It happened again. It always happens when I’m on a course. However insightful it is, however much I learn, I always end up feeling on edge and dissatisfied and mildly envious of the contributors. Then my customary self-liking dries up like a fallen leaf and ends up brittle and brown inside me.
I love to write. Nothing gives me so much pleasure, nothing absorbs me so totally and so deeply, and nothing helps me to find out what I think more clearly. And yet I don’t do it. This used to be the Portishead Pilgrim blog by the way. I’ve migrated the content to www.wildrumpusrev.com.
You probably haven’t noticed it’s 13 months since I last posted anything. It’s not as easy to notice the absence of something as the presence of something. I’m like the inverse of an addict. I need to write to save my life. Writing helps me feel rooted, heard, creative… as if I have a place in the world, whether or not anyone reads my writings. But it’s a dangerous thing to do. It makes me feel vulnerable and exposed. I often think of Demi Moore, the Lieutenant Commander in A Few Good Men, challenging Tom Cruise’s character to ‘make an argument’?! Lt Daniel Kaffee made pre-trial legal deals rather than stand up in court and make his case to a jury. When you write, you take a stance, and doing so you risk alienating yourself from the other 6,999,999 people in the world with a different stance to yours. Your words are out there, making an argument, or taking a position. At least not being the same as all the other words out there. And that’s why it’s easier not to do it. To stay safe. Except for the paradox: my well-being depnds on me writing.
For me not to write is a kind of self-harm. So it doesn’t matter if you read this or don’t, I have to write it. I’ve been on and off the wagon for most of my life now, but time’s getting short, and it’s now or never. My truest self writes. My deepest self has thoughts to convey that are probably of value to someone somewhere. My way of seeing and portraying the world could enlighten someone’s thinking. It may be vanity, but I’m wondering if the harder words feel to say, the more important it is they be articulated?
I trust there may be more where this came from. You’ll be the ones who find out.
