A Deep Breath (#30)

I am not in need of good luck right now.
Serendipity? She never showed up.
As long as I am willing to leave the house, I guess.

It's been a while, I know. A lot has happened since I last posted. My thoughts? Oh, I have a lot. Not sure if sharing them will make a difference. At least there will be proof on the internet of where I stood during these tumultuous times. However, today's post will not cover my reactions to current events. Sorry. Instead, I retread old wounds, but with new words. Listen, it is form of practice. And, a way to keep this project afloat. You can's sail if you're not floating.

 

Today, my mother asked about my blogging. The last post was on September 1st--five weeks ago. Not my longest drought. However, it is the start of a slide. Slip-ups happen, and do not have to lead to fuck ups. They are easy to recover from, most of the time. Trip up enough times, and you find yourself accelerating down a dark road. And, if you do not stop a slide quickly, things begin to spiral, and you find yourself heading in the wrong direction. Learn to exit sooner rather than later. I learned all that from Jennette McCurdy's I'm Glad My Mom Die. Great memoir.

(I wrote about it in this blog post.) 

Of course, she was talking about her struggles with an eating disorder and an abusive mother. Her therapist told her throwing up once in a while is far better than doing it every day (which was her habit for years). She should not allow a slip-up to inspire her to give up. If things begin to slide, the sooner you reset, the easier it will be to recover. Do this enough times, and snapping back quickly becomes a habit, too.

For me, this is about writing in general, and how my procrastination interferes. For me, writing is a tool for exploring my thoughts, and expressing them publicly. All my life, notions, observations, revelations, and reflections have swamped my brain. Briefly in elementary school, throughout high school, a few times in college, and occasionally while teaching, I released the internal tension by writing, sometimes in the form of fictional stories and essays, mostly through journaling, and finally by blogging.

My first short story showed up in the fourth grade. It was about a young Christian boy who needed to sneak past some Roman soldiers guarding a bridge--I attended a Catholic school and was an altar boy. Then another popped up in eighth grade. I moved on to dark beaches and glowing caves--it was Halloween and the Lord of the Rings was my favorite book. There was also a poem titled "Am a Thinker Who Knows No Bounds". Hey, I was socially awkward, and puberty affects us in different ways. Eventually, my ninth-grade teacher leaned on  

me to embrace writing. That was my most prolific fiction period. I still have those short stories, and a children's book--both main characters die. Listen, we all endure some form of teenage angst. By the time I graduated high school, there arose the story of a psychiatrist and his very short female patient, and a retelling of the Elephant Man. Those are the ones I remember.

Then college arrived, and the fiction stopped. Throughout, there was the journaling, especially my first year. And, two published letters to the editor. One was about the value of television (I focused on documentaries, and shows like Reading Rainbow), the other about the dangers of Ad Hominem attacks (the country was fighting over the Lewinsky Scandal). But all my energy went into writing essays for my classes. Or, avoiding the assignments altogether--I was not a studious student. Not a single piece of fiction, that I can recall, made an appearance.

After college, and a brief stint with computer programming (sometimes I wonder if I should have stuck with it--my paycheck would have been a lot bigger), I started teaching. During that time, it was my students' writing that became my focus. Despite all the ugly drama, humorous antics, quiet epiphanies, and daily self-doubts, I never once wrote any of it down. Given the unique structure and form of the private school where I taught, I could produce a series in the style of Harry Potter. Seriously, the Hogwarts and PLA have a lot in common. Since my career spanned fourteen years, it would surpass seven books, easily. And, I know just the student I would center it on! 

When the school closed, my mind broke. Alcohol and drugs were never my tools for escaping reality. Instead, I would just drown myself in thoughts, daydreaming away life's problems. But, they had become shattered. So, I dug deep, and uncovered a part of myself buried under distractions and neglect. Writing.

It had brought me happiness once, long ago. Those two little stories and a poem from childhood were just the start. If they had meant nothing, I would never had remembered their details. Then came ninth-grade English, and those three-to-five-page assignments that I transformed into fifteen-to-thirty-page novellas. Sure, I wrote them the day before. However, there was something about that feverish pace, of characters and plots flying from my head, through my fingers, onto the keyboard, and into the computer--a world I had just created appearing on my monitor. Fast and furious. And then, the relief, when my teacher returned it, graded, with high marks and praise. They were unedited, yet cohesive, and well-written, enough that someone could still enjoy it despite all the errors. For my fifteen year-old self, writing had become orgasmic--there, I said it.   

(That is the last explicit sexual metaphor I will use in this post.)

So, fast forward to November 1, 2014. What is a middle-aged man, whose fourteen-year career, one that he had learned to love, had just ended, to do? Well, he lacks the confidence, and inspiration to write fiction. Journaling would have been a good place. But, he is convinced that making it public will provide accountability, an important component for successfully building a habit. Since it is the 2010's, and blogs have been a huge source of information and comfort for this man (plus, they are still a "thing"), he decides to start his own.

Then, something changed on June 6, 2014: the school closed, and my job of fourteen years--teaching children between K and 12, and administering a small private school--ended.  I was unemployed.  The house, the wife, and the children, along with the two cats, still needed attending to, but a whole other part of my life stopped.

Now there is a void, and I have a desire to fill [it].

So, I will write, and perhaps my thoughts, my hopes, fears, desires, and needs will flow like sand through a funnel, a filtered funnel, into that void.  

And my wisdom will be the filter; my knowledge and imagination, the pouring sand.

Now, I just need to wake up at 5 AM every morning...

That was my second post of my first blog. There is still no filter. Not even sure about wisdom. If you are interested, here is the first one:

Make it so! ~ Jean Luc Picard, Star Trek: Next Generation 

And so I am.

I have spent the better part of ten years reading blogs of interesting, intelligent, creative people, and hoping I could emulate their achievements; I have spent the better part of twenty years wishing to write prolifically like I did in high school, and desiring an opportunity to publish my works.  I want to become a thoughtful, inspiring blogger.  The best way to form and express your thoughts and ideas, is to write--good writing is inspiring.  The best way to write well, is to write all the time--practice makes perfect.  And the only way to start, is to just do it.  So, here I am, just doing it.

Of course, once is never enough.  My writing needs to be a habit, which then turns into an addiction.  Habits can only form with repeated action.  In addition, by associating said action with something or someone in your environment, you acquire an enabler.  With an enabler, you have the inspiration, or excuse, to continue the habit.  One day, while trying to break the habit, you will find yourself unable to stop.  And then you will be addicted.

I want to be addicted to writing, and so I am creating this blog.

My goal is to post everyday, even if it is only a paragraph; thereby, creating repetition.  That will make it a habit.  By going public, I am creating an environment of readers; thereby, producing my enablers.  You will provide an excuse.  And with that excuse, I can eagerly embrace the addiction, writing.

So, join me on my journey of addiction.

You have nothing to lose.

Needless to say, it has yet to become an addiction. I cannot blame my enablers. Those who care have been vocal. Instead, like most of attempts at life-changing goals, old habits returend, and the early blogging fizzled. It would take four years of expressing myself in other creative projects, and a pandemic, to bring me back to writing. And, the second attempt began with a bang: I was producing three blog posts a week. Soon, I brought back my journaling, to reinforce the blogging. Eventually, I made three attempts at writing a novel, using the NaNoWRiMo challenge as inspiration. Somewhere on my computer are three files. In one, a land cries out for a band of heroes. In the second, a beloved doll struggles to share the attention of a little girl with a newcomer. Finally, in a third, a lonely former mercenary escorts, through an exhausted world, a nun who is all alone. Writing out those stories felt so good.

Then life threw up on me. The fictional writing disappeared. The blogging, sporadic. Even my daily journaling became inconsistent. Perhaps, my mind broke again, and I am denying it. Or, maybe I am just now coming around to accept it. Whatever the case, I need to be writing, and not just journaling entries. This blogging does help. And, look how much I have written in one day.

In the end, five weeks is not my worst slide. Two years ago, I went fourteen straight without a post. Spent it staring at all the jagged fragments. They are now reassembled. And it is time to start gluing them together.

Also, my country is going through a wild transition, and it is about time I talked about it. This blog is a good place to start.