Our Dreams
Why does the idea of writing sounds more charming then the act of sitting and doing it? It is a dream because it is literally experienced as a fantasy rather than reality I chase. And it’s much easier there. I say the writer life is so romantic and what I want, yet it is all self-image. It’s a dream because nothing of my reality signifies that I am willing to commit to it. That I actually will accomplish at the level I dream I will. True, but the fact that people are growing up eating vegetables, sitting on benches, walking their dogs, doesn’t mean some of us can’t go to the moon. Collectively we are dreamers.
Waiting for inspiration
I procrastinate because I am awaiting that elusive creative insight to feed me a line or a story. It rarely comes. And when I try to write without that it comes out more plain and inspiration-less than I imagine. I am trying to label and understand what is in me before it can be released. I have an idea of how and what should come out and the translator from feeling to words never does its job properly. All my work comes out with a sense of frustration rather than creation. So I stagnate, until I erupt with the desire to write anything.
Quick starts but no follow through
Every new project begins as me putting the petal to the metal; my work is full of kick starts, surges of belief and energy, ready to finally aim and fire. But what is it but an empty promise. The ability to maintain passion is the challenge. Starting it is the easy part.
Blurring the lines
How can I blur the lines of what a writer should be, and what I am? It makes me very self-conscious that I write so outside of the box. But I am just chasing the label less, following a scent that takes me at times beyond the city walls, beyond the predictable. Writing lately is a test of faith because I usually don’t know what it is exactly that I am planning to write. I am getting more and more in-love with going further and further away from knowing. How deep is the rabbit hole of unknowns? Writing takes you to the unknown because we have no idea what the destination really is. Knowing what you are going to write is like putting a blockade in my way saying that it HAS to happen this way. Being free is frantic because you have no direction. I am on my way and I don’t know where that is.
Passionate now, forgotten after
I feel like my goal is to experience dramatic bursts of self-expression. This entertains me now, yet afterword, it immediately is unimportant and done, and I am already focused on the next one coming through me. I have to accept I do that for the moment – there is no mourning of unpublished work, discoveries not shared, and there is no future moment of fulfillment or reward or material thank you. Life’s become a firework, bright one moment, gone the next. Embrace that.
The Label less writer
To think I can’t be put in a box. What makes a writer is not if he is a novelist or a self-help writer. It’s if you take a bunch of words on paper and shows it to people. I don’t have to label this, or feel that I have to be categorized in order to write. This is why people don’t start, or change their jobs, because there’s not always labels and answers to define where we are going. People don’t leave things a lot of times because they are scared of the unknown. Of what they don’t know they will discover.
Who am I?
I don’t ask who am I and it’s mostly because I am scared of the answer being blank. That’s it’s not who I have been for the past 28 years. That who I am, what I believe in, is incongruent to what I discover. I’m scared of the shock of that, and the now what feeling. Maybe “Who am I” is a daily discovering, rather than a guaranteed label. Maybe who I think I am is only a small limited piece of myself. Maybe the whole picture of me is more than I can imagine. It’s terrifying to start blank.
What is true?
So what is truth? Is it the ability to clearly and orderly be labeled? Or is the willingness to say what’s on your soul rather than what will be embraced, be predictable, or accepted. If I was crying while writing this, would it be a holy experience? I’d say so. I’ve been to the temples, mountain tops, gurus, and days of silence, and felt less sometimes then I feel while writing. That’s why it’s sacred for me. This was a place where I find truth, rather than admire the truths that others have found. Sacred sites give you the impression you can buy your way to spirituality, that you can inherit it. That it’s a destination on the list of places.
Addiction
Why does addiction override my logic? Why is our body built to chase what makes us feel intense, even if it is harmful, hurtful, and even when we tell ourselves we want to stop? We are intensity addicts. We think we will be better people if we stop, yet somehow that alone isn’t enough to change us. Logically addiction is self-destruction, and we can’t logically outsmart our way through things. Maybe addiction is a fear of the unknown. Addicted to the known.
Living in Free Fall 