a list of excuses

Sometimes I feel that the act of writing is one of reaching out.

Everything ultimately is.  I know this.

But... I don't know.  The peculiar mixture of vulnerability, self awareness, and mental organization form such a potent compound that sometimes it seems all too dangerous to attempt fooling with it on a regular basis.

Or that's an excuse.  Probably an excuse.  I'm just avoiding.  And after re-reading that last "potent compound" stuff, I just sounds ridiculous.

So therefore I am left with little choice but to lean into it.  Here is my brutally honest list of top excuses that I use to keep myself from writing.

1. I don't want to look like I need it.  I don't want to need it.  For so long I've used writing as a means of digging a bit deeper within myself, trying to put words to what is essentially a gnarled mass of images and inner impulses.  The push and pull of powers outside of my control.  And it has gotten to the point that I feel as if any attempt to sit and hash things out has progressed pass the point of personal responsibility.  It's possible that I've named too many things, reduced most of life to manageable and specific constructs. Read too many books on how humans work that I can now more quickly recall passages from sociology treatises than my own immediate reactions.  Regardless of the reason, I've convinced myself that I don't really need to address any emotional ambivalence anymore.  Now, I just buckle down and do what I have to in order to survive.  On one hand, that's made me a whole lot more sane and "adult" (ugh, what a terrible word) in dealing with the world... on the other hand, it has completely turned my writer's stove down to the pilot light, if that.

2. I don't want people to read it.  To be completely honest, I feel as if anything that I write sets up an expectation to the reader that I simply don't want to be held accountable for.  I don't feel that I have a whole lot to say that people should take completely seriously, and I've gotten a bit queasy thinking that perhaps I have gotten to the point where an exposure of any inner life that I have would come across as unpleasant.  So I suppose that's just fear: fear that I don't have a life worth sharing, fear that I don't have insights worth exploring, fear that any negative experiences or thought processes that I've inevitably gathered over the years will leave a bitter aftertaste.

3. I don't care enough about people to share it.  The nagging thought that if (and that's very large and egocentric "if") I have something to say, that the person reading it simply doesn't deserve it.  Why should I have to illuminate something previously darkened to someone who can't manage it themselves?  Now, clearly, that's incredibly selfish... I probably shouldn't even admit to feeling that way.  But what's the point of this if not to eviscerate myself completely, in hopes that I can find something that I've lost?  And perhaps in this idea I can find a bit of my paralysis in cognitive dissonance.  The equal forces of "they don't deserve it" and "who the hell are you to assume you're valuable."  There is certainly an element of superiority inherent in writing, that in the organization of words a writer can somehow guide someone else somewhere new.  That dominance has somewhat eluded me in recent years, and any attempts to overcome it have evoked a palpable, physical cringe.  My ego a chalkboard, my writing the fingernails.

So this is me reaching out.  I've obviously written this, and as one of my favorite Orson Scott Card quotes goes: "I know what I really want by watching what I do."

I've needed it.