Writing can be kind of hard

You know, writing is kind of hard. I found it hard to have a voice, to feel what I was saying mattered. I'd see (some) writers say that, if you were truly a writer, the need to write would hound you all your days. I never quite felt that way. It would come to me, and it would leave. I would have a voice welling up from inside me, and I would encounter a reality that told me that voice was better off quiet. It was a simple reflex, ingrained some time before words could probably adequately express it. I think what I've learned really is that it requires feeling. Requires being in touch with the world. Some people are very sensitive and have many feelings stored inside. Some of those people too can be easily shut down or fired up. Sometimes both. Back and forth rapidly. I try to find a good balance now. I don't really want rapture, and I certainly don't want to remain quiet. I want beauty. I want feeling. I want love, I want pain. I want to be alive.

I think we are all called to create for many different reasons. It is a drive in us. I think it's in all of us. We want to interact with the world, we want to play. We want to express ourselves. We want to have fun, and we want to tell other people how we feel in a way that will make them feel too, we want to share our pain and joy, we want to create mirrors upon mirrors, mirrors within mirrors within mirrors; we want to reflect our collective humanity all around through our individuality. I hope no one feels that art is some calling for a select few, some pawing affliction, the curse of genious. I think that perspective is a misunderstanding, and a hell of a tool for governments, a way to rob people of their voices. It is hard sometimes to feel you have a voice. To find the strength to create. Even to find any purpose in it. Especially when you've been made to feel unworthy.

I was recently re-reading a post in Yanyi's The Reading series where he talks about what drove him to write. How it saved his life. How he came to understand that it was an invaluable part of his life, something, in fact, that was inseparable from his personhood, from his heart, his soul. "I must write because otherwise I would lose track of who I am." Art helps us remember who we are. Creation is a mirror. Reading is a mirror. Don't be afraid of mirrors.

Can I admit a traitorous thought? I've been looking at web platforms, site designers, those things that make creating a website so easy. I want to write, and I want a place to put it, and I know it isn't a crime. I want it to be easy, I want to be able to reach people, I want to not have to worry about whether my site is styled while also being properly viewable on mobile. I know it isn't really a crime, I know, but it feels like a betrayal sometimes, of myself. Not to want these things, but to show up on the shore of these designers, with their polished editors and prepackaged themes. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling a sterile feeling there. A type of loneliness. Maybe that's silly, but I feel like these things weren't created for me. I feel no inspiration in their post editors. I feel alone. I feel without myself.

I can't, honestly, escape the charm of writing directly into html. It feels more personal. More personable. More authentic, I guess. I'm not dealing with polish, things polished for marketing. That stuff messes with my head. I'd like to use my own polish. I show up in the post editor with that feeling some people get when staring at a blank word document, the feeling that I am no longer speaking for myself, weaving a facade rather than art. The mask. I know it lives in my mind, but I see it behind these gleaming, sleek things. I long for simplicity. It lifts a certain weight off. I don't really want to be marketed, though I'd like for people to see and read my things, to feel something. I don't write just for myself. That would be a betrayal of every writer I've ever read.

I don't feel that pressure here. This feels safer. I don't feel any burden of expectation. Any unnatural performance. Just my rhythm and my words, which I can send out on the sea.

Anyway, all this to say, I find it hard to find myself in most things when it comes to writing. That same sea I wish to set my work upon, I find myself very lost in when approached wrong. This boilerplate world. I don't have to skills to make the prepackaged themes my own. I'd rather make my own shitty website than feel I'm making myself in some other's image. The way in which I come upon the writing doesn't feel separable from my writing. To seal it in another package and send it off feels like I'm betraying something for the sake of ease. Though this is easy isn't it? Why does it feel that anywhere else require me to be someone I'm not? I'm not sure. But if you feel the same way, here we are together.

home