June 29th, 2010
Expectations and Last Resorts
Why can’t writing be as effortless as it used to be?
It’s not from lack of trying. I sit here, struggling with each word, as if there is some unspoken necessity that each sentence I write must be perfect. And I know I sound like a broken record, because this ALWAYS happens, and then I ALWAYS come here and complain about it – as if that does any good. It’s been like this for the past two years, and I’ve yet to figure out a way to overcome these obstacles. WHY is that? Why can’t I just WRITE like I used to – just doing it for the enjoyment of it? Or writing because I have something I NEED to say? I can’t say that I’ve ever been a writing genius, but at the same time, I know the writing quality I’m capable of, and it is SO much better than what I’ve been accomplishing.
I suppose this is what they mean when they say you should just write every day. It’s obvious advice, really, but it only poses another problem: What in the world can I write about that would help me move forward instead of being trapped in an endless quest of unobtainable perfection? I need to get in the habit of writing and “letting it flow,” but using my book as practice is only driving me insane. That approach obviously isn’t working. I need something else to practice on, and there’s only one alternative I can think of.
And that one alternative feels just as daunting as climbing Mt Everest.
Me and this journal haven’t seen eye to eye in years. Part of it is that I’ve grown out of it – this website represents who I was when I was 17, with all my arrogance and self importance and general teenage angst. It’s who I was when I was 19, when I orchestrated my own failure and I first began to realize that life wasn’t going to work out like I planned. It’s who I was in my early 20s, when I holed myself up in my home and played online games all day so I could ignore reality. This journal encompasses my faults, my fears, and my weaknesses, and I’ve done nothing but put it on display for the past 13 years (good GOD I’m getting old). This journal has NEVER been a good thing for me to have, and yet I’ve clung to it. Sometimes desperately, and I’ve yet to find the courage to let it go. Even now, I couldn’t completely turn my back on this if I tried.
So can I really travel down that road again? What point would there even be to it, when I can’t write about my job (don’t want to be fired) or my boyfriend (don’t want him going apeshit because I dare flung his name out in cyberspace – and believe me, I’ve been there before with my first college roommate, it’s not pretty)? What else is there in my life aside from my cats, food, and TV? It’s not like I have anything else interesting going on in my world, I don’t even really have friends, and writing vague posts on my thoughts and feelings has long since become stale after the past few years. How many more posts like this can I even stomach? How long would I have to endure it before I got my writing confidence back?
And do I even WANT to try and find out?