A Blog at War

For a long time now I’ve been telling myself I want to be a writer. I’ve always had an active imagination and have done my best to indulge it while keeping just enough of an anchor in reality to be able to see if it might be changing for the better. So, out of nutritional concern for my hypo-metabolic internal monologue and the need to take preventative measures against one hell of a personality disorder, I became one who writes.

Social Media baffles me. It simultaneously achieves both the exact and direct opposite goals it sets out to. It gives a person the opportunity to “sell” themselves to an infinitely bigger audience than could ever be confronted face to face, but in doing so it creates a narrow path for you to squeeze through on your way to the main stage. It tweaks you, chips away at you, melts you, remolds you. By the time you’ve become successful at social media you’ve achieved two things: 1) You’ve successfully provided an entire global community the opportunity to experience what it is you have to offer them, and 2) You’ve traded the thing you have to offer them away for the opportunity to share it with the world.

Basically I’m just scared. I don’t want to know what it is to achieve a dream, because I’m terrified that by the time I achieve it, achieving it won’t be enough anymore. I’m scared to try for more, because despite whatever the end goal I pretend there is, in reality more is all I’ll ever really want.

So I become a shitty blogger. I try to disappear. I hide.

Sooner or later, though, I’ve got to realize that my running away from life  isn’t fair to me or anyone I come into contact with.

In an effort to save you from more self-deprecating word-vomit, I’ll just leave you with a quote from a fellow asshole who also writes – one that I can’t get out of my head:

“Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage; courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.”
— Robert McKee