begin as you mean to go on
Back in the molten days of the primordial past, when people
who posted things on the internet made super a lot of fun of the word blog
(BLLLLLAAAAAAWG) and congratulated themselves for not writing blogs, I was
congratulating myself for not writing a blog. I was writing an ONLINE JOURNAL
and that meant carefully crafted mini-essays that delved into the minutia of my
life but in a poetic, charming, introspective-but-relatable way that made you
laugh, and cry, and cheer.
Or that’s what it felt like I had to do. The pressure, my
god. To always write something funny or smart or wise or knowing or smart or in
some way crafted to give you the feels and feel like you loved me. I started
off writing almost every day and it slowly slowly drifted down to just
sometimes and almost never but I kept writing online for almost ten years and
then I got paid to write online for a couple of years and then I said you know
what, I do not want to write online any more because I am afraid every time I
post something I am only opening myself to ridicule and misery and who the fuck
knows where that came from, because I’ve never gotten hate mail or hate
comments but such is the stuck-in-your-own-brainness of so many folks in this
world who need to get unstuck from their brains and be the -ness they need to
see in their lives.
Anyway, this latest tick over to a new couple of end digits
in the year, you see people reflecting on their past and thinking about their
journeys and being all retrospective and introspective and nostalgiaspective
and I realized I don’t remember very much about my year at all.
I did not like school in any way and always felt bombarded
and raw and vulnerable. We looked for an apartment for three months or so, and
found one and loved it and moved in May. My best friend and soulmate was
getting sicker and sicker, and the hospice care versus transplant journey was so
fucking fraught and endless and the story ended with a race to his bedside to be
there for his last breaths, labored and sucking and painful, and a part of me shrunk
into a tiny ball of pain that still beats inside my chest, behind my heart. And
– what. I gave up on so many manuscripts and book proposals that I had written
and been proud of and somehow just got crushed into tiny bits and discarded. I
discovered I loved screenwriting but the script I was writing would never get
produced because epic space operas were too expensive, especially when they’re
written by nobodies. I stopped writing anything else. I abided.
No, I stopped binge drinking. That’s a thing. Why wouldn’t I
think that was a good thing, an impressive thing, a thing to be proud of? My
ability to self-sabotage is a magical and powerful one, and my fear of writing
is a powerful one, and the combination is like a Wonder Twins kind of thing
where my terror and my uncanny ability to dodge around the things that cause
terror become me having maybe too many glasses of really bad wine and then
saying WHOOPS guess I can’t work!
No more of that.
More thinking about what I want, and what will get me there.
More thinking about where I am now, alongside all the thinking about where I
want to go. More being here and taking care of myself and loving my family than
panicking about not being enough and trying to bury that misery and self-hate.
Less self-hate.
More posts. (BLLLLAAAAAAAWGS) More keeping track of my life
and marking small moments, less generalized anxiety. More writing, less [ ].
I’ve read two books so far this third day of the year, and I want to read 100 total. I’m in the middle of plotting a novel, and I want to write it, all of it, steadily. I’ve decided to trek to the library every weekday to write, and I have done that, despite Rainfall Warnings and sheets of rain and self-doubt. I’ve started plotting this book, and it’s about girl gamers and a fuck you to #gamergate. I’m worried about Crom because he seems like he’s always anxious, always. I love my wife more than most things by which I mean any of the things. We just bought a pink couch and how does it get better than that? Well, in an infinite number of ways for an infinite number of folks but right now for us, it is an upgrade in the quality of life we started upgrading already with the purchase of full-sized electric blankets on sale. Also we roasted a duck for New Year’s Eve, and that was an olympic effort. Why does anyone roast a duck? That is a question for the ages.
I am happy to be alive, for the first time in a really long
time. How are you?
