Monday, April 11, 2016

I've written this same damn post a thousand times, worked it out in blog and message and text, the same cry from inside my soul that I've got nothing, that I've been sucked dry. It's that time of year, I guess, when I realize that the fountain that used to spit out ideas and thoughts and clever bon mots is nothing more than a fickle spring, dried up at the first touch of drought. I'm not even good at my job right now, which is to this kind of writing what carob is to chocolate - nothing but an artificial and plasticne substitution.

I spend a lot of time talking about what I cannot do. I cannot command a room with my presence, I cannot seem to type quickly without error anymore, I cannot drink milk. I cannot work a full time job and write on the side full time, too. Right now, I cannot do even basic baseball analytics in the same way anyone else can. I can't find it in myself to be completely happy for someone else, even though I hate myself for that seed of jealousy.

Two paragraphs in and I'm staring at the rest of the page now, because sometimes I just can't even make my fingers keep going. I write in such flowery awful language, you guys, that even when I'm writing to write, writing to try to keep myself from completely falling apart, I sit and stare because the words just aren't lining up correctly, the rhythm isn't quite right, and it's not that this isn't a symphony, it's that it's barely a student-level piano duet.

Maybe it would help if I didn't flip to Twitter every time I finish a paragraph, but I can barely stand to be in a room with myself at times, much less on the same page. I still don't know if I'm actually going to hit that bright orange "publish" button yet.

That's a lie. I know I will, because I am, for all my love of espionage and misdirection, fundamentally honest. I will, because maybe my ranting, maybe my venting, maybe my honest exploration of emptiness (not even pain, just the vague black nothingness that is the inside of my head right now, where words used to exist) will help someone else. I doubt it, but maybe, they will, and all this won't have been for absolutely naught.

I'd like to write that great piece, still. The big something, my chance at glory. I thought I had it, a few months ago, but it slid through my fingers like sand, a reminder that I really shouldn't get my hopes up. So it's still out there, that chance for me to prove myself once and for all, or maybe it's not. Maybe this is it - I'm simply what I am today, nothing more or less.

I don't know what I am today, and every time I ask someone to tell me I cannot tell if they are lying.

I've been posting a lot of things untitled, recently, because I cannot come up with something that doesn't either feel misleading or overly pretentiously shallow. This will be another one.