Blocked Again!

For the past couple of months, I've been battling writer's block...

yeah, I know, I can hear y'all saying "yeah, but you're blogging over here, so where's the block?"

When I write on this blog, I don't think of it as writing per se. This is my voice--as if I were speaking to each and every person who reads this--as if some of us were out at a coffee shop. Or having dinner. Or shooting the breeze in front of the ice cream place downstairs....

This isn't Writing. This isn't Journalism. This is just me speaking to you.

It's all that other stuff. That Writing. That Journalism. That's the stuff I can't seem to do right now.

But when I even *think* about doing any other kind of *serious* writing, I sort of freak. I collapse into myself. A curtain comes down somewhere in my mind and that's all she wrote. Literally.

I don't know whether it's that I'm bored or if I'm getting not-interested in all that journalism and web 2.0 kind of stuff that I've been writing about--and getting linked about--for the past year or so.




Maybe, too, it has something to do with feeling like I don't write all that well. That I'm really a pretty crappy Writer. I'm good at emoting and expressing myself. But Writing? At that, I suck.

I sometimes think that if I felt a little more accomplished in other areas of my life, I might feel different about my Writing....

And it's not that I've been upset with editors. I've been fine when people have suggested something needs to be changed.

I think it's more that I just don't find anything all that interesting right now.

And I'm surrounded by too much instability. (can't say too much more than this)

Instability leads to frustration leads to a sense of "why bother?" leads to block.

Perhaps it's just that writing, for me, isn't a job. It's part of my life--an extension of me. An expression of self.

Maybe it's that writing, because it is for me, an expression of self, it can't be commodified.

Maybe it's like when I worked in sales--I was great at it when I really liked what I was selling. But the minute I had to sell soemthing I no longer believed in, or knew was of inferior quality, I just couldn't do it.

Maybe it's that I can't write about things I don't believe in, or that I'm not curious about, or that I'm burnt-out about (that was part of sales too--burnt out on a product just made me not want to sell it.)

In many ways I admire those people who have one true passion--one hobby that they can do as a job and one job they can turn into a hobby.

But there's never been that One Thing--except maybe religion. But you can't really make money at religion.

Still, I don't like the idea of everything all blurring--of hobbies blurring into jobs and jobs blurring into hobbies and being On all the time.....



Jeff wrote me something today about the blurring between subjective and objective realities. We are not allowed our subjective realities. Caught between the Protestant Work Ethic (a way of believing that all creativity should be commerce--or it's the devil's work) and the pop philosophy of The Secret (whatever you think, you can--and do--manifest), we no longer have separation between various parts of our lives.

It's like doing your job in your sleep. Ever have that happen? I remember years ago, when I was working in a video store, and I dreamed that I was working in the same video store. It was a nightmare.

So, maybe that's what causes the block--the lack of separation between job and hobby or the lack of downtime between objective and subjective realities.

Or maybe it's that all those dreams I had haven't quite come true....

That's a new wrinkle to the whole thing.

Or maybe that there's just not a lot of control over *how* all those dreams come true. Coupled with a fear of cross the Gods of Amazing Careers....

Or that sometimes that dreams don't disappoint quite the way reality can.



But when dreams and reality overlap--when subjective and objective have no division--and job blurs with hobby--what then?

What's next?

pics courtesy of Anne Taintor