Everything Is Cyclic

How do you pick up a blog after so many long pauses and breaks along the way? I don’t have an answer. I think when future generations looks back at the end of 2019 through the end of 2021, I’m sure a lot will be made of what the forced seclusion did to us as a culture and a world. I wish I could claim the gaps on this blog are a result of The Long Silence of the Soft Apocalypse.

They aren’t.

My absences on the blog are, sadly, a direct reflection of my lack of creative writing. Corona certainly fueled the absence, but it was a hiatus already in the making. Somewhere along the line, I lost confidence and faith in my writing. I look back at the books I’ve written, both published, drafted, and unfinished, and I marvel. How did I write so much back then? How did I feel so confident in what I was putting down that I then published it myself? I think back to that energetic thrill I had writing the two books I ultimately did publish and wonder how I accomplished that.

Two weeks ago I had a birthday. Birthdays are funny times, especially as we get older. They become more reflective, more retrospective. This year, I started thinking about me and writing, as I am wont to do.

I’ve never fully believed that if I were successful, I could live off writing (although I also cannot lie, the daydream is alive). Somewhere along the line, I still managed to confuse success in writing with liberation from having a day job. I know, that’s pretty silly of me, and flies against the reality of the vast majority of writers. But in seeing no path from writing to “freedom,” I lost faith in both writing and myself.

Sadly, I’ve been here before. Like so many things, it’s one of many cycles I replay (weight loss is another popular one). But the things about cycles is that they are both predictable (my next step will involve dusting myself off and trying again), and breakable. This time I feel like I’ve learned from some of the mistakes of my past.

I can only allow myself to create new. Too many times I’ve revisited old attempts at works, miring myself in past writing and thoughts. No more. No more reinventing, no more trying to salvage. Enough.

I’ve also felt like I have a lot to say on my blog. However, I’ve noticed in the past that there is a direct correlation between blogging and writing in general. There is a realtionship there, something in the wiring of the brain where words are generated and strung together.

Of course, now that I’ve revealed that secret, you all know how to tell when I’m writing. The more this blog is updated, the more I’m writing. I don’t think I can maintain daily – or even weekly, necessarily – updates. I’ve tried that before and it didn’t end well.

So, let’s see where this goes. Because at the end of the day, I really do miss creating fiction.

(As a side note, I’m writing this entry in Ulysses as a test run. It’s….interesting. Of course initial setup triggered a rate limit when it tried to authenticate, but after that it’s been fine.)