If you'd like to keep track at home, this post marks the first time I've been on schedule for pretty much anything in my entire life. The idea of posting a blog a week (meaning, of course, waiting till Sunday night and then just kinda winging it) wasn't simply a new challenge but a reaction to last years goal of writing a blog a day. That lasted about two days, and so far this is doing about as well.
How was this past week in your life?
Hear any decent speeches? Watch any decent films? Listen to any decent original cast recordings of Broadway stage productions of musicals based on the lives of historical figures?
Before we proceed, you should know that the current recording project is also proceeding. We proceed as it proceeds at a different speed. Believe me, I'll see to informing you as the news on that front pours in.
For a long time now (either a few months or maybe the past eighteen years), I've been working on a novel-length endeavor involving some original characters that are always floating around in my head. Sure, I've written short stories and poems and songs, but never something of this great length. Even when, having completed all 50,000 words of NaNoWriMo some Novembers past, I still never reached the end of the story. Like so many others, I've been unable to grasp that golden fleece of simply finishing a work.
"Most people never finish the books they start. I’m guessing 97 percent. So if you can just finish the damn thing, you’re thousands of miles ahead of most other writers. So just finish it." - Douglas Coupland
Perhaps if I spent less time reading about writing and more time writing, I'd have actually written something by now. Instead, I have folder after folder, which, if they were not digital, would have long since burst with the scraps of plot ideas, character descriptions, witty snippets of dialogue, and the ever elusive whole chapter of nearly there story.
My attention span and energy level are often in dueling flux, and while this could easily be ascribed to some millennial affect of the digital age, I'd like to believe it has more to do with the imbalances of neuro-pharmaceutical tide pools in my tilting cranium. Similarly, I'd like to believe that, had I been in regular therapy, under the spell of prescription medication, in my teenage years, much of my life would have occurred differently. When I say that I'd like to believe this, I mean it in that tragedy can sometimes be easier to digest than monotony.
I used to think, wouldn't it be so terrible if I wasn't in fact mentally ill?
What if I'm not crazy at all, I'm just crazy?
What if all the inner turmoil and outward damage I've caused wasn't because there's something actually wrong with me, but rather that there's just something wrong with me?
In other words, what if I'm not bad because I'm sick but sick because I'm bad?
What if my failure to connect with other people on the level I believe them to be connecting to one another isn't because I'm an introvert with social anxiety disorder, a somewhat exclusive set of interests, no marketable skills, an inability to find common ground in socially acceptable topics within normal conversational parameters, and the haunting belief that everyone in the world is out to get me?
What if it's because I'm just a shitty kinda guy?
Plenty of other people have seemed to believe that, so is it too dismissive of me to assume that everyone who thinks I'm a jerk must be so far off-base? Is it arrogant of me to believe that every time someone has taken their anger out on me, it was some kind of deflection, bouncing off toward me through an arc of unfairness?
How many people should have to tell me that the world would be a better place without me in it before I start to think that, at very least, I might not have what it takes to live in their world?
And how many times could all my fears, doubts, anxiety, and dangerously debilitating self-destructive tendencies been assuaged if, instead of praising me for how hard I worked to be the perfect son, boyfriend, friend, leader, delegate, student, writer, christian, employee, etc...
What if just one person had thought to ask if I was okay? What if all my voracious vim and vigor had less to do with wanting to be my best and more to do with fear of being anything less?
Hindsight may be 20/20, but if I spent all my time looking back, I'd likely run into something I should have otherwise been able to avoid.
All that to say, this novel outline I've been working on since I was a wee lad has no become a graphic novel outline, despite my feeling of inadequacy as a writer and an artist. The key, I think, is to continue pushing ahead. I can focus on fixing things in later drafts. Taking the lessons I've learned along the way from paying attention to outside influences and learning from my past mistakes, I can create something otherwise never made. For now, though, the key is to keep moving forward.
Just keep writing. Just keep writing. What do we do? We write.
(and draw.)
Odist Abettor
P.S. - Here's a lovely little animated video I ran into recently. Taking a bit of a spin on the old story of Job.
P.S.S. - Also, forgot to mention—I spent Saturday morning working with my uncle's brother replacing blinds at a big, fancy house. Mostly I held stuff and moved stuff and packed stuff and tried to follow directions without breaking anything. It's nice to see someone in their zone, working hard at something they are both good at and enjoy doing. Back in high school, sometimes the cast parties for plays and musicals would be held at the houses of the more affluent families in order to facilitate more guests. I never felt comfortable in those houses, but felt more uncomfortable at parties in general, so it didn't much matter either way. Though it's never an exact science telling what kind of nightmares I'll be host to at the end of the day, I was spot on when it came to one prediction in particular. After having spent all morning trying to carefully balance heavy boxes of fragile materials while teetering on the edge of an enormous indoor pool, specifically one with the plastic cover drawn tight, my subconscious has discovered a brand new symbolic totem of doom. Yay! Still, despite the fact I'm not sure if I'll ever enjoy the kind of work I got to do, it was something of a refreshing shift to feel somewhat useful.
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