lesson #12: your own worse enemy, or the analysis of the diary

I like to write.  Always have.  Diaries dating back to elementary schools days are still hiding under the mattress in my room at home.  Detailed accounts of every cute boy and stuck up girl in school, ages ten through sixteen.  At seventeen, though, I switch to journals.  See, journals and diaries are two very different things.  A diary is secret place for childish heart break to be scribbled away.  A journal.  A journal holds art.  Passion.  A journal is a cherished gem of inspiration, and will one day be displayed as the root of whatever genius accomplishment I am most remembered for in life.  Poet. Actress.  Humanitarian.  At seventeen, I was done with the cliche whining of my past.  I was writing poetry.

Poetry was a beautiful truth I was, naturally, privileged enough to know.  While other teenagers were hung up on rhyme schemes, I had discovered slam.  Knew that anything could count as poetry.  ABAB no longer mattered, if you wrote anything with enough feeling.  Poetry was a feeling.  Poetry was music. Acting. Excitement.  Poetry, for me, looked suspiciously like diary entries, only they were written in composition books instead something flowered and locked.  

What makes a writer anyway?  Is it just putting pen to paper?  Or, really, fingers to keyboard.  Maybe what you write needs to be read. But, does it need to be read by choice?  Does a writer need to be published?  Does a writer even have to be good?

That’s the fear, right?  That we’re ‘not good’ at something.  I was not good at basketball.   There is no fault in admitting that.  It’s just a fact. I wasn’t good at volleyball.  I sometimes pretend I was okay at soccer, but in reality, I wasn’t the best at that either.  Really sports in general, but that’s no news.  I wasn’t good at spelling.  And I was never good at science.  I’m really not a good singer, but I let people assume I am.  Oh, and I’m bad at checking my messages. And at calling people back.

So what’s so scary about writing?  Well, a very real fear of being consistently judged.  A grotesque exposure of self to an unforgiving public.  Grammer...grammar.  Boring stories.  Writer’s block.  Self-exploration.  Finding out you’re actually not very good. That maybe what you love to do isn’t actually what you get to do. 

Actually, I guess that’s the fear.

Writing now, as an adult*, I get stuck.  Too focused on details. Too unsure about the ‘audience.’  There are many distractions. It’s been to long since last time.  Not the right position in relation to Mars.  Who knows.  I forget it’s fun.  I forget unanalyzed human impulse that leads all little girls to keep diaries.  (Probably little boys too, but without brothers, they have always remained a mystery.) Writing is an expression of self.  Writing is natural, at least to me.  And, no matter how hard we try, we just can’t forget what comes naturally.

*Just for the record, it still sometimes to weird to call myself an adult.  Is that weird?