I didn’t write a blog this week and
I am feeling the stress of it. This is the second time in two months that I
have been negligent. And sure, you may say, so what? No one died, no one’s
health is in jeopardy or is being forced out into the street. What is my problem?
Can’t I put things into perspective? That is all true. But the what, the
driving force, the kernel beneath is all, is... fear. I am scared that if I get
out of the habit of weekly blogs, I will stop publishing all together—curl up
in a ball and never write again. Remain a wannabe artist with lost priorities
and delusional fantasies.
God, I love being dramatic.
That said, I did write this week.
I finished off the epic editing of my contest piece with the plugging of my
nose and a belly-flop in: I pushed send. I also did editing work for my client
and started working on another story. So, yes, I did write … I did, I did… but
still, the fear remains. What about my blog?
Funny, after five years of
consistently writing a weekly blog (okay, it hasn’t been every week but the
vast majority of those of weeks) do you think I can give myself a break? Just let
it go and trust I am not sliding down the glass strewn slopes to hell. (I never
thought of that slope as slippery. Every time I start sliding I find it hurts too
much. It’s just that sometimes, I feel we are so numbed out by whatever stress we
are under we just don’t notice the pain until later.)
Anyhow, that fear and its proverbial
slope tends to figure strong in my life. I think it stems back many years ago
to my mom calling me fickle. I was horrified and not a little shamed. Fickle?
Me? I don’t think I even knew what it meant back then but what I did know, at
least in my mom’s eyes, was that it wasn’t good. Then there was the time my father,
who I must admit said this while we were estranged back in the early '90s, told me that I
never stick with anything. I was mortified. And sure, I have had over 34 jobs
in 38 years and I have moved 19 times in just as many but what can I say, I
like diversity. But fickle? Inconsistent? Well, maybe. Just a little.
The only problem with this
analysis is I cannot stop writing. See, look at me now, even while declaring I have
not written this week’s blog I type my 442nd word... on this week's blog. Writing, no
matter how poorly I do it, no matter how rushed or for what intention, seems
to be a force within itself. I cannot live well without doing it. It is a part
of me so ingrained, so entrenched in my viscera and tangled in my ganglia that without
setting my pen to paper or finger tip to key pad at least once a day with a snippet
of a never-to-be-seen sentence, I feel lost. Confused. Adrift.
Writing grounds me. It heals and
befriends me; it helps align me with my truth. Indeed, without it I probably would curl up
into a ball. So, when I think about it, blogging is not just an easy way to
practice my art but it may also be a message to those from my past—a middle
finger salute to the claims I could not be consistent. Huh. Now there's an interesting revelation.
And perhaps the meaning of that symbol,
written out and explained back to me through my own eyes, may not be as necessary as I thought
about an hour ago. Too late though, the blog is written.
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