Warning: This is a nigh-incoherent, self-absorbed rant (what else is new?). Proceed at your own risk.
I’m not particularly sure where writing fits into my life.
I came to a conclusion walking home tonight from a pleasant evening that ran the gamut of the seven deadly sins, with heavy emphasis on sloth and gluttony: writing to me, is much like a bowel movement, causing discomfort when obstructed and relief when it has passed.
Pardon the graphic imagery, but it serves its purpose. Relief is not pleasure. I’m not sure that the pleasure comes from the act of writing itself, only the release, the feeling of pressure released, of a noose cut from the gallows.
The rest is pride. That’s where the real pleasure comes from. The accolade, or the disgust, or the confusion or anger. The incitement is where the pleasure lies. The acknowledgement of others. The audience. You.
That’s why I think blogging gets to be too much for me. It’s all relief and no release. A tonic to cure the symptoms. That’s not to say I won’t continue. The reason I set up the “blog schedule” is to continue to provide myself relief in hopes that one day I’ll write something that will cause a continent or two to shift. To finally satisfy my pride.
I restarted this particularly blog entry four times. Four. Each time I felt as if I was writing absolutely nothing. I complained about my lack of acceptance, my attempt to find a place in this world. All bullshit. I know what niche I fill and how decorative and inconsequential it is. I don’t need to write about it. My frustration about it has run its course, and thus a new topic needed to be addressed. I defaulted, of course, to the one thing all writers write about: writing. I’ve never had writer’s block like that before, not with the blog. My problem with the blog was never my lack of things to say, only my lack of urge to utter. This seems initially contradictory to my vain and preening nature, but consider that I often think that I’m far too good for the blogosphere, or just too good for anything in general, and my sloth becomes a bit easier to understand.
I’m something of a fraud, you see.
I honestly believe that I’m meant to write. The more I do write, the more I know that it’s true. But the problem comes from my sense of entitlement. That I should be immediately good, immediately accepted and praised and fretted about and railed against oh yes please do tell me I’m so fucking good and so fucking bad.
I don’t deserve to skip a step, but I often think I ought to be allowed to and therein lies yet another one of my fundamental problems.
And thus, from the chaos of this clusterfuck of self-examination, a goal is set. To find the worth in the work. To appreciate the craft of writing and derive pleasure from its making. Not to mentally elevate so that it’s “good enough” for me, but for me to understand what the act is and become defined by it. I think I may have tasted it from time to time, but the time has come:
I’m going to find out what it’s like to be a writer. For real this time.
