"Now, what I’m thinking of is, people always saying, 'Well, what do we do about a sudden blockage in your writing? What if you have a blockage and you don’t know what to do about it?' . . . In the middle of writing something you go blank and your mind says: 'No, that’s it.' Ok. You’re being warned, aren’t you? Your subconscious is saying, 'I don’t like you anymore. You’re writing about things I don’t give a damn for.' You’re being political, or you’re being socially aware. You’re writing things that will benefit the world. To hell with that! I don’t write things to benefit the world. If it happens that they do, swell. I didn’t set out to do that. I set out to have a hell of a lot of fun." -Ray Bradbury
_-cropped-.jpg)
So it's been a good long while since I last wrote here, and I find that I am extremely comfortable with how the last year has gone.
I am secure. I spend 32 hours a week at work. I'm becoming a regular at the Park Meadows Starbucks (grande vanilla latte, $3.85). I'm confident with my job security and my health insurance and my performance reviews. I've gotten used to my commute along C470 in the afternoon, calculating my gas mileage (16.170mpg) every time I stop at the 7/11 on Mineral and Santa Fe. My diet has been sufficiently regulated--an app on my phone allows me 1,740 calories a day. Everyday that I'm at work, I eat a turkey sub for lunch, with a medium Diet Dr. Pepper. When I get home, I feel comfortable sitting in bed and eating a whole thing of blueberries. Every Tuesday, I play trivia at Jordan's Pub and am confident that our team will always place fourth. Every Wednesday, I play trivia at The Pioneer and am confident that our team will always place fourth to last. I have things locked down.
But I understand that this isn't how I should be.
This was the year that I told myself was going to be a year of revelation--a year that really made me understand what it was I was supposed to be doing in the world. I was going to read and write and completely immerse myself in a life that I would create as I went along, flying by the seat of my pants. Writing would happen easily--organically; It would find me so simply that I would have no choice but to wake up every morning to the loud buzz of ideas flitting around in my head. Ideas pressing increasingly harder at the edges of my temples, begging to get out, to become real. I am not supposed to be comfortable--I am supposed to be exploding.
But that hasn't really happened. I haven't read much and I haven't written much and I haven't been uncomfortable much.
I sign a new lease tomorrow, on an apartment down near DU, and I can't help but think of it as a metaphor. Either it will represent another routine--a comfortable 12-month promise of a strictly defined lifestyle--or it will be a clean break. And the thing that scares me is that I'm afraid that I've written this before--written that I am at a precipice, and something is finally going to change that will motivate me and everything will change. Yet again, I'm writing about a self-imposed boundary that will determine my success or failure.
But perhaps that's just the comfortable post for me to write. Perhaps that is what I write routinely when I want to escape routines. Which is a bit of a conundrum, isn't it? I often feel like it's a way for my subconscious to work against itself--one side saying, "Yes! You're nearly there! Just cross that line and you've made it! This is where things change, and it gets easier!" and the other side saying, "I don't like you anymore. You're writing about things I don't give a damn for. You're writing about things that are outside my comfort zone."
Well, "to hell with that," subconscious--I think I'm ready to be uncomfortable.
-jim.
