Week One

I have been inspired to write a lot lately. I have been posting a lot to the BBW blog, and this piece started there, but I am posting it here as I try to figure out a few things about my direction these next few years.

I feel like I am just spinning my wheels here--both on this blogging effort and at life. I wonder about life generally because the older I get, things just seem to get more complex. There is a lot of shit swirling around me and I feel utterly powerless in its midst. There is a lot of change going on in the world and you already know how I feel about much of that nonsense and fuckery (yeah, I am back to cursing). And as writing is my refuge in times like these, I am placing a lot of pressure on myself to increase my output even though it is not entirely clear that it matters...

So let me address that issue first. I started blogging more than 10 years ago just to have a means of expressing myself, but I have been writing like this for years. Before it was called blogging, I wrote pieces in a spiral bound notebook with a black Bic ballpoint pen. When I wrote out some of my thoughts on the computer, I called it computer journaling.

When I began this effort, my intention was to be discovered as a writer. I had written a few things that had generated some interest, and after having two jobs where I wrote to convey the positions of others, I thought I was ready for the next level. I think back in 2005 when this blog began, I had hoped that I would end up writing a column for some online ezine or maybe I would have written a book or two by now.

Well, I am still at it, writing in obscurity. I am a decent writer, but not a very good promoter of my writing. In fact, I am not good at all when it comes to self-promotion or taking credit for things. I am like those artists that only focuses on making art, but needs lots of help managing everything else in their lives because the art becomes all-consuming. Or perhaps I am a writer afraid of both success and failure because I have found failure is way too easy. It takes the same amount of effort as trying to achieve success; however, success requires more sustained effort. Failure can happen any number of times but success seems to be a one-time shot.You get plenty of opportunities to make the shot, but you only get that one chance to make that shot.

After blogging all these years, I believe that I want more, but I am afraid of what more means. Does it mean that I need to dedicate real time to writing and not just make the most of stolen moments? Does it mean that I need to prioritize my craft above the needs of everyone else, and at what cost?

Which is where I question how well I am doing at life beyond my writing. This month has already been a bitch and whenever I think things have calmed down, shit happens. Like yesterday, I was working on this piece when I got a call that fucked the rest of my day, my night and is still causing me agitation. So when I contemplate whether I should become one of those people whose every waking moment is spent honing her craft, it is never a realistic thought. Or in other words, I could never truly tell the rest of the world to go fuck off while I write since a good deal of what fuels my need to write is the shit that happens to me!

My most honest writing comes from the constant questioning and self-doubt: have I been a good enough daughter, am I a decent mother, how can I be a better wife, why don't I feel like I am enough? Why do I take so much to heart? Why do I keep getting in my own way? Who am I to think that my dreams are realistic? Would I have been better off if I had just been content to be a mediocre lawyer? What made me think I had what it took to be any kind of lawyer in the first place (remember how you nearly failed out of law school)? Why don't you just give up and admit that you are a failure?

Because even if I am unexceptional, mediocre, average or just ok, I am not a failure.

So I will continue. The world may never discover me, or it might. I will continue to write when I need to express how the world affects me. I will write when I have a lot to say but no one available to hear any of it. I write to leave a record of my opinions, my thoughts, my anxieties and also my hopes and dreams. I write because I am a writer.