Rust

Once again, I have been neglecting my creative craft. I cannot even tell you the last time I sat down to actually write for pleasure. Actually, I can. I am pretty sure my last real writing attempt occurred sometime during the month of May while I was sprawled out like a happy drunk on a bench in Adams Park. Back then, I didn't have a care in the world, and by that, I mean an agenda. I was a freshly graduated, unemployed, and therefore I had time to write. In fact, I devoted whole days to writing, reading, and drinking coffee at the local hippster cafe. Life was bliss. Creating a writing life was not as hard as my writer friends claimed. I was thriving. I had ideas for books, short stories, poems. They came to me in the middle of the night, on bike rides, as I was composing other works. This writing thing was easy.

Eventually reality caught up with me and things started to get complicated within the realm of my writing life. I won't go into great detail, but if you are at all curious please review my last two postings in which I rant about the stresses of life. Although I am reading a fabulous guidebook about writing processes, the truth of the matter is that the guidebook lied. The book claims people can have a really great writing life if they make time to write. That, in the midst of all the crazy they have going on in their lives they can still have it all, but only if they really want it all. Here's the problem with that statement. If you are entertaining children for ten hours a day, coaching for two, preparing and cleaning up meals for three, taking the dog for a walk, and requiring eight hours of sleep so that you  are recharged to start the process again the next day, those remaining ninety minutes are sacred. Sure, I could use them to write and activate the dendrites in my brain, believe me I have tried, but in reality you are so tired from the events of the day that your brain turns to lime jello and you end up falling asleep and drooling all over your journal. This writing thing is hard.

However, there are times during the craziness of life when I get inspired. Even though I have endured a long day, I am determined to write something. This largely has to do with the insane amounts of Irish-Catholic guilt pulsing through my bloodstream. I write because I feel guilty. I feel guilty because people inquire about my work and I have nothing to show for myself, Others complain I have not composed anything for weeks (cough cough...Jake) and I feel like a failure. This feeling of inadequacy is only hightened when I remember that I fell asleep (for the fifth time) while trying to do exercise 36 out of the guidebook. With guild as my inspiration, I am ready to write. This is good, until I sit down to write. Writing is like athletics, you have to train yourself in order to build up endurance. Since I have been taking a couch potato approach to writing, my endurance is lacking. No longer can I sit in Adams Park for hours on end, scribbling away in my journal. Instead, I am tired after ten minutes. Sometimes I don't even make it that long. I am rusty.

When it comes to my current writing life, I feel like a parent trying to relive her glory days when meeting other writing types. My highlight reel goes something like this,  "Oh, you write? Me too! What's that you ask? Am I working on any projects at the moment? Well, no, but when I was younger I sent things for publication. Were they ever published? Well, no, but there was this one time I  performed my poetry for an audience at an art gallery opening, I was hand selected by an award wining author. Oh crap, I pulled something. Will you be a lamb an fetch me some BenGay?" And that is a pretty acurate image of my present self. I guess it is time to light the fire under my butt and wipe the cobwebs away. I gotta get myself back in shape. I have to start writing again, because well, I like to write. So, where is the WD40?