the last week or so I’ve felt as though there were thoughts in my head that I haven’t quite been able to work out. something about being tired; work has been more people-intensive than usual, which saps my energy. (I’d just like to say that I’m amazed by the whole process of teaching. how people get up and do that every damn day I just don’t know.)
I’ve done a little writing on paper — journaling, mostly, the beginning of last week, and one day last week I had a good burst of fiction (a tiny bit more on the way home this afternoon). lately my attitude towards story-writing has been fairly bleak; I’m dissatisfied and irritable with my (lack of) progress and engagement, and annoyed with my own pessimism. it’s a black hole of badness, which I wrote a very long paper journal entry about, but don’t feel quite right repeating here.
(ah, the question of audience, something I’m now constantly aware of as I pass my third blogging anniversary. oh, for the love of $deity, don’t look. I’m mortified, myself, as I always am when I break out the big boxes of old paper journals and reread what I wrote in 1987, 93, 97, etc. someday I’ll write my own blogging system that will make entries that aren’t just lists o’ links auto-vanish after 6 months. it’ll be the “ignore past self” option in the control panel. is that a bad sign, how uncomfortable I am with my brain’s past states? perhaps it’s related to how exhausting I find the company of other people: always inventing myself to be the right thing around others. when it’s just me and the word, all the unbidden ways of being unfold themselves, one after the other. only now, in this space, it’s not just me and the word: it’s me and the word and Kat and Kermit and Elizabeth and the other Elaine and Anita and Jacob and Ralph and Mike and Dorothea and Raul and whoever else I don’t know is looking. whew. maybe this is the problem I’m having with Aila et al, and with my scattered posting here: too nervous about the imagined reader over the shoulder. or something.)
okay, there was another thought there, but I don’t remember what it was.
Nah, looking-and-cringing is pretty normal. Self-acceptance is difficult at the best of times. I have to keep reminding myself that people like me even though I suck. 🙂
You could always invent a superpersonae!
Dorothea — thanks, and you don’t suck. (I wish I could go to your tutorial at Extreme Markup.)
Kermix — you’re a goof; don’t go changing. (not that I haven’t occasionally debated going for an anonymous outlet, but I couldn’t quite swing it.)