Now isn’t that the way it is? Commit to write and the brain freezes.
Ah. Writing about what matters. Came across that twice this week. In the editor’s (wonderful) commentary between pieces in The Next American Essay, he remarks that the best essays are those in which he senses the author is writing about something that matters to him or her. And lin another piece in Writers Ask, a writer says that the kinds of things he really likes to read are the ones that give him a sense that the author has wrestled with the issues in them, that they matter.
So being a writer by habit if not by publication, I immediately asked myself, Am I writing about what matters to me? Then: What matters to me?
Which brings me to the difficult place, where the answers to those questions are No and I don’t know. Anymore.
And besides . . . when I become passionate about things, it reads as strident and overdone. It does not rally the troops, it repels them
So I seem to have abandoned passion. Except when I have drunk or smoked or remembered too much and then I rage and sometimes weep
And besides . . . there are so many things to be done. Dishes. Laundry. Filing. Taxes. Medical appointments to be made and kept.
acupuncture chiropractic physical therapy dentist occasional surgeon primary serious eye doctor
and there are exercises, practices
tuning forks reiki leg lifts crunches ankle alphabets bicep curls
and the job search do they like me will he hire me again does that one make more per hour than I do and if so why I am good at this and it’s not terribly important so why won’t they just say well done here’s money
And besides . . . I don’t care passionately anymore
though I do get angry at
politicians church men corporate ceos women who best me men who don’t acknowledge me bosses who regard me less worthily than I regard myself my legs for failing me my choices that took me in the wrong direction myself myself MYSELF for not seeing not acting not daring not completing
what matters . . .
What matters? ? ?
And besides . . . we grow old and die anyway
I think sometimes that everything is filler, except for certain moments when we have to choose, and those matter, but not the rest, which is most of it