Annual - Annoyance

(The title was derived from my laptop named "Beautiful" being grumpy and refusing my efforts to reach this blog and make a post. It is about 5 years old and I probably could have taken better care of it. However, my combination of fondness for its familiarity and disinclination through a cheap streak at the cost of replacement means I am most likely going to make do with it for a while yet.)

Every year, I tell myself is a rededication. Nothing outrageous, but an opportunity to mark off milestones and make new habits. Alas, I run out of steam and get distracted by other things. Mostly, I wonder if what habits I chose really matter. Do they mean something to someone else? Is it selfish to pursue these habits at the expense of other things?

I don't know for certain, and thus get worried over nothing until I realize that time has gone by and I have accomplished nothing but vanity. Nothing will matter if there is nothing given or risked. I fear that I shall go through my life with the same mantra, the same thoughts put in different words. but it is all that I have at the moment and will likely always be.

So I read other peoples work, comforted that it is not mine. That I am a spectator, though not often a critic. I am apart from the creative process, but can get excited and point others in the same direction. "Look! Look! This person is saying something on my wavelength! If you want to understand me, only presented better, this is what you need to know. This is what entertains me. This is what thrills me. And because this other person is able to communicate this, I am obviously not alone in that interest or perspective."

It is lazy, admittedly. But it depends on what I ultimately do with the knowledge and experience I have accumulated. Mostly I do things of value when I am not noticing, when it becomes natural for me to do certain things. I want a natural life, one in which I grow. But it is a matter of perspective. Maybe you'll gain from whatever fruit I am able to produce from the sources of entertainment and interest that I find and share. That is a pleasant thought.

Consistency. That is the key. To keep persevering and building a commitment to an end.  This blog is somewhat a collection of snapshots of my mind at certain times. Like with my face, certain themes stay recognizable, but depending on the time interval between captures and the amount of sleep I've had before it, the expressions in the portraits change.

I am usually spurred to write when some external event occurs to encourage it. In this case, it is a cocktail of few ingredients. The new year and the reorienting in time and place that it brings. A vague poking about on my part towards my lethargic facebook account to see if I should awaken it. Lastly, the amount of enjoyment I am getting from reading Warren Ellis' "Orbital Operations" and the DeFractions' "Milkfed Criminal Masterminds" email newsletters.

Writing as a process is fascinating to me. Not always as the mechanics and the rules as if it were a machine, but from the operator and conductor's point of view. How does a writer process information and convert it into communication and narrative? Ellis is a grumbling gardener of a writer - his ideas sprout from a rich assorted fertilizer of environmental and economic theories of rise of declines in the modern world, ambient music seeded along other sorts of podcasts, and composted rejected ideas which collapsed on themselves before they saw the light of public purview. I love this weekly newsletter so much, with its grim humor and commentary on trends and their applications and implications.

Milkfed Criminal Masterminds' updates are fewer, so I don't have as much material with which to judge its tones, but Matt Fraction's December newsletter was amazing. It was a story told through chronological coincidences and rediscoveries, of how pain, addiction, and death were sometimes the risks and scars of his courting of the creative process. It was beautiful, heartbreaking, bitter through the hard times, and sweet through the knowledge that he has survived those demons for now.

There is hope, though in the short scenes and stories that I have crafted so far have not always been clear or hopeful. I get lost, whether in terms of where I was intending to go, or in not leaving a distinct and engaging trail for an audience to follow. A few of my attempts have strained the friendships I've had and discouraged me from trying my hand at writing short fictions.

Writing is work. Especially editing. I have heard that the first draft is for the writer (with door closed), the second is door open (with a few trusted people let in to review). I don't always have the confidence for the second go-around. It is cowardly, and I need to change that if I want to be a better writer. It is a tricky balance to be in tune with the work but not emotionally connected in a way that will cripple at the first wave of criticism. I guess that is why there are drafts. If I want something to last and stand, I need to care enough that it has a good foundation and presentation from more than one angle or perspective. That I would not be discouraged by it falling apart, but to take the pieces that stood up well and recycle them into the next attempt.

This is mostly a reminder to myself. It is not a resolution, but nor is it a passing fancy. Let's call it a consideration for now, until it gets higher than a few days off the ground to be worth a different title.