You see, I've always considered myself to be a writer. When people ask me what I do in my free time, I almost always say I read a lot, and write a bit, but if I were totally honest, I'd have to admit I was probably overselling that idea. Truthfully, I hadn't written anything to completion since that final blog post in 2012, and even that was exceedingly slight. I used to write short stories as a kid, but I hadn't finished one since midway through high school, when my attentions turned, predictably, to poetry. So I guess you could say I was an amateur poet, yet I hadn't actually written a poem since my college days, almost a decade and a half in the rearview mirror.
So what, exactly, was I a writer of? Honestly I couldn't tell you. I guess the blog qualified as writing, but as has been addressed, I was only intermittently proud of that work, and it was infrequent. Which makes me a bit of a liar, I suppose. The problem is, I feel confident that I can write clearly and maybe even adequately, but I don't feel as if I have a point of view. I read past works and it seems flat and mundane, without a clever or original angle. I read old works and rarely feel anything other than disappointment. But it still called to me. I still got the urge to put pen to paper(or finger to keyboard, as the case may be), and I would compose sentences and paragraphs in my head while I walked or took the bus. I would always tell myself I would write it down once I got home, and that it would be the start of a grand project that would kickstart my writing habits for good. And then I would get home, and the work-induced lethargy, to say nothing of my responsibilities as a child-having adult, sent me lounging on the couch and watching movies, which I was increasingly falling asleep to.
Somewhere along the way I got the idea that maybe I was limiting myself with the narrow field of pop culture, which is of course ridiculous. Pop culture is so far-reaching as a topic that I could practically write about anything I wanted, throw in a reference to the Millennium Falcon or Godzilla, and voila! My article fit the stated objective of my blog. And still, I had it in my head that I should open myself up to writing about other things, and so created this blog. This was to be the blank page that I could fill with whatever I wanted. A safe space to tinker with short stories, poetry, rantings, sketches, whatever entered my mind and was of sufficient merit to think others would tolerate reading it. And if it wasn't of sufficient merit? Well, I wasn't so much worried about that part. I would just throw it on there and if it found an audience, great. If not? Well, the point was to get myself writing again. I felt motivated, I felt inspired, I felt sure that I would keep going this time. And so I decided, New Years having just passed, that I would take the opportunity to make this my resolution. To write something, even if it was just babble, every day, and try to cultivate some of it each week for this blog. Once again I could tell people I was a writer and not feel like a fraud.
This was over a year ago. I logged in today, remembering I had created this site and feeling like I should do something with it, and was surprised to find I had actually written a post. I certainly didn't remember doing that, yet maybe I had written some small form of throat clearing and then forgotten it. Seems like something I'd do. I looked into it further, and saw that it wasn't actually a post, it was an unfinished draft, with the title 'So This Is The New Year'. And when I opened it? Nothing but a blank page. A blank page that I have now filled with a few paragraphs of throat clearing, finally taking steps to fulfill a year old promise to myself.
I won't make any promises here about what I plan to do with this blog, or how often I plan to update it, and I won't speculate on any future plans. I've done that before and I've always let myself(and my purely hypothetical readers) down. In fact, if you go over to my aforementioned original blog and read that 2+ year old most-recent-post, you'll see that it includes a promise to buckle down and post several times a day. I'm afraid procrastination and hollow promises are things I'm all too good at. What I will say is that I feel like I'm finally groping and stumbling my way towards actually developing as a writer, and if you decide to remember this site, and check back every once in awhile, you might be able to track some of my progress.
