Giant Existential Questions and Small Frustrations

I’ve been a serious writer for six or seven years now; it’s an important part of my identity, and something I enjoy doing tremendously. Except I’m not writing, much, hardly, these days.

Well of course I’m busy. But I was busy before and I wrote. I wrote quite a bit when I was working full time.

Something is different now…I’m struggling to figure out what. Mark had an intriguing thought this morning, when we talked: he points out that I’m working on pieces that were started a year or two or three ago, when I was in a very different place; I’m not finding the energy right now that created those pieces.

It’s back to the question I asked a month or so ago: finish what I started, or work on what’s fresh and exciting? (And I know the answer is “fresh and exciting”, but, I don’t even know what that is right now…)

This darn short story. All it wanted was a little polishing! It’s like the sorcerer’s apprentice, every change I make opens up giant new avenues and questions and directions and problems, and they’re all crazy and dumb, and I don’t have energy for any of them.

Who am I as a writer? What am I trying to say? What are my stories? What are my stories NOW? Am I too busy living my stories to have the space to process and document them?

And small frustrations. Every little thing I set out to do becomes a big thing. (Hmm, seems familiar…) I can barely keep up with the forces of entropy in the house, in the email inbox, in the yard. Nothing stays fixed.

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I may or may not be going hiking tomorrow. But, whether I do or not, there will be sushi afterwards. So there is some consolation. 🙂

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Oh and, I saw one of those notes on another car on my street this morning–a pickup truck–lending further credence to the idea that it’s a scam of some sort. Maybe somebody targeting cars that don’t appear to be driven very often, to see how well-monitored they are? I don’t know, it seems quite complicated, whatever it is.

Or maybe they do actually want to buy used cars. Who knows?

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