I guess immediately after finishing the last blog post I should start a new one. In theory, I should churn out one blog after another like a creative genius – moving from each post into a continuous cycle of writing and editing. If I did that then away we’d go, onward and outward, until I finally find that figurative leftover cocaine that this blog is meant to search for. But that doesn’t happen – at least not yet.  Despite my love for writing, I can’t get my mind to work like that. The voice you see on the paper is much like the voice inside my head – I am constantly over analyzing everything and using perverted analogies to understand my troubling or complex thoughts – but the substance behind the voice isn’t easy to put on paper. Even though everything boils down to sex and violence, I am still a child of impetus and distraction.

I distract myself from the process of taking words out of my mind and spreading them out on the table where I can pick them up one by one, and put the puzzle back together in a fashion that flows right for me. The thoughts that would be written just end up floating around in my head like a strange Sesame Street word game. I should keep a journal or something. I have in the past. But I get caught up in different things, different releases, and it ends up dissolving into the either. Sometimes I feel like I am avoiding the work of writing on purpose. And this is why…

I have an absorbent amount of self-doubt garnished with a dash of self-hate about my self-doubt. No psychologist told me this. I just acknowledged the flaw, adjusted to this new characteristic, and kept the train moving.  I hate the things that I write even though people say they enjoy them or relate to it on a deep level. I don’t dislike it because I think it is bad writing, but I detest it because it’s not perfect. I always think to myself, “Shit, I could have gone this way with that sentence. Damnit! I could have flushed that out more.” I am told that is how all artists look at their art. Misery breeds creativity. A good artist is usually a perfectionist.

But herein lies the problem: I don’t look at myself as an artist. The pretense I see in giving my creative urges a categorization of “artist” suffers from an amount of gall I dare not tango with.  There are many people that are true “artists”. Damn good ones at that, but I am definitely not one of them. I don’t feel that I suffer this writing. If anything, I am a societal and conversational analyst with a disposition for gin and ripe adjectives that takes full advantage of his keen ability to harbor slightly self-destructive tendencies.  Maybe that is a good definition for a writer and maybe that’s what I am, even if I have never published a book. But why would a writer use “maybe” twice in a sentence. See, there it is, that ugly head of self-doubt

Writing is something I have always enjoyed. It is personal task that involves opening wounds out in the open for whoever decides to read it. And it hurts. The use of language gets me going like Jenna Jameson did an entire generation of young men.  I love this shit. Masochism.

Suffice it to say I am avoiding the original task of finding an answer to why I don’t write frequently.  Why would someone who loves to write, not just write all the time? Why, if he believes that he could be a writer and even fits his own definition of one, would he not have self-confidence?

These are good questions and it took me a long time to find the tip of the iceberg of reasonable answers. The truth, you see, is nestled in the test results of who I have become and my thoughts on where I go from here. That is where the leftover cocaine is hiding. It isn’t in the couch cushions of that shitty flower couch in my living room. It is jammed back behind the looming feeling that I am supposed to succeed without trying, or laziness.

I know this inclination of mine isn’t true. I know I have to work hard to get what I want.  But I still feel this and look at a plethora of examples of people who have succeeded without real effort in our modern world. Some primal part of me wants to be them and believes it is possible.  I try not to take things for granted.  And I would love to say that I have worked hard my whole life and deserve a break. But that would be some white bread bullshit.

I am an above average worker. I don’t suck. I don’t complain excessive amounts, but I don’t exactly push for the highest of excellence. I find myself in the vacuum that is “being average”, and it scares the shit out of me to believe in my possible excellence even though I hate mediocrity. These thoughts trickle into my effort in writing. It’s those banal reasons, societal inclinations, personal vendettas or maladjustments to the world of adulthood that I let other things take precedent over what I love. A growing Cancer.

I would love to say that this post is where all the shit ends – the buck stops here, folks – but, honestly, the self-loathing is what drove me to write this…and it’s the driving force behind my desire to get better. It’s my Chemo Therapy in this fight as much as it is the cancer. It is cannibalizing the market and I need to figure out how to fix or replace it. So, maybe it has a use. Do I need to hate more? Ha, perhaps, but probably not. Do I need to hold onto a strict standard for my creativity? Definitely.  If I want to be a more consistent and concise writer I need to start by destroying the preconceived notions that I came to my thirties with after letting them run wild in my twenties. I need to mow them down at the gate and kill every one of those destructive and millennial ideas about how I get to where I want to be. That is all easier said than done, but admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery. Sometimes you have to lose control to even know there is such a thing.

Now I have enough to chew on until the next post. Godspeed.