Gone Fishing

I spent the last year here rebuilding my confidence as a writer, forcing myself to see my life as noteworthy every day, gathering inspiration. I didn’t know what I was doing, and half-hoped the sheer pursuit of a Broken Down Writer theme would be enough to sustain the blog.

But giving myself about a half an hour a day to do this, I’ve been gumming the edges of what I really want to do, which is to write a full-length story. And I’ve been terrified by that because if I can’t do it, it will negate my life-long dream, and also because I know it will be terribly hard.

Posting blogs grants us an immediate, short-term satisfaction of casting ourselves into the world and then waiting for the chimes to ding when someone acknowledges us. And it sure feels good.

All our time is limited, and I’m happy to report I’m spending more of mine now on my hard-drive, picking my way through a story that’s troubling and difficult, as I knew it would be, because it’s forced me to go deep inside myself. And things don’t present themselves in a linear format, through the creation process…like life, it’s a mish-mash of scenes and impressions, hard to distill meaning.

I’m taking time off from the blog now in order to devote myself to a new writing project, and I’m grateful to you for being a part of the blog-journey with me this far!

I’ll leave now with a dream I had early last week, where I was at a soccer game and watching my team-mates on the field. I realized the game was almost over and I would miss out on getting a chance to play, which is not much different than how I felt when I really played soccer, in high school.

In my dream-state, I imagined whether I wanted to play offense or defense, and felt the rush of fear and anticipation when I thought about what I’d do when the ball came to me. I saw myself lacing my cleats, and that’s when I woke.

I really dread sports metaphors, but it’s time I got my ass in the game. Thanks for reading.

Categories: writing

Tags: Aleister Crowley, art, blogging, coming of age, commitments, dreams, James Joyce, liminality, Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Fool, writing