Taking My Own Advice

I've long said that there is no such thing as writer's block. That it's just a block you put on your own creative flow when you're just being stubborn. You're unwilling to write something that isn't good, so you write nothing at all. But the good is buried under a layer or two of bad and only way through is to just write it out.

Writing is rewriting as they say. And blogging isn't writing, as many bloggers on the interwebs are all too happy to prove. So I'm gonna ride this impulse to write right on through this wall I have in my mind (or is it in my fingers?). I apologize in advance to anyone that happens to stumble upon this blog. Maybe I should start making that my standard sign off actually...

I've been in a real funk lately. I've been eating poorly, not exercising, watching a lot of TV (even by my standard) and doing little else. I've gained back a bunch of the weight I lost in the fall. Now I could blame it on my emotional state, or my social life. I could blame it on my never ending search for gainful employ. The truth is, I don't really know what it is. But I know when it started and that's my best clue to all of this. It's been a slow progression into melancholy since January. This malaise started there. Time for some honesty I guess.

I had a friendship with a girl in the fall that slowly turned into more, at least on my end. But I could not allow myself to take the next step because this girl is not a Christian. As my friend Graham described it, "It's the only thing that's a problem and it's the most important thing."

I couldn't even allow myself to find out if she felt the same way at that point (in hindsight now, I suspect she very well may have), because I was pretty infatuated. My emotions were torn enough already, I couldn't risk finding out a relationship was actually possible. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't have been able to resist.

It all would have been great if I could have asked her out, gotten shot down and moved on. But I had reached the point where I no longer wanted to ask her out because I couldn't risk her saying yes. So after agonizing over this for much longer than I should have, I did the only sensible thing I had left at my disposal; I ran away. (and yes, I know sensible may be generous; I've had a lot more time to think about this than you have).

One day I just stopped contacting her. I stopped going to events or places I might run into her. I had made my decision and I needed to stay firm, but I could not stand to be around her in the state I was in. It was too painful and I feared my twitterpation would betray me.

The unfortunate side effect of this was that I simultaneously cut out an entire social circle that we shared. And for the better part of the last four months, I have only seen a handful of those friends, a handful of times. These were people that I was mostly seeing on a near weekly basis for the prior six months or so.

So I cut that hole out of my life and I started to sink. Whether that was the cause or just a contributing factor or even the last straw on a paraplegic camel, they are most definitely related. Now I don't know if this will make any difference or not as far as my somber demeanor of late, but I felt like I've been internalizing this for too long and I'm striving to be more vulnerable on this blog. So there you go. If you're the praying sort, I could use some prayer for this lack of motivation. I need to get some kind of motor running again.

Insignificant Ramblings

Every once in a while, I find my sleeping schedule sliding, seemingly of its own accord. For instance, back in the fall there was a period where I physically could not sleep past nine a.m., no matter when I went to sleep. At the moment, I'm in a restless nights period where I lay in bed for hours before I can fall asleep. I think perhaps my sleep time has shifted later into the night without consulting me. Terribly inconsiderate of it really. But hey, at least I don't have anything going on right now. And who decides what the normal time to sleep is anyways? Obviously society runs on an average of sorts, but few and far between is the soul that is average, seemingly defying the term itself.

But what better way to stay up late than to pour out my thoughts onto a page, digital though it may be? I've been neglecting this exercise (and all exercise if I'm honest) these past months and I have a growing yearning in my spirit over it. When I don't write I begin to feel that I have nothing relevant to say. That my writing is invalid. That it doesn't matter. I'll never be as good as ____, so what's the point? I might as well pack up and go home. Find in a cabin in the heart of the Minnesota wilderness. Live off the land. Fish, hunt, plant, grow.

Then what? I'd want to write about it. I'd have to. Like so many great American novelists before me, I'd write about a man that escaped from the rigors of a world that's technologically advanced, yet socially and emotionally stunted. Broken even. We slowly lose our interaction to the irresistible draw of interconnectivity.

And so I'd write. I'd reminisce of a time I never knew. A bygone era of Twain, or Fitzgerald. Always to the past, always to the wilderness. It's the American ideal. The rugged cowboy. The stubborn pilgrim. The durable farmer. This is the stock we come from. We were never meant for this world of reality stars and celebrity marriages.

We melt away our brains on the trivial while the world burns around us. Untold millions suffer in silence while the western world debates the celebrity of the minute's style choices. #Dehumanized

But I will stand and fight. Turn the machines against themselves. That's American too. Maybe I won't start a ranch but there's still work to be done here. My fingers hold the key.

Writing is an inherently arrogant tool. The writer says "My thoughts are worth sharing! Everyone should know the things that come from my mind." And perhaps they are right. If you disagree and write your own thoughts, are you not guilty of the same thing? Any exchange of ideas carries this problem of course, but words are never more permanent than when put onto a page. Words in the air are just ripples in the air. They vanish, often without having touched an ear to perceive them. But written words can endure the centuries; persist unaltered through the millenia. Who's to say who will read these words, these idle thoughts of mine, in the distant future, unimagined in my own time?

But my thoughts have run their course for now and I will stop the flow here. This is raw, unfettered writing. No structure to constrain and no story to tell. These are just the thoughts that float down the river of my mind at three a.m. on a insignificant Friday morning...