Another Self-Absorbed and Narcissistic Blog

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Sylvia Plath

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.”

Margaret Atwood

Last night I barely got my blog done.  I got pretty tired, so I’m going to work with that sense of urgency, knowing that fatigue is inevitable and imminent.  I’m glad to be here anyway, feeling happy and getting closer to my goal.  As so often happens, I have no idea what I’m going to write, but I’m going to do my best to not leave this chair until I’m done.

It’s been said that a good writing schedule would be for two to fours in a row of straight writing.  That seems like a lot, but I’d like to try it soon.  Next week I will have time off and that might be a good time to see if I can create that for myself.  Maybe I’ll try and not like it or maybe I’ll love it.  I won’t know until I try.  My other concern is wondering if I’ll be able to stay focused for that long.  Maybe I should try an hour first and then build up from there.

The one thing I’m not worried about is what I will say.  That will come to me as I write.  Sometimes it takes longer than other times, but something always comes.  And if nothing does, then I keep writing anyway.  I’ll build my writing muscles. 

The only things that I’m sure of are that I want a house near the beach and I want to write.  In talking with a friend today I realized that I have a lot of ambivalence and confusion about my other life choices. With everything else in life I have varying degrees of enthusiasm.  I’m not sure why this is. 

Perhaps I’m making too many decisions alone.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be making any decisions right now.  Perhaps I need to take care of other things first and then subsequent decisions will reveal themselves.  Perhaps everything is perfect now and I just need to keep working.  Perhaps I need to practice gratitude for what is.

Incidentally, it’s not that I’m unhappy with how my life is going.  I just want to be sure that I reach my goals.  I also want to have passion for what I’m doing.  And perhaps that’s part of my problem.  I’m not sure if it’s possible, or even desirable to always have passion for one’s work.  I don’t think we should ever hate what we do, but I don’t know if we can always love it. 

Right now I’m teaching Job Search skills and writing resumes and I do love that.  I had a passion for teaching ESL for a long time, but my morale has taken a beating in the last couple of years due to shrinking class sizes (mine and other teachers’).  What’s most frustrating is that I’m working harder than ever.

Overall, however, I love my job.  I’m good at it and I help a lot of people.  I feel very fortunate to have work that

·      I like

·      I’m good at doing

·      Is helping others directly.

Not everyone can say that so I know how blessed I am to have the job I have.  Everything I’m doing suits the extrovert in me.   Writing satisfies my introverted side.  I don’t think I even realized how introverted I am until I started writing every day.  I not only enjoy time alone, but I need it to develop as a writer and as a human being.

So now I’ve written another introverted blog, (some might say a self-absorbed or narcissistic blog) which probably interests no one but me.  In fact, a lot of my recent blogs have been about the writing process and I’m not sure how interesting that is to others.

Then why did I write it?   Why don’t I just delete it?  Maybe I’m trying to show my readers (if I have any left) and myself that sometimes this is what it’s like to be a writer or to be in one’s Purpose.  It’s not glamorous or exciting or interesting.  It’s just work.  It requires diligence and perseverance and determination even if all I’m going to do is throw it away.  But this is what it is.  It’s work.  Work isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not always fun.  Sometimes only the results of my work are fun, not the actual work itself. 

The results are going to show themselves eventually.  I just have to Get Started and Keep Going…and keep writing.