my hopes and dreams, the little teeth biting viciously through my self confidence and tearing it away in chunks. I avoid the specter of my own failure by failing to try, and while that accomplishes nothing, at least I still hold the dream that I could have succeeded. You know, if I really wanted to.
You ever wonder how it is we can so easily lie to ourselves, even when we know what we’re doing is a lie?
These days I sometimes wonder if that’s all any of it is, a lie. I will never get a job or unemployment, but run out of money and be kicked out of my home. I will lose everything I own and roam the streets begging for a little compassion from a cash-strapped and increasingly hostile country, hoping not to be raped or murdered by people who see how vulnerable I am. I will never go overseas to meet my one true love, but break his heart and my own with false promises I can never keep. I will never see my son again. I’ll be seen as a shameful influence and a fuck-up by his parents. And I will never, ever, not in a million years, write my bestselling novel.
So why even try?
Sometimes the answer “because I need to eat and maybe keep warm” is the only one that keeps any of us going. It’s certainly a good enough one for me. So I will try again, for god and country and a desperate need to eat.
And who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
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