It’s been a while. Let’s get reacquainted, shall we?
As you probably know, being a return visitor or maybe just an observant newcomer, I’m a writer. For a long time, I loved to write. Then, for a while, I loved to write and I had ambitions. Then, I just had ambition and well–I found it doesn’t really work without the love. I kept finding excuses not to write. I’d like to confront some of those excuses here.
It’s crap.
In a nutshell, this is how I felt about almost every single word I wrote for quite a while. I have sat down and tried to write in spurts and fits in the last two years. I haven’t finished anything in all that time because I didn’t feel that anything was worth finishing. Or maybe endings are really hard and I’m better at beginnings. Or maybe the rejections finally took their toll. That last one could be true, but it feels more intrinsic than that. I am a perfectionist and a procrastinator, two things which go hand in hand.
Intellectually, I know that it’s impossible to write gold in the first draft. I also know that when I was at my most productive, I was writing three pages a day for 5-6 out of 7 days a week. I’ve proven to students that 250 words a day (about 15 minutes worth of work) can yield a novel a year.But sometimes my brain is not my friend.
The world went to hell.
Not literally, but figuratively. Maybe literally, depending on who you are and where you’re from. But for me, the 2016 presidential election was a hard blow. Passive activism became a large part of what I thought about and talked about on Facebook. In the midst of all that, I wondered if the world really needed another white, middle-aged, straight male voice. Doubt got the best of me.
Speaking of voices.
I wonder if I’m late to the internet and it’s always been this way or if things are actually changing right before our eyes. But there’s SO MUCH content out there now. Trying to wade through, much less stand out from it is an intimidating task. I didn’t feel up to it. I always just wanted to write. Not write and maintain an author page and a video channel and a blog and a Patreon, all of which I need to update at least twice a day to stay trending. I still don’t feel up to it. Which is why I’m not going to do it. I’ll still maintain this blog, but I’m going to be talking about more than just writing (more on that later). If that means that I toil in obscurity for the rest of my life, then so be it. I’m just trying to get back to love.
I had other things going on.
That’s true. That’s still true. I moved across the country and started a new career. I’ve spent a lot of my free time educating myself about being a bike mechanic. I go for a lot more bike rides than I used to, even at the peak of my commuting days. It was on a ride that I had an epiphany of sorts. Though maybe I should call it a rediscovery.
I love riding. I like being in shape and the gear nerdiness that goes along with being really into something, but that’s really more of a side effect of loving to ride. The destination doesn’t matter. Being healthy doesn’t matter. Just being on the bike and spinning the pedals; charging down hills and grinding up them; taking a moment to look around while the wind whooshes past my ears. I feel the way about riding that I used to feel about writing. I’m trying to use that to get back to loving writing as well.
I felt trapped.
I felt backed into a corner in some ways. After the election, I wanted to talk about political stuff here, but I hadn’t done that before and I lacked the courage to start. My blog was about writing and I’m a horror writer. But that’s not all I am. I’m also a bike mechanic. And a Magic: the Gathering player and a player of other games. And a watcher of movies and TV and a reader of books, some of which are not horror. I felt that I needed to stay on brand if I had any chance of building a brand. And all of that was just me overthinking. As I’ve said before, my brain is not always my friend. But this is my blog and I’ll do what I want with it.
I let my excuses be excuses.
In the end, it’s as simple as that. I didn’t want to write and I found reasons not to. This led to a lot of guilt for me. I felt I was betraying my muse, ignoring her, not doing her justice. I’m trying to be more forgiving of myself and let it go. Forgive myself and move forward, I mean. Into a brighter tomorrow. Or something like that. I have goals and I have a plan. I also have forgiveness and I’m trying to find love. Mi padre said something to me that I try to come back to when I feel like shit: failure is not final, neither is success.
-\-
This post will become obsolete as time goes on, once the changes stop being changes and become just the way things are. But if you’re an old friend or a new one, I’m going to be opening up what I talk about here to cover more facets of myself and my interests. I’ll try to categorize and tag appropriately. But, as with everything, it will be a work in progress and subject to change and redesign.
The Chimerical Dark 