Notes on Writing Again

Is writing any fun? Is it really like oxygen, rejuvenating and cathartic and all (underlay with Southern twang)? Is it really something you want to return to, day after day, or is it more of a self-imposed burden, hammered on yourself for no other reason than you're slightly good at it and hope against hope that it pulls your name and reputation out of the ordinary and into something actually meaningful?

I don't know. Sometimes it really does feel like a chore, if I'm being honest. It can be a drag to lug my lazy frame over to the rolling office seat and impel (compel?) the wheels to act. It can be really tough sometimes to come up with something worthy to write about, and to translate that into something I would want to read. 

But on such days, at least until now, I've been able to make it happen, to maintain the habit and get something, anything, out there. Because developing the habit is important. It provides the foundation for something bigger, perhaps even a writing career or verisimilitude of one. Something I can point at and be somewhat proud of. 

Is that the wrong reason to do this? Is this all ego? Probably. I don't think it's the only reason, but I also can't deny that it's part of it. It may ultimately end up an extended false start or major fail, but c'est la vie. The effort is what is important now.

Will this become fun? I don't know that it isn't, entirely. There are times when I find myself enjoying the exercise. I get in a flow and the product seems satisfying and it doesn't feel like a complete slog. Perhaps that's when I'm writing about politics and headlines and such, I don't know. But it's not ALL pushing a giant stone wheel up a hill, over and over again. 

I may also be misreading the room, here. Maybe I do actually enjoy this more than I realize or am letting on. The truth may be closer to that statement than I know. But that's another important but relatively unaddressed aspect of this whole endeavor - discovery. Writing to figure out what's on your mind, and better understand what you actually know. This is what fleshes out those precious inner blobs of thought and gives them some kind of real discernible shape, a type of translation that's seemingly been long missing from this meager, flailing existence. 

I need to know what I know, yet I've spent no shortage of time avoiding the effort needed to extract and come to grips with it. 

Shifting gears - I write and write and the more I do this more this just seems like a series of journal entries. Is that bad or contrary to the purpose? I don't know. Does it matter if it is? Probably not. 

Once upon a time, for a brief moment, I was careening toward a career in journalism. I don't know if I ever took it that seriously, to be honest, but I was aimed in that direction. There's even a piece of paper somewhere acknowledging that I've completed a certain number of courses in the subject, and I had even dipped my toes into the J-pool with various publications. 

But, I digress. What is journalism if not a series of journal entries - ongoing attempts to understand not only the world but what you know about it. And if I am going to resurrect or, shit, create an actual writing career (out of nothing), then what better place to thread the needle and sew the quilt than with seemingly random journal entries exploring what I know, what I know, how I perceive the world and it's often tiresome machinations. 

In fact, as I tap and tap here, I'm actually reversing how I feel about the whole journal entry idea and beginning to embrace it, like this may really be the right thing to do at the moment. Up to this point, I think I've been a bit resistant to this exercise BECAUSE of the feeling I'm using it as some sort of ipso facto therapy session and revealing too much. But maybe accepting it and embracing it as such is what's needed to keep it on track, or even take it to the next level. 

I've never been good at holding onto an idea long enough to turn it onto something more. But if I do accept this as a series of journal entries, at least at this point, maybe I can parlay that into something bigger. 

There's always hope, I guess. 

Til Tomorrow (or later today)


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