I’m reading this book by Ann Lamont called ‘Bird by Bird’. I’m only on the first chapter but it had a long introduction which I really loved and that made me very excited about the rest of the book. Introductions are not often worth reading, or enjoyable, unless they’re very short and to the point. This one was long and rambling but full of great stories and great metaphors.
I think I want to be a writer. That’s a funny thing to say when you’re 47 years old, and maybe even funnier if you knew that I’ve been harboring feelings about being a writer for over a decade. Not even a writer writer. I just wanted to start a blog where I wrote every day and shared what I wrote with the world. For 10 years its been my goal and in that time I’ve probably written maybe 5 very bad and thoughtless pieces. You probably couldn’t find them if you tried because what I was good at was all the things that were far less important than writing: trying out new blogging platforms, experimenting with dozens of blogging themes looking for that one that really spoke to me, changing the name of the blog over and over and over again, and each time I discovered one I really liked I would go and buy the domain and move the blog there. I did everything… except write.
When I sit down to write I can’t think of anything anyone would want to hear me write about. A very original problem for a writer I know. And then my mind wanders to things it likes to think about, like how this Voyager low profile keyboard I’m using, that I spent a lot of money on, kind of hurts my wrists when I type, and it has a funny key configuration so I keep pressing the backspace button when I want to capitalize the letter because the backspace is where the shift normally is. So then I think ‘why are you using this stupid keyboard it is taking so much extra mental bandwidth’, to which I think ‘because it cost a lot of money and I have to get my money’s worth.’ I can talk about shit like custom keyboards all day. Going down rabbit holes is one of my favorite hobbies.
I want to keep going but honestly my brain is tired from all this writing. What an embarrassment. Also my hands hurt from using this keyboard. It would be funny - terrifying - if I published this slop. Publishing slop like this is actually what I’ve told myself I need to do many times. ‘You have to get thru the crap to find the good stuff. There is no other way.’ God what a dilemma.