I get slightly overwhelmed and excited when I start a new journal entry. The blank space can be a bit daunting, as I never know where I will end up and whether or not my rambling comes together into some sort of realization or learning experience.
Though my entries are sparse at times, I've learned a great deal about myself by thinking like a writer. This has it's flaws of course, but I'm finding many new methods of expression are becoming available to me. So I'm going to focus this journal entry on mental states and how they help me interact with the page, and thus my world.
I suppose I'll start with what I feel is the biggest advantage of blogging, and that is refining ideas until they're eventually good enough to share. I should say that a lot of the ideas I have in here are not good, but I have acknowledged before that this is part of the process of getting to strong ideas. It's not like these entries are actual published work, yet they do serve a purpose. Well, I like to at least pretend I haven't wasted countless hours typing into a vast emptiness unless there is some sort of reward.
This act of writing, or assigning words to the various feelings and musings in my head, has really helped me organize my whole thought process. I often come upon day to day realizations and my brain immediately starts to shuffle them around into not only what makes the most sense to me, but in terms that others can understand as well. This sentence right now, in fact, is currently being devised in my head and I'm not writing it for me -- I'm writing it for you.
That sounds foolish, but I like to imagine that I have an audience whose eyes that read my words and ears that hear my voice are more important than my own. It is not fulfilling for me to write solely for myself. I could sit here for years and write words that are pleasing to me, but then having a shared language would become irrelevant. The words would be so empty and without purpose because I would not be writing with the desire to evoke people's thoughts. I would disengage from my world and live in a self-absorbed bubble. (Let's just suspend belief and ignore this whole blog nonsense.)
Sure, it sounds blissful but that is not what I want. I am at the point in my life where I'm becoming the human I want to be -- one that is very much involved in this world. Whether I am a tutor, teacher, street bum, or self-righteous asshole (check!) -- it doesn't matter. I just want to continue interacting with this world in better ways and grow from those experiences.
Of course, I should mention some of the walls I've hit along the way. Perhaps it's a part of my personality for other reasons, but it is often difficult to have complete confidence in my ideas when I believe I am being judged for everything I say. Even having learned to think before I speak, there are times when I am all too aware that the things I just expressed do not perfectly represent my views. To give an example, I am struggling to work through my views on love and romantic relationships. I've had countless conversations on the subject, and each time I notice myself fumbling to find the perfect words. I often feel like I have a good outlook that is open and accepting of different types of love, but other times I feel challenged and realize I have no significant experiences to back up my views. How am I gonna support my theses?!?! Well this isn't exactly essay writing.
I was just telling my friend Chris that I suppose it will take some time to have fully realized views, but that shouldn't stop be from being confident with what I already have. And even if I am quite confident with certain outlooks, that shouldn't stop me from continually challenging them and adding to this massive web of life concepts I wish to create. Good system, yeah? I'm glad you agree. You being the two readers I think I have. Hi guys!
Speaking of confidence and writing, it seems like half the time I feel like I my thoughts aren't good enough to put on paper. It's hard to discern, but I often follow Chris' advice: "Don't believe every thought you think." I fucking love that statement to no end. I've thought about it a lot in the last few months and it has cultivated some rather interesting ways of thinking (that I try not to believe so easily). However, I should acknowledge that it may be worth it to jot down any ideas I have and read over them later. I have different outlets depending on the context of the ideas and my mood. Little poetic musings usually end up in my tiny green spiral notebook. Writing in which I go introspective usually ends up here, but also I did maintain a physical journal while I was in Europe and it felt much more like I was writing it for myself or my future self. I suppose it would be worth it to maintain these various outlets for my benefit, utilizing each one to somewhat organize my thoughts.
The one I'm trying to get better at is writing stories. I haven't had much luck with this in the past, and I'm still wavering as to whether or not I should pull the plug. I often get nifty fictional ideas in my mind, but I haven't found an effective way to write them down. Muddling them together with any of my other avenues doesn't seem appealing, yet when I go to simply put them into a Word document I feel a bit disconcerted. It's just a text editor, but there's something daunting about that blank space and it's fighting my every intention to be creative and fill that space with art.
Something I'm going to try is using a much more basic text editor just to trick myself. I'll never know I pulled a fast one over on me! Also, I've devised a system (yet to be implemented) in which I can use my hugantic, cumbersome laptop for an hour before bed and put down my final ideas of each day. (And before the damned thing overheats and sends me into a convulsive heat stroke.) The problem then, will be organizing those ramblings into a cohesive story. A lot of my ideas are spontaneous and inconsistent with any real theme and honestly I don't know how real writers do it. What the hell are you guys doing so right? I think at this point I just need to talk to more authors and learn about their habits as well. Mimicry leads to mastery, I hope.
Anyway, it's time to bring the post to a close. I've just about had it with hearing this voice ramble inside my head and not produce anything of substance. Perhaps I'm just waiting for all these pathways (and the stars) to align before quality ideas really come in. Open the floodgates, baby.
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