I’m going to talk about writing as if it were coping. I think that’s the right call in this age of “content creation for social media.” Maybe that’s what it is for a few people.
You write really well and I have so much to learn from you. What you’ve got on the page is beautiful, well-considered, aware and yet unsparing. I’ve been struggling in my own writing to be relatable and relevant. I want to talk about the fact I’ve been hit hard by anxiety, or indulged some awful thoughts, or did the best I could but not quite good enough. I want to admit what I did wrong, when I could have been better or chosen to be stronger (not always a choice). I want to be able to come to terms with what I’m not doing perfectly or handling as well as I should.
So naturally, this has turned into convoluted mush on my part that barely talks about anything, failing both to be personal or sensitive to everyone else. I was thinking recently that I wasn’t writing as much because I was lazy. While I was thinking this, I was taking notes on several essays to see how they were written, making mental notes on stories I wanted to tell, looking for new books and poems to read. I check twitter for longreads and indulge them daily. It took me a little bit to realize I wasn’t lazy, but that some kind of insecurity is underlying the will to write. There’s a big difference between being lazy and shutting down, and if you don’t recognize it, you get down on yourself that much more.
I think I’m getting out of that rut. I’m not sure. I’m not sure how to ground my confidence. That’s what I need in 2017, that’s what I think we all need. The most confident among does lack all conviction, is full of passionate intensity, is allowed to take a dump on the White House floor in the name of white supremacy and gets the nuclear codes for it. In the face of that, I find it hard to tell myself that resilience and survival and making mistakes and going nowhere matter. It should be so much easier, no? The people with success are literal crooks, except that even crooks have more honor and dignity. But it isn’t easy. It’s like morality in this country is that one has to be prepared to deal with everything, and if one can’t deal with it, one isn’t moral. It always feels like there’s this standard beyond all of us that is uncompromising, and if that standard isn’t there, then we’re the worst.
But I dunno. I don’t know how I’m going to ground myself. I’m just going to hope for more dispatches from you, and hopefully, I’ll write something as heartfelt.
