A Hi and Lo-atus

To see all the helmets visit the original Imgur Site

Hello everyone, I am back from my hiatus and just in time to wish my congratulations to all my fellow nerds and nerdettes in Seattle. The Big (Please Don't Sue Me, NFL) Game was a terrible one by any standards, but at least I could be happy for all the cool people out in the... I want to say... "Starbucks City," who got their first championship title. Also, the real winner of the big game, in my opinion, was Stephen Colbert, but then again I find Colbert to be a winner everyday. His pistachios commercial(s) were by far the best on the air that night, at least nationally. In Georgia, some lawyer paid for a 2-minute ad spot to air the pilot trailer for his movie (i.e. law firm.) I will admit that I enjoyed the Seinfeld bit between Jerry and George, and that is only remarkable because Seinfeld has been off the air for fifteen-years and yet we still cling onto it, like a naked man clings onto a newspaper for some last nostalgic shred of decency.

Also, since my last post, Mother Nature has made a fool of me. My previous pleas for snow in the face of global warming has become somewhat laughable as I am now pleading for the snow to stop. There is so much of the damn stuff on the ground that I saw white walkers doing battle with Imperial snowtroopers as I went to work the other day. I also want to remind everyone that just because this has been a record winter doesn't mean that Global Warming is still not a thing. The trends are still rising toward warmer global climates, it is just not a steady climb. There are dips and peaks like the stock market after a drunken Tuesday.

As for my own life I took a few weeks off from writing this blog in hopes of getting some headway on my novel, but truthfully I wound up mostly just playing Assassin's Creed III. Sometimes I think it must have been so much easier to be a writer when there were no video games, but then I realize that that also means there were no computers and then I'm right back to writing on a typewriter without spell-check... So I have to recant my previous statement.

This brings me to a dilemma I have been struggling with (and excuse me for getting personal,) but lately I have begun to question myself as a writer. I am good enough to know that I am not spectacular, by any account. My spelling and grammar mistakes alone are enough to tell me that, and also I have found that I come up with really great concepts, but often lack in execution. My novel has stalled and the real reason I have not posted a blog post in the past six or seven weeks is because I have found myself running out of ideas. It has been a frustrating time for me, as writing has usually been as natural as breathing to me (which thanks to my advanced age of 30 is also becoming harder.)

For a while now I have been debating giving up the craft. It would be so much easier to not have to deal with the time commitment or the mountain of frustration I sometimes allow myself to get buried under. I could have so much more time for things like playing video games or even reading (which becomes restricted due to my writing habits.) I only allow myself to read things which might currently enhance what I am writing, which is why I haven't picked up a comic book in over a year, because I am afraid my squirrel-like mind will get so distracted with superheroes that it will pull me back into the black hole that is my pen and paper  superhero RPG rulebook. I can't let myself get distracted, but I miss comic books.

I am two hundred pages through a novel where when I look back I can't even tell if it's good or not. This could very well turn out to be another Journey Home (my 500-page young adult fiasco that probably would have been more coherent if I had given my story outline to a monkey and asked him to embellish it a bit.) With my career and personal life moving on, it is becoming harder and harder some days to put so much of myself into these two or three year projects that just end with misery. Everything I write lately feels hackneyed and insincere, like I'm just going through the motions. As of a week ago, I was ready to shut down this blog completely and call it quits, but I found something in the narcissistic and irrelevant cacophony that is Facebook that made me pause. This:

THE GAP by Ira Glass from frohlocke on Vimeo.

It is narrated by public radio host, Ira Glass, and you know what... It made me feel better. It made me feel like I wasn't alone, that everyone goes through this sort of doubt. My girlfriend also reminded me that it takes George R. R. Martin six years to write a new novel, (much to every one's frustration,) but I can understand why it takes him that long. Everyone thinks writing is just inspiration spilled onto a page. It's not. Inspiration plays its part but more often than not it is depressing, exhilarating, back-breaking soul-pouring that results in a mess of words which still require another year of editing before it even begins to sound coherent. It's a lot like shaping a sculpture from a lump of clay, except that you have to extract the clay first from your own flesh, which is something no one ever tells you.

Maybe this video is the reason why I sat down and wrote out this blog post, or maybe its because I realized that (despite everything else) I am, have, and always will be a writer at heart. It's more than how I define myself, it's how I see the world. Regardless of where I am or what my job title is, I have always labeled myself as "writer," and I don't know if I can let go of that label, maybe because its right or maybe because I'm scared to... Maybe both. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. I still have the desire and the passion for the kind of literary engineering that can only be accomplished by forming my world through the lens of the written word, because I find that writing is a lot like people. 

We are all made up of strange parts and words that function differently, limbs that move, hearts that beat, hair that grows, and memories that fill out heads, but alone they are small and empty. We carry with us a greater significance than just the sum of our parts. A story is like that. The words themselves have meaning, but the story conveys more than any solitary word ever could. A human has meaning and depth, but the sum of humanity is a story more powerful than any one person ever could be... As for my meaning, I'm a writer, and it is good to be back.