skills | This Will Be Changing

I’ve decided I should re-learn how to write. I want to be able to write like I used to, when without much struggle I would have a concept, a topic or story, and a clear outline of what I wanted to say. That’s not to say I didn’t work at writing, or know where a piece would end up whenever I sat down with my paper or computer, but I always had a starting point.

It seems like now whenever I have an idea, I either forget it instantly or I’m crowded with so many related thoughts that I can’t pick out a narrative stream that I can actually get onto a page. One thought usurps another too fast and I eventually lose track of the main point. I’ve heard, somewhere, that regular journaling can help you make better sense of your thoughts — so, essentially, practicing writing will pay off.

It feels unfair to me though. It all came so naturally once, and while I can’t claim everything I wrote was good, the flow of words and sentences just worked. I could rely on it. All the gears and mechanisms were in place and I could sit down and let my hands express my thoughts.

Even this is a story — the devolution of my writing skills. I hesitate to try to explain how I got to the point where I am now, when I can barely sit down and start. Mainly for fear of being judged, but also because I worry that I won’t be able to get the explanation just right. I find it increasingly difficult to get people to understand what I’m saying, and I wonder how many people I’ve known in my adult life have a very inaccurate picture of who I am because I was not able to say what I meant in the right way.

Now that I think about it, I want to learn to write BETTER than I used to. I want to become good enough to explain my inner world, and the stories it creates, better than I could in the past. Does anyone really want to hear it? I don’t know. Those nagging voices at the edges of awareness are assuring me that no one cares. But as some creators I like have said in the past, if I write a story and only a few people, or even one person, takes something meaningful from it, then it’s worth doing.

Three creative things I want to do RIGHT NOW. But seriously, literally right now.

1. Write for a really large block of time and finish at least one short story (that’s been in the works for a pretty long time now). In addition, make some progress on the novel I was writing that I was going to work on a bit in December, and then didn’t because I’m just too lazy to ever be productive.

2. Get paints and brushes and DIY the cardboard boxes I use as storage bins so that my room can be pretty and not just a complete mess.

3. Totally reorganize my room. It doesn’t sound like a “creative” thing, but it would have to be to figure out how to make everything fit nicely in my room.

Two reasons I’m sure I won’t do these things.

1. Chores and errands and adult things like that. It’s often tempting to forego responsibility for awesomeness, but at some point the concept was ingrained in me that if you do that you end up with a mess that’s harder to deal with later. So I try. Sort of. But I also waste a lot of time watching tv shows, so what’s the real problem here?

2. Currently editing the longest manuscript ever. EVER. Aside from, like, encyclopedias or whatever. And because of time and deadlines and stuff, I’m going to have to work quite a bit this weekend, because otherwise we might have problems.

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It’s 2014! When you have fewer life changes, it feels like time is just passing you by and making you older. I HATE it. I feel so stuck right now. Not fun. What’s my goal? Where’s my end point? I need these things in order to actually function.

First five things Friday of the year–and the first one for a few weeks. I remember my original intention to do this every week, somehow missing the fact that Friday nights are usually spent hanging out with friends and way too tired out from the week to have clever, coherent thoughts… I am the tiredest.

I’m having major life issues right now–mostly, realizing that I don’t think the skills from my current job are really transferable to any other jobs, which is something that’s probably going to work against me in the future. Unfortunately, further details can’t really be given on the internet, so I guess I’ll just have to be vague.

My birthday is approaching. I’m about to be 27. It’s both still young and too old. You know what? I blame the internet. If I didn’t hear so many stories about people who are super successful in their 20s, I’d probably be much more ok with where I am in life. (Or at least marginally more ok with it…)

I think that I sound awfully boring right now. It’s so bad that I almost want to delete this whole post and not blog at all right now, but, well, why not.