"I assume you're still not writing?"
In a long ago blog, I would write meditations on lines or chapter names from books - "Learning to See" (Barry Lopez) comes to mind. It feels appropriate to write a more recent sequel when I'm feeling like writing about not writing (still). The evidence exists here in its absence, the pages and pages of unfinished writing that sits unexamined. Why?
Is it so hard to reflect on the things one does? Socrates is in the room with me right now, pointing fingers. I wrote my friend Sara a letter in 2017 or 2018. I had finished "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanigihara and truly hated it. Anyone who thinks Eli Roth has the market cornered on torture porn needs to look at that book with some of the radical empathy it claims to possess. She never wrote back. I decided in 2021 I would write her a letter again and asked for her address. Three and a half years ago! Still not writing.
The funny thing is that's right before my mom died. Time has re-composed itself pandemic-style in the wake of that event. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since the "still not writing" mantra awoke this schism. A different before and after. One that feels less on me but in actuality exposes an existential crisis of my identity. I remember walking along Bowery with Sue over a decade ago, and I asked if she's still been writing and she said she gave it up. Didn't need to feel that guilt of not doing it. Better to focus on music, her passion.
What's my passion? Ugh, the evidence says its work. My ability to negotiate through the basic corridors of a healthy work/life balance flummox me to the point where the effort needed to write feels like more work, let alone existing in a world defined by the work. Why can't the writing be the passion though? Writing requires practice and doing. The bar for that is low; it can be typing! Let Truman turn in his grave with the other hoi polloi. But even in generic conversation, and maybe I have the Midwestern upbringing of the dinner check-in to thank for this, but I'm constant in my framing what little conversation I manage to be regarding to work. It dominates my thinking to the point where nothing else gets through the blood-brain barrier. The anxiety roils inside, a stew of guilt and sadness. Not everything has to be a work of serious thinking or art. The brain says, standards, though.
It's like the mentality is I can't finish anything if it isn't perfect. But to be ruthless and determined is simply a matter of practice. I am such a creature of routine that I feel as though this should be something fixable.
My therapist is quoted above at the start. Assumptions from a therapist. What a surprise it would be to say actually.
There's a sequel to this.
