don’t read this blog

I don’t recommend it.

I’m writing this all for me, not for you. If you get something out of it, I’ll be surprised. Honestly, I don’t really know how to write well. I do know that writing, as an exercise and a mode of self-expression, is good for me. The calories I burn on the keyboard and as my brain attempts to churn out something that makes me sound clever, sexy, or erudite. (Erudite! Look at my vocabulary!) Writing helps et my spaghetti of thoughts out of my pasta-pot brain and organized in a saucy heap on the plate of the page.

What a dumb metaphor.

Like I said, don’t read this blog. It’ll rot your brain.

So why am I writing it? Moreover, why am I publishing it?

I know that we are capable of more than we know. What gets in the way, at least for me and maybe for you, is what some writers call writer’s block, what Steven Pressfield calls “The Resistance,” or what most people call “I’m not good at this, so I’m not going to bother trying.”

I like Pressfield’s version, The Resistance, because it is both an apt and visceral physical metaphor and also personifies this metaphorical monster into something I can relate to at a human level. The Resistance is the cumulated voices of our insecurities, our desires to be comfortable and well-liked, our discomfort at struggling and not knowing the outcome. It keeps us from starting, it keeps us from finishing what we start, it keeps us from showing what we’ve finished. In short, it’s trying to keep us safe by keeping us hidden.

And look at us! That Resistance is part of our evolved psychology, so it must have worked to some extent – it’s here, and yet so are we. But in this world where most of us don’t face lethal threats on a regular basis, it’s more dangerous to keep ourselves hidden.

It’s not as if I don’t have a choice. I do. I can write, or I can kill myself. So today, I’m writing.

I don’t know who said it, and this might not even be the actual quote, in which case, I said it here for the first time and I should get all the credit. LOL. I heard it said that some famous, prolific, and tortured-soul writer said or had a plaque on his desk, or told his therapist, “It’s not as if I don’t have a choice. I do. I can either write or I can kill myself. So today, I’m writing.”

So intense! So extreme! Especially in today’s culture, where we have a growing awareness of mental health issues. The point, at least the meaning I take from this, is that whoever said it (I said it here, first!) simply noticed that if we’re not creating, we’re dying. I mean, dying inside just as much as physically. And if whoever said this needs therapy, as our modern armchair psychologists would insist, perhaps we can look at the creative act as therapeutic. After all, it was Anna Sexton who said “Poetry led me by the hand out of madness.”

Maybe she’s not a great example since she was depressed, alcoholic, and ultimately died by suicide.

My point is, I’m going to write. I’m going to try to do it daily. I’m going to publish it here. If you decide, against my advice, to read along, it suppose it can’t be helped.