Ok, so. It has been a long time since I have been doing any writing with any kind of regularity, and as is often the case the long absence has been gnawing at over this time until nublike I am first to set fingers to keyboard and start pouring out ideas into the silent void of pixelated code, some attempt and literary communication to scratch that itch, that insistent drumbeat telling me to create verbally that for some forsaken reason I always end up deigning to slough off like a weight on my back or walk off like a cramp in my leg. For some reason the protracted activity of sitting and thinking and typing and writing and putting thoughts into sentences and building them into paragraphs is something that invariably ends up bugging me. Maybe my chair isn't comfortable enough or maybe I just can't sit still or maybe I am just lazy and undriven. I can't think of anyway to trick my mind into doing it on a more regular basis. I seem to be stuck in this cycle of typing typing typing for a week or two and then getting tired of it and going off and doing something like watching television or maybe reading a book, or just fucking around on the internet surfing tumblrs for hours and hours and hours or refreshing the same criticism websites over and over and over hoping that finally this time this one will have some new content for me to lie back and read on my laptop and then I will have that to do instead of writing and yet each and every time all the time that I am doing all of that I am thinking, you should be writing, you should be doing something constructive, this is not constructive, this is not getting you where you want to go in your life. You don't get points for idling. Even now a part of me, having written all this in one sitting is want to get, up walk around, pace for pacing's sake, maybe open up the firefox browser in the lower left hand corner and see, in one of those websites, any one of them, has maybe update one little thing, one new photo that they are reblogging from somewhere else on the internet. A part of me, becoming so aware of this tendency, this seeming procrastination, has given up on ever making any progress on this writing thing, has, in fact, accepted that it is not to be, that writing is not my fate. And, in fact, this part has been liberating. A writer writes, after all, and keeps writing and writes every day. I do not. I am not a writer. So if I am not a writer, what am I? I just freed up the rest of my life! What do I want to do with it? Focus on a career? Well, in truth, I have made some recent headway with that, enough to give me some momentary contentment in my forward momentum through time. Start a family? Well, that ties into a host of insecurities and eccentricities that I haven't even begun to grapple with, and in some small way do not want to, though I know my ignoring of them is stunting my development as a fully-fledged, fully-engaged person. I think somewhat I am waiting to deal with the second thing until I get a little farther ahead in the first thing, build up enough self-confidence to feel I can move ahead with it. But really, even counting those two things, what do I want to spend time doing? What do I want to do, right now, that I actually find fulfilling? And the most obvious direct answer to this, is something artistic. And I basically have two avenues for accomplishing this, drumming and writing. Well, three, but the third is drawing and that I find more aggravating and am poorer at than the other two. I don't have a working situation to play the drums regularly, and don't seem to be working too hard to be find one, and have just been playing hand drums on my legs and desktops all the time. This is a momentary respite, but is doesn't actually feel like accomplishment, and I think I crave that sense of accomplishment, the production of something. Unfortunately, accomplishing something more with drumming would involve forming a band, proactively hunting for one, and that involves a lot of social work and interaction and ringleading that I do note feel up to as someone who is still completely out in lunch on melodic music theory, or I could glom onto a band with a bunch of strangers, and I don't feel like setting up my kit in some stranger's den. So that leaves writing. Obviously I am a nascent and a neophyte at that activity, still developing, still unpolished, and unpublished, but I do get a little tinge of satisfaction at each short piece I finish and published on the internet, throwing out into the world like spare change. And every little piece I do create gets me closer to some goal, makes me teach myself new things and come to innately understand more aspects of narrative structure and dramatic weights and characterization and imbuing theme and utilizing language, and even if I am not destined to be a Writer in the occupation sense, that doesn't mean I can't you know write, and thus be a writer, in the general sense. It's ok if that is not my identity, and I think in some way holding on to that particular dream is holding me back from actually reaching it, at least, for me, because of the odd backwards-forwards way my mind is wired where my hopes become work becomes stress becomes something to flee from. It's only when I stop wanting it, when it stops being a goal, that it becomes something that I am comfortable in doing, when I realize that if there some egotistical part of myself that thinks I deserve it, that that part is wrong, for I don't deserve it, there are many many people more deserving of that something, people who actually, you know, write, and enjoy it and do it and keep doing it whether it brings them something or not, and that the fact that I beat myself up over whether a small (and I think it might actually be quite small) part of myself deserves something is a sign of my own further neuroses, after all, some people think they deserve it and use that impetus to work harder until they do really deserve it, it is only when I realize all that they I can nevermind the bollocks and just get down and get back to the fun and the the creativity, the creation, of writing. Of taking thoughts in my head that are floating around and setting them down in cold concrete prose. When I can get down to doing that I'll be happy.
