Fresh Starts

I just created this blog after some light prodding from my wife as to why I don’t write anymore.

I started by telling her it was complicated, only to end up searching for the WordPress app within five minutes. Turns out it wasn’t that complicated.

I have this really cute thing I like to do where I get a big idea, get all jazzed up about it, think about what my life will be like once I achieve this plan, and burn myself out in a short order due to the pressure I put on myself.

Like hip hop? I’m going to create a blog for it.

Enjoy movies? Well I’m going to be a screenwriter.

Learn how to make a pizza? Guess what now I’m detailing how to open a pizzeria.

I feel like the phrase this is why we can’t have nice things is a perfect summation of why I can’t have dreams/ambitions/interests/likes.

It goes from 0 to 100 real quick.

And writing quickly became a mechanism for me to daydream around. Escape. My ticket out of whatever I was in. My way to be somebody. Desperate to matter.

So I used it. I used it like I used a lot of things in my life. And got off on the belief that this thing mattered and it would take me somewhere else and I would be important and whatever the fuck.

And then when it didn’t I strategized on the next way to escape and matter – sometimes taking another approach at another world writing – screw stand up, I’ll be a screenwriter, blogger, journalist…I must have had at least 300 different ideas, attempts, plans.

And nothing hit. And I felt like I couldn’t have a healthy relationship with writing because of it.

When I was younger, I used to make my 9th Grade English Teacher – let us free write. It was a super basic exercise, she set a timer and the whole class would just write for 25 minutes non-stop. Pencils couldn’t stop moving.

It went from a challenge to something deeper for me. A way to tap into that voice in my head. Formulate my thoughts, ideas, opinions.

I fell in love with writing somewhere in those exercises. And I got half-decent at it. And I took that bit of talent/learned skill and passion and applied it. Went off to LA to have dreams of being something.

There is an old Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee – with maybe Kevin Hart – where they talk about LA. “L.A. is undefeated – no one has ever conquered it.” They say something to the effect of that.

I couldn’t agree more.

I love LA. Still live here. But fuck man, this place is undefeated.

It puts you in your place over and over. A city fueled on dreamers – literally – the dreamers are pumping gas, flipping burgers, making this shit run. From immigration to US Transplants, everyone comes here with a plan. And then that plan gets derailed when you move into Koreatown or Hollywood or The Valley. All of a sudden you realize you have to make money fast and the dreams can take a back seat.

Of course, by the time things start coming back around and you can focus on the dream, you’ve met enough people who’ve been eaten up by the machine that you don’t even know what you want or why you wanted in the first place.

I used to do those free writing exercises in the park in Boston on the weekends in high school. For fun. I tapped into myself so quickly with them.

This is just a free writing exercise. I could do the whole editing thing, but by the time I reread it and shape it, I lose the reason why I wrote in the first place. Its importance diminishes.

But I couldn’t trust writing anymore. Writing gave me unrealistic expectations. Writing fueled me with dreams and not a lot of actions. So I stopped.

I stopped the dreams.

Focused on other things. Stopped getting burnt by ambition.

So when my wife asked why stopped writing I said it was complicated. She asked why and I said you wouldn’t get it in that way that us men say that when we don’t want someone to push.

It’s complicated because I wanted it to be complicated. Because in my head I made it complicated.

I stopped writing because I couldn’t trust it anymore. It let me down. It gave me big, impractical ideas.

I don’t meditate, much to my wife’s dismay. My free flowing writing is essentially a tap directly into my psyche. It’s as close as I can get with it.

So I stopped writing because I couldn’t trust it anymore. But writing is an extension of me. So I couldn’t trust me anymore.

And I had to ask myself – is that still the case? I’m working to prove myself wrong.

Not by making dreams come true. But by writing and being free.

Here’s to round 301. This time it’s just for me.