I am discarding the notion that I must begin this writing by justifying the act of this writing. That is the usual weight around my neck; that sad and guilty and womanish feeling, suspecting that surely there is something more important I ought to be doing. I am not sure where I absorbed as Truth that everything - literally, everything in the world, howsoever intangible yet existent - mysteriously supersedes my own well being and interests. I usually blame my mother.
This is probably unfair. She was once one of 14 children on a farm in Iowa. Only twelve survived. The oldest died of something historical and dramatic like cholera in 1920fucking whenever, never crossing paths with my WWII-era mom. But as a child, she swept up the remains of her youngest sibling - a toddler - after the little one was run over by a truck: my drunk grandfather didn't see her crawling in the driveway. Yes, there are many questions raised by this story. But its real point is, she is a magically stoic woman, who evidently has always been compelled by duty. Whatever her personal emotion or impulse, it was overrun by an inner drive - nurture or nature? - to give care to others.
She grew up to be a nursing home nurse, and if you ask me I think she is exactly the kind of angel we all deserve to have tending us at the end of our days. Nonetheless, I get sullen about the servile mentality I must have absorbed from having seen it so repetitively modeled throughout my formative years. A quick Google translation tells me that her Latin motto would be Posuit Primum Omnium Aliud, which may or may not correctly translate out to 'put everyone else first.'
But really, you can't just blame Mom; obviously half the problem was Dad. He exacerbated the situation with his antiquated grasp of gender roles, charmingly flavored by anger management issues. Article of Proof #1: 1992, curiously furious about my 8th grade history class curriculum, explained to my (female) teacher during Parent-Teacher Conferences that "women didn't play a role in the Old West" and told me I should be wary of being taught bullshit by "feminists." Article of Proof #2, 2000: curiously furious that I broke up with my college boyfriend, asked "So are you a lesbian or something?" Still really wish, out of spite more than sexual proclivity, that I had been. Article of Proof #3: 2016, voted for Trump, "because I knew you'd cancel out my vote anyway." Ah, parents.
But enough of them, and such futile finger-pointing. At some point I hope for my daily writing to become more than a simple flushing out of toxins, which is narcissistic, and so the second personal quality I equally anticipate and loathe. I mean, it will happen. It will dominate this blog. I am my own most fascinating subject, yes. But mayhaps I can eventually transcend myself, once I run out of steam blathering on about my parents, who for all their faults are kind, society-supporting people.
Anyway. It's just that lately, the universe feels like it's cornering me, verging on bullying, into practicing a more daily writing practice. Which sounds so god-awful! Although. I do remember a time, in my very distant, extremely virginal teenage years, when I did write every damned day, composing mournful poems and weird little stories, but the things is - I truly enjoyed it. I was like, "I'm a writer." This was before I had any sense of adult shame about self-identification as a writer. I wasn't trying to be boastful or snobbish; it was just a point of fact. I loved to write, I did it all the time, and my tiny suburban world confirmed it at every turn - I was a writer. I liked both the physical act and mental rewards of being a scribbler.
But then I went to college and realized I had no idea how one spent one's adulthood being a writer; that the only people who referred to themselves writers were cartoonishly pretentious and usually male, and they dropped mystery terms importantly like "Pushcarts" and "MFAs" and ascribed taxonomic ranks to their poems. The instutition of college itself insisted on a strange hazing ritual; you had to sign up for specific classes in which this jackal pack ate you alive, providing "feedback" on all your "projects" after you pushed the desks into a circle - a deliberate gesture that disallowed my natural, coccoon state of hiding. All of this struck me, clearly still strikes me, as the most barbaric and exclusive way you could discourage young female writers from getting in the game. But then, when I was 18 I had also never heard of feta cheese or dildos.
There are many things I have only managed to articulate well past my prime as a Sexy Young Women (age 23-35, or whenever it was I got married), probably because that pressure receded, and blood was once more channeled away from my vagina and back into my brain.
Where was I? Oh yeah. At some point, I stopped thinking of writing as fun. I guess it's when I encountered all of those assholes, and an institution that made me feel inadequate, and I was not fortified enough to disbelieve or resist what they were trying to sell me (see paragraphs 1-3, above).
And, I became a very Sexy Young Woman, which meant there were many splendid distractions to be had. This was terribly important and all-consuming, given the aforementioned hyper-virginity. For several years in a row, I felt bad about not writing, but absurdly promised myself that I was "gathering life experience" as if I were a future farmer, preparing to sow the barren fields of my creativity. True and important work, or excuse? I'll never know. Maybe one day I will write a truly insightful piece into the dangers of cage-dancing on Drag Night.
Now that I am a Respectable Woman who does not even get carded for wine blocks when visiting my local grocery store, time has become a precious commodity. I mean, really fucking precious. There aren't enough hours in the day, if you ask me. A couple people I know died last year. They weren't old. Their bodies just betrayed them, and they died, and that was it. I hate to be so narcissistic that someone else's tragedy makes me think of myself, but it left me with this very nervous realization that, shit - time can be squandered. You can use your time, or not. You can do what you like to do, or not (in your free time, I mean; obviously most of us are engaged in time-sucking bullshit for at least 40 hours per week).
And another thing I've realized that is important - yes, there is always something To Do. Someone will complain if you didn't take out the fucking recycling. Someone will always whine that they don't see you enough. But I've realized that, hey wait a minute - things To Do are not necessarily MORE IMPORTANT to do than the things I actually fucking want to do. Things I sort of need to do, in order to feel like a whole fucking human being.
Do you know what it's like for a writer to not write? Her brain begins to feel fuzzy. Her jokes come out all malformed. She begins to fear she has dementia, or that she possibly fried an important part of her brain with too much cocaine and/or whisky. It becomes worrisome.
So a couple weeks ago, as I'm cooped up in my hotel room for a work retreat, I decide to keep myself company and begin to write. And I realize that it feels cognitively good. I feel sharper, clearer, more confident. I write to myself something along the lines of "Writing is like a medication I need to take daily."
And since then, whaddya know but the universe is pelting me with Actual Live Writers. People who write for a living! The other day I got to listen to Tony Kushner, who considers himself a "fairly good" writer and who appears to hate having to sit down and write, because the world is full of aforementioned "splendid distractions." Or Renee Mitchell, who is basically a human piece of art who can sing, write poetry, and left her Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalism career to write what she wanted. Or Kelli Jo Ford, who has a kid and who got this grant from my organization, and who describes herself as having to "write within the cracks of life," and it's super hard and so frustrating, but she does it because she basically has to.
I think I get where these folks are coming from. And that's delightful.
So we'll see what happens. I feel better watching words form out onto the screen, but my fingers are getting fatigued. I guess that's a much better feeling than the sad, empty feeling I get from letting a single day go by without having created something, something, ANYTHING. I wish there were more time to do what you want to do. But it's good enough for me, for now, to have a little blog where I can fit some writing into the cracks.
And now it is time to go make dinner.
This is probably unfair. She was once one of 14 children on a farm in Iowa. Only twelve survived. The oldest died of something historical and dramatic like cholera in 1920fucking whenever, never crossing paths with my WWII-era mom. But as a child, she swept up the remains of her youngest sibling - a toddler - after the little one was run over by a truck: my drunk grandfather didn't see her crawling in the driveway. Yes, there are many questions raised by this story. But its real point is, she is a magically stoic woman, who evidently has always been compelled by duty. Whatever her personal emotion or impulse, it was overrun by an inner drive - nurture or nature? - to give care to others.
She grew up to be a nursing home nurse, and if you ask me I think she is exactly the kind of angel we all deserve to have tending us at the end of our days. Nonetheless, I get sullen about the servile mentality I must have absorbed from having seen it so repetitively modeled throughout my formative years. A quick Google translation tells me that her Latin motto would be Posuit Primum Omnium Aliud, which may or may not correctly translate out to 'put everyone else first.'
But really, you can't just blame Mom; obviously half the problem was Dad. He exacerbated the situation with his antiquated grasp of gender roles, charmingly flavored by anger management issues. Article of Proof #1: 1992, curiously furious about my 8th grade history class curriculum, explained to my (female) teacher during Parent-Teacher Conferences that "women didn't play a role in the Old West" and told me I should be wary of being taught bullshit by "feminists." Article of Proof #2, 2000: curiously furious that I broke up with my college boyfriend, asked "So are you a lesbian or something?" Still really wish, out of spite more than sexual proclivity, that I had been. Article of Proof #3: 2016, voted for Trump, "because I knew you'd cancel out my vote anyway." Ah, parents.
But enough of them, and such futile finger-pointing. At some point I hope for my daily writing to become more than a simple flushing out of toxins, which is narcissistic, and so the second personal quality I equally anticipate and loathe. I mean, it will happen. It will dominate this blog. I am my own most fascinating subject, yes. But mayhaps I can eventually transcend myself, once I run out of steam blathering on about my parents, who for all their faults are kind, society-supporting people.
Anyway. It's just that lately, the universe feels like it's cornering me, verging on bullying, into practicing a more daily writing practice. Which sounds so god-awful! Although. I do remember a time, in my very distant, extremely virginal teenage years, when I did write every damned day, composing mournful poems and weird little stories, but the things is - I truly enjoyed it. I was like, "I'm a writer." This was before I had any sense of adult shame about self-identification as a writer. I wasn't trying to be boastful or snobbish; it was just a point of fact. I loved to write, I did it all the time, and my tiny suburban world confirmed it at every turn - I was a writer. I liked both the physical act and mental rewards of being a scribbler.
But then I went to college and realized I had no idea how one spent one's adulthood being a writer; that the only people who referred to themselves writers were cartoonishly pretentious and usually male, and they dropped mystery terms importantly like "Pushcarts" and "MFAs" and ascribed taxonomic ranks to their poems. The instutition of college itself insisted on a strange hazing ritual; you had to sign up for specific classes in which this jackal pack ate you alive, providing "feedback" on all your "projects" after you pushed the desks into a circle - a deliberate gesture that disallowed my natural, coccoon state of hiding. All of this struck me, clearly still strikes me, as the most barbaric and exclusive way you could discourage young female writers from getting in the game. But then, when I was 18 I had also never heard of feta cheese or dildos.
There are many things I have only managed to articulate well past my prime as a Sexy Young Women (age 23-35, or whenever it was I got married), probably because that pressure receded, and blood was once more channeled away from my vagina and back into my brain.
Where was I? Oh yeah. At some point, I stopped thinking of writing as fun. I guess it's when I encountered all of those assholes, and an institution that made me feel inadequate, and I was not fortified enough to disbelieve or resist what they were trying to sell me (see paragraphs 1-3, above).
And, I became a very Sexy Young Woman, which meant there were many splendid distractions to be had. This was terribly important and all-consuming, given the aforementioned hyper-virginity. For several years in a row, I felt bad about not writing, but absurdly promised myself that I was "gathering life experience" as if I were a future farmer, preparing to sow the barren fields of my creativity. True and important work, or excuse? I'll never know. Maybe one day I will write a truly insightful piece into the dangers of cage-dancing on Drag Night.
Now that I am a Respectable Woman who does not even get carded for wine blocks when visiting my local grocery store, time has become a precious commodity. I mean, really fucking precious. There aren't enough hours in the day, if you ask me. A couple people I know died last year. They weren't old. Their bodies just betrayed them, and they died, and that was it. I hate to be so narcissistic that someone else's tragedy makes me think of myself, but it left me with this very nervous realization that, shit - time can be squandered. You can use your time, or not. You can do what you like to do, or not (in your free time, I mean; obviously most of us are engaged in time-sucking bullshit for at least 40 hours per week).
And another thing I've realized that is important - yes, there is always something To Do. Someone will complain if you didn't take out the fucking recycling. Someone will always whine that they don't see you enough. But I've realized that, hey wait a minute - things To Do are not necessarily MORE IMPORTANT to do than the things I actually fucking want to do. Things I sort of need to do, in order to feel like a whole fucking human being.
Do you know what it's like for a writer to not write? Her brain begins to feel fuzzy. Her jokes come out all malformed. She begins to fear she has dementia, or that she possibly fried an important part of her brain with too much cocaine and/or whisky. It becomes worrisome.
So a couple weeks ago, as I'm cooped up in my hotel room for a work retreat, I decide to keep myself company and begin to write. And I realize that it feels cognitively good. I feel sharper, clearer, more confident. I write to myself something along the lines of "Writing is like a medication I need to take daily."
And since then, whaddya know but the universe is pelting me with Actual Live Writers. People who write for a living! The other day I got to listen to Tony Kushner, who considers himself a "fairly good" writer and who appears to hate having to sit down and write, because the world is full of aforementioned "splendid distractions." Or Renee Mitchell, who is basically a human piece of art who can sing, write poetry, and left her Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalism career to write what she wanted. Or Kelli Jo Ford, who has a kid and who got this grant from my organization, and who describes herself as having to "write within the cracks of life," and it's super hard and so frustrating, but she does it because she basically has to.
I think I get where these folks are coming from. And that's delightful.
So we'll see what happens. I feel better watching words form out onto the screen, but my fingers are getting fatigued. I guess that's a much better feeling than the sad, empty feeling I get from letting a single day go by without having created something, something, ANYTHING. I wish there were more time to do what you want to do. But it's good enough for me, for now, to have a little blog where I can fit some writing into the cracks.
And now it is time to go make dinner.
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