That's what the career counselor I saw today said to me. It stung. I hurriedly explained to him that not writing made me feel bad, which he dismissed, not knowing that what I meant was that not writing makes me feel awful. Guilty, maybe even ashamed, perhaps worthless. It feels as though I'm wasting my potential and cowardly avoiding a difficult but important task. It feels like I'm not doing the one thing I might be good at, lest I discover I might not be good at it, and therefore good at nothing.
I feel embarrassed about referring to my aptitude for writing as potential. Which is absurd, because it is potential. Even if it's just potential to be a really good personal blogger, which maybe isn't all that grand, but it's what I've got. I don't have aspirations to be a great novelist, but that's probably more a reflection of my fear that I don't have it in me to be a great novelist. Let's be honest, I'd love to be Stephen King-like in my prolificacy and success. But as much as I envy those two aspects of his career, the thing I really envy is the way he describes losing himself in a story. Channeling, rather than writing. Feeling words flow from one's fingertips. I know he also says that in order to write prolifically, one must write prolifically. Not novels, per se, but anything. My problem is not one of talent, but of avoidance. Which can also be called laziness, ambivalence, what the career counselor called "not needing to."
But I argue that I do "need to" write. The fact that I don't - at least not consistently - says more about my mental/emotional/psychological/moral fortitude than about my desire. Call it depression or call it plain old fear, I don't write because I feel afraid to try. I am afraid to write badly, but in order to write well, I must first write badly. I must also learn to follow through, to write past the point of feeling inspired and through the inevitable ambivalence I start to feel after writing a first draft. Maybe it's not ambivalence. I'm really into labeling today, I feel a need to label the feeling of relief but also immediate avoidance that comes after writing something. I feel better after writing, but I don't want to look at what just came out of my mind. It's like vomiting. And while there's no value in examining one's regurgitated lunch, returning to a piece of writing is an essential part of the process. Or so I've heard.
But I want to say something and be done with it. Words are never easy to get it out, and I fear that examining them more closely will only counteract the positive benefits I got from writing in the first place. That is to say, I want to take the fleeting relief I get from pounding out an unedited blog entry and cling to it as long as possible. But in doing so, I am no doubt denying myself the opportunity to wring even greater satisfaction out of the writing process. By honing a pile of verbal vomit into a thoughtful and concise essay, I will create something instead of merely spewing something. There is real satisfaction in that, and pride. Those feelings are also fleeting, but at least I'll have something substantial to show for it.
Before I go ahead and publish this mostly unedited blog entry, I just want to say that the aforementioned career counselor isn't a jerk. Aside from that stinging comment (which inspired me to write, and thus ended up being productive), he had a lot of helpful things to say. I'm actually feeling hopeful about my career prospects for the first time in recent memory. I hope I didn't jinx it - I'm so wary of positive feelings, always preparing myself to be disillusioned. But it's nice to write something positive. Let's call it an affirmation. An experiment in conscious hoping. And I'll just let this moment, this day, be a hopeful one and let that not be a dangerous thing.
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