I’m on a writing hiatus. I’m writing a little, but giving myself a break from the pressure of writing\/editing\/submitting. I’m just working on these fragments. The idea is to separate writing, the thing that helps relieve my anxiety, organizes my thoughts and lets out my anguish from the pressure of … whatever I made it out to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m attending a local writing festival and one of the writers talked about having to separate herself from her inner capitalism. She talked about how her art and expression aren’t just about money, and it’s hard not to default judging by the monetary reward – I made lots of money, therefore I’m good. I almost wish I had that fallacy. It seems simpler. I view writing as an expensive hobby, I don’t really count on ever making money with this. But even if I did, I would still not feel justified in spending time writing. My thing is service to humanity, society. Writing feels so indulgent because I’m not saving anyone’s life with this. I’m not solving hunger or even helping the environment, the way I could pretend with my day job. I don’t know why it’s so hard for my subconscious to accept that I’m a normal, very average person who is tired a lot of the time. I will not save anyone. Please, just let me do my day job, volunteer a little, be generally a good person, donate to charity, and let me write a little. Right now it’s like this – I threw a tantrum, stomped my foot, and said “I’m going to write whether you like it or not!” I don’t know who I yelled this at. Is it the god I don’t believe in? My grandma who instilled the value of service in me? So I fought for the right to write, but my subconscious made a deal with someone, I wasn’t aware of. She said I will write, and just you wait, it will be really good, it will be impactful, and it will be worth it. It will be worth taking my energy away from environmental efforts, from my children. I think she even said “you think she’s kind of a shitty person? Just you wait, when you see the writing, you will see why she’s allowed to be a shitty person. It will be that good.” I didn’t see the deal being made, I don’t have the written agreement. But I feel the energy, the pressure. The fucking better be good. So I can’t write. Cause it’s not that good. It might never be. I wish I could just write little things. Improve little by little. Be in my group, get feedback, take some courses. Read great stories and gently aspire instead of being crushed by the knowledge that I’m too old to be starting. I’m too banal. I’m too out there. I’m too weird and too conventional at the same time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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I’m on a writing hiatus. I’m writing a little, but giving myself a break from the pressure of writing\/editing\/submitting. I’m just working on these fragments. The idea is to separate writing, the thing that helps relieve my anxiety, organizes my thoughts and lets out my anguish from the pressure of … whatever I made it out to be. I’m attending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[41],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/midlifeunraveling.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}