[Pro tip: writing about how often you write is really interesting. Do this often!]
Google Reader seems to sap away my creative juices such that I often find little left in the tank when I have time to devote to larger efforts. Why write several paragraphs on the Department of Defense deploying area denial weapons or Colorado Springs converting itself into a libertarian -wasteland- utopia when I can make snide one line comments on a shared item in my public items feed? Or argue incessantly over hypotheticals and whether saying or doing this or that is racist or just misguided or "reflects the reality of the situation" so it's not racist at all because really, it has to be the fault of those damn lazy minorities that they... where was I?
I have a lot of project writing that's been building up, and it weighs on my mind at times. Something I liked about a game I played, In A Wicked Age, was that the game incorporated a "We Owe" list into play. Characters who met certain requirements were put on the list. They deserved more as a result of what they had achieved. Similarly, I feel as though certain events place themselves on my own internal "I Owe" list. I owe an anniversary to a mistake. I owe gratitude to those deserving who too often get short shrift only as a result of my failings. I owe my mother, Mother's Day having just occurred. I owe at least one piece to my father as a down payment, a silly/solemn (it varies) vow I made just after his death. I owe my talents my life's work. I owe love my life's devotion.
As time has passed, I find it harder to give voice to the words that roil inside. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and lack of use atrophies all strength. At this stage it seems to be all I can do to stave off being left only with the ability to recall dimly that there is yet more to write. I wrote more when I was younger. I had more to say and less reservations about saying it. It would be more accurate to say I had less to say and fewer inhibitions against shouting it. A world that for all appearances has no interest in what you have to contribute is one in which you learn to hold back. Resounding silence teaches a stern lesson.
In those halcyon days I knew a group of folks and we all used livejournal. I wrote. I commented on the entries of others. I received comments on my own entries. It was a good system. Being at an ivory tower helped to keep things limited to a general pool of knowledge, and we could share thoughts and opinions on a more varied pool of subjects with a more varied pool of interlocutors than we had opportunity for in our classes. Those times passed. As my friends list shrank, my interest waned. An echo chamber loses a lot of its appeal when you just see what you wrote repeated back at you. In time, it was only of use as a semi-regular catalog of anything that caught my attention hard enough to force further thought from me in the form of words organized into occasionally sequential blocks of quivering word-speech-text.
It's odd, or perhaps just self-centered of me, but the internet seems to mature on a pace with myself. In earlier days, I/we had not a thought for how my/our actions would reverberate down the line. Once, we had profiles open for all our peers to see. Once, I wrote whatever came to mind that I had the impulse to write on. Now, we keep our facebooks profiles private. Now, I stop to consider that perhaps writing this or that will say something about me, affect future employment opportunities, or show me to be less erudite than I wish to be viewed as, and stop writing. I have let the experimental entries go instead of committing to them as I once did. The words are stillborn on my fingers and find no release except in "that's lame" or "that's awesome" comments on pictures of kittens and child kidnappers in Haiti (that was chiasmus careful readers, I don't think kittens are lame).
I've been reading a blog of a friend of a friend of whom I am fond and would consider a friend if I had had more time to interact with him. As it is, I view him as favorably as I probably can another person and read what he writes about himself. He writes often, and has even been published. I wonder sometimes if devoting myself to a longer project might be what I need to give voice to those things that linger, to cross things off the list. Knowing me, that won't happen. I'm not the most diligent of workers. I am best suited for that which calls for focus and delivering short bursts of intense effort, leaving the longer repetitive grunt work to be done by other hands. Not to say I can't grind when it's called for, but I have noticed that as my options have grown, I find grinding harder to focus on. Blinders, if I could find such as would suffice for me, would substantially increase my productivity.
However, while being blind would allow me the time to pare down the list, it would leave me with only a small portion of a lifetime's experience to draw upon both as inspiration and as a means to improve my craftsmanship. Generalizing from that dualistic view (the value of being closed or open) is an item of interest for me, but I'll leave that to my list. I can console myself, I suppose, by remembering that some of the best works now circulating were produced by men of advanced age with no real repertoire to boast of up until that point. So long as I keep hold of those things that I owe a new life to, live yet more of those things, and read, I can act as if they are simply delayed for the benefit of all.
Future self, how was this one?
