A blog where a family can be a family

I don’t know what to call my writing issue.  I am comforted by it but I have realized that if I make anybody have to listen to me all the time I can get very annoying very fast.  It’s so nice to have some solitude to get the writing drive out without feeling like I’m forcing it on anybody.  I think it’s just a nice relief for me.

I remember when I was a teenager before I ever wrote anything.  I would get so mad at myself because I didn’t know how to talk or form my sentences very well at all.  I would have something so specific to say to somebody and I just couldn’t get the words out and it would drive me crazy.  I’d just mumble and hope for the best and get strange responses.

I still find that communication is hard even now when I write every day.  Knowing exactly what you want to say doesn’t mean anybody is going to listen.  Or sometimes they listen too well I’ve realized.  People read into things too much sometimes.  Like with songs there is always a certain meaning attached and usually not much else.  But people will get obsessive and draw more conclusions than is necessary.  I’m always glad when songs mean something to people but good grief, there’s more to life than songs, you know?

—–

Sometimes I say stupid things in public and feel embarrassed but try to play it cool.  When you are always exercising your blabbing abilities there is a big probability that something dumb is gonna come out.  And something dumb WILL come out, trust me.  

——–

Writing is like pulling teeth a lot of the time.  There is nothing in the brain that wants to come out.  It’s all happy and content about staying inside.  I try to scrape the barrel but I think I’ve already scraped everything out of this one.  

Think think think.  I’m gonna sleep here in a minute.  I love looking forward to sleep.  I love that I get to konk out.  I keep having these great dreams.  I have been sleeping late so it gives me a chance to savor my dreams instead of rushing into my days.  I’ll sit in my bed after I wake up and think back through the details of my dreams.  I’m often surprised.  I really do think it’s so easy to forget dreams. I think most people probably forget about 99 percent of their dreams.  That sounds accurate to me.  

I’m always traveling in my dreams.  And it’s always to places I’ve never been.  The other day I was in New York City with Jack from Lost.  We were on some mission and we got trapped in a big parking garage without doors or windows.  I was one of the characters from the show only I was also myself.  It was a character that had always been on the show (in my dream world).  The character was me (Jeff).  I was this tough, brainy guy that Jack liked the best and Claire had a crush on (I added that last part just now).  We were carrying machine guns around (which is weird now that I think about it).  Somehow we got out of the parking garage and hooked up with Sayid and then found a house where all of our other Lost friends were.  I think they had ordered some pizza and I was so excited because I was staaarving. And then we had a few minutes to spare (‘cuz we were going to fight some people) so I went on a walk by myself.  It was about 8:55 at night and I saw a Borders bookstore across the street.  And as soon as I saw the Borders I realized that all I was wearing was tighty whities.  Oh crap!  I ran across the street and hid behind a mailbox.  I was trying to act normal and not embarrassed.  I saw that Borders closed at 9 and there were only about 5 people left inside.  And for some reason I really wanted to know if they had an Anne Lamott book (Bird By Bird).  I decided that if they had the book it would probably be on one of the front display tables (don’t ask me how I knew this).  So I sucked up my pride (and some of my gut) and walked nonchalantly through the front door at Borders.  I could feel the people in there staring at me but I just played it off like it was no bit thang.  I looked down at one of the tables and I saw my book (I couldn’t buy it because I didn’t have my wallet on me).  Then I looked up and made a thumbs up sign to everybody inside, “Alright, ya’ll got it!  That’s all I needed to know!  Ya’ll have a great night!”  And then I turned around and walked out the front door.  

I woke up right after that and sadly wasn’t able to reunite with the rest of the Lost people which sucked because pizza was sounding really good to me.

Anyway, I hope I have another cool dream tonight…

The last entry was short.  I was totally hoping to write some long thing but I guess I got distracted somehow.  I can’t remember what happened right now.

My writing style is interesting to me but also seems potentially puke inducing.  It is extreme self-centeredness trying desperately to pass itself off as art.  It’s commentary on a commentary.  How annoying, right?  I read something the other day where someone was talking about what it’s like to make things for audiences and how it’s more fun to make things that people either love or hate because the alternative is something that nobody even cares about.  I thought that was pretty good.  It comforted me about my self-obsessed writing style.  I remember when I was younger and “developing” my writing voice.  I listened to a lot of music and I realized that the most fascinating stuff (in my opinion) was first person.  Those were the songs I liked to listen to because I would easily be able to put myself in the singer’s shoes.

These days that’s one of the challenges I keep facing about songwriting.  I want to write songs that people can relate to and are interesting but I’m more and more wary to want to play a “relatable character” for people.  It creeps me out in a way.  The songs that are the most interesting to listen to are not always the ones you’d want to write and have to sing over and over again.  That’s one of my major weaknesses as a songwriter.  I don’t like singing the same song twice.  It feels derivative.  This is good in a way because it keeps me writing and reinventing things I say but then I go so quickly through songs that I can’t remember how to play or sing any of them.

Isn’t that a strange situation for a songwriter?  I sure think so.

I’m not dating these things.  I’m curious how they’ll read later on if no one knows when they were written.  I’m wondering if it changes anything.  It probably doesn’t matter much.  I guess one way to make something timeless is to not put the date and hour on it.

I just went on a walk.  It was for three miles on a sidewalk around some baseball fields not far from the house here.  It’s 3/8 of a mile all the way around so I went around it 8 times (is that right?).  Most of last year I was in the habit of running about four miles three times a week. It lasted until Thanksgiving because it got cold and wet and I spent a week housesitting at my Mom’s house.  It threw me off my routine and I never made it back on.  I probably could have just run less or walked instead but nah.  I just quit.

Tonight was my third night in a row to walk three miles.  I’m not sure what kind of shape I’m in.  It’s hard to tell because I’ve spent a whole lot of time in this house over the last few months.  I can be a real hermit when I want to be.

——

I’m writing very small in this notebook.  It’s wide ruled and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to write long entries if I only wrote on the lines.  So I’m doubling up.  It might be pointless but oh well. 

I’m trying to push my writing a little more.  I don’t know if I could ever be a novelist.  I find it a real challenge to make myself write most of the time.  Or, I mean that I never think I can connect it all or make a story out of it, you know?  To write stories you have to maintain a narrative.  I don’t think that’s something I’m able to do at the moment.  And I don’t see how people even do that anyway.  I mean write long, connected stuff.  That sounds so hard to me.

And how do people just blab and blab?  I don’t get it.  I can most everything going on in my mind in about five seconds normally.  And maybe that means I’m dumb, I don’t know.  But still, some people can write books that are over 700 pages long.  I don’t see how that’s possible.  And how can you get it all to tie together?  I don’t know.

Well, wait.  What am I talking about?  I’ve learned a lot from writing regularly.  I’ve learned a lot about how to work the writing muscle and how to get through self doubts and panic attacks!  I think the best realization about the difficulties is to know that yes, they do exist and they will always be a part of the process.  When you except that you learn to work with the challenges and not fear them as much.

There are so many things that can distract you from the task at hand but the benefits of persistence make it worth it.  I feel great after I’ve spent a day writing when I know it took a lot of work.  I feel proud of the accomplishment.  I love the feeling that something wouldn’t exist unless you decided to sit down, dream it up and make it.  

I used to read books and take for granted the gifts that writers give.  I find myself a lot more grateful for the written word lately.  It’s a real sacrifice get things down on paper.

On my mind right now are little digital characters.  I’m thinking about the letters of my sentences as they tap down to the white of my computer screen.  The way the thoughts lay down is almost snake-like.  Each letter is really a whole choice between so many other possible letters.  Why is that interesting to me right now?  I think because I’m always on that edge between the end of my writing and the big, endless blank whiteness in front of it.  That’s where a writer lives.  It’s a between place.  You’d think a writer would live somewhere else but nope.  A writer is always on a journey of tiny steps across empty pages.  I think the endless white nothingness is the scariest thing for a writer to think about.  It’s never ending!  That is both exciting and terrifying.  It’s a humbling  thought that your whole creative life hinges on your ability to suck it up and go traverse the wild white page.

I’ll get to where I want to fill it up with drizzle.  Dribble.  Fluff.  Whatever to get me to the other side (please tell me there’s another side..).  Why do whole books exist?  I see them sitting on my bookshelf here and each one was dreamed up and tapped out someway, somewhere.   Every book had to get born.  And then they are just here to look at and thumb through.  Is that unbelievable or what?  We have all these manmade records of thoughts.  In a world of such cheap daily experiences doesn’t that give you hope?  Books exist.  Real people think them up and write them down.  Some are really good.  And some human made each one.  A human like you and I.  With skin and eyes and opinions.  People can do that.  People can write books.  It’s a possibility!   Humans are capable of sitting around and watching TV and also of writing whole fascinating books!   Isn’t that just the most inspiring thing you’ve ever heard?

Can you believe we live in the world where humans write?  It happens IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM!!  Dr. Pepper exists and people write.  What else do you really want out of life?  Wow..

I’m gonna hit the f key.   f

I’m gonna hit the r key.  r

I can hit any key I want to.  Nobody can tell me what key to hit.  4   Nobody can make me hit a certain key, I just 7 hit whichever one I want to ` when I want to.  I can talk real smooth or elegant er whateves.  Every key I hit is a decision that is going to have some consequence.  Maybe the letter or number will stay.  Maybe it will be deleted.  Maybe there will be a typo and it will survive by 4error.   Who can say really?

I feel like I have a pen and I’m running it across some paper with my eyes closed just to prove a point.  My point is that anything can go anywhere.  

That may not be profound.  I think it might be.  I don’t know.  It seems good.  It seems hopeful and dreadful at the same time.  Anything can go anywhere.  Anything can happen to whatever thing you can think of.  Is that too vague?  I don’t know.  

(I don’t know if I’m getting this across.  I’m trying to say something interesting.  I hope nobody tells me that I failed.  Maybe they won’t notice that this is stupid.  Maybe they will think it sounds smart.  That would be cool!   I wonder how long I should stretch this out.  I wonder how long I could?  Hmm… more importantly, how long would I?  Maybe not too far.  Each entry only gets a certain amount of attention after all.  I mean, you can just sit around and keep going.  There other things to do with your life than make entries in your blog.  Like sleep for one.  Don’t I feel tired?  Uh… yeah.  I didn’t have to think about that one.  Yes.  I am tired.  I could sleep.  Yes, but isn’t there value in enduring through the creative process?  Yes.  I believe so.  Yes.  The best works of ark would not exist if they were only worked on in the fling of inspiration.  There is a hard, dull, lonely desert to every creative endeavor.  There is a grit to it and a strain.  There should be.  There should be a misery to it.  At least a little.  It should feel like work.  And everybody knows how depressing and annoying work is supposed to feel.  You have to suffer through that pain, you know?  I mean, if you want to be a legitimate human.  You’ve gotta be miserable.  You’ve gotta bear the stress.  Right?  Isn’t that the way it goes?  Life is good but life is bad…  so just be thankful and suffer through the hard parts.  I guess.  

So that’s what I mean.  Life isn’t always easy.  And writing isn’t always easy either.  It’s like a metaphor, get it?  Writing is like life and vise versa.  It’s just another way to describe stuff.  Don’t you get it?)

I’ve been having some fantastic dreams lately.  I think they’re better than my real life.  I’ve been trying to savor them because they are very entertaining to me.  I’ve been sleeping late and letting the dreams unfold at a regular pace.  The other morning I had a dream where I went to New York City with a bunch of friends (even though I have no idea who they were, just that they were friends somehow).  I have recurring dreams where I go to New York City.  I’ve never been there in real life.  I’ve always wanted to.  I would love to live there for a few months sometime.  That’s a dream of mine.  

Anyway, in my New York City dreams I’m always riding in a car and we approach the city on a bridge and there’s always a million cars.  And I just stare at all the buildings like a little kid.  In fact, in the dream  I had the other day, the car we were in had a sunroof and I looked up through it at a building so tall that I fell over backwards in the car.  I guess I wasn’t sitting in a seat.  It was more like the seats had been taken out and it was just a big open inside of a car.  Now that I think about it, maybe it was a limo.  Hmm..

Well, I fell over backwards and I was just completely silent at the sight of the huge buildings.  I think I’m partly in love with New York City.  

I think I have the same love for Los Angeles.  I have a dream world where I go there too.  Not in my sleeping dreams.  I mean just in my day dreams.  Yeah.  The other day I found the address to the building where they shoot The Office and I entered it into Google Earth.  Then I did the thing where you can view it from the street and I pretended like I was standing there looking at the real Dunder Mifflin (only it had the name of a studio on it).  It was behind the fence just like the show.  And the street was in an industrial area on a dead end.  

I’ve never been to L.A. either.  I’ve never even been to California.  I would like to live there for a little while someday too.  Not permanently again but maybe for a couple of years.  I think I would have fun around Hollywood.  I had an idea last night to move there for a couple years with the goal to be in a movie.  And not to have an acting career but to do something in a movie.  I could just be an extra in something.  I just think it would be cool to be able to tell my grandchildren that I was in a movie.  I’d probably leave after that.  Or I would just hang out around town.  I think it would be fun to go to premiers and pretend to be a part of the scene.  That idea sounds funny to me because I don’t have a lot of ambition to actually do it.  I can’t tell if I’m just imagining it for the fun of it or what.  I think it would be fun to be around where they make a lot of TV and movies.  

I’m trying to think if there are any other places where I would like to live.  Maybe somewhere in the mountains.  I have a USA travel guide and there is a picture of a street in some Northern state that looks so picturesque (I know that sentence sounds ridiculous but I mean it).  You know how some places just look so cozy and interesting?  I saw that picture one day and imagined what it would be like to live there for like 10 years of my life and just write books.  I think I could really concentrate in a place like that.  I don’t know how involved I’d get in the world around me.  I’d just observe life as it passed by me and I’d go off into my quiet cabin and write some stories.  

That would be amazing!  Don’t you just want a cool writing space?  

Do you ever have fantasies about writing spaces?  I do.  Another one of my writing space ideas is to have a house with enough extra rooms and have two dedicated to writing.  See, I would keep one of them empty and bare and put all the books and everything in the other room.  Then when it was time to write I’d get whatever supplies I was gonna need for the day and then take it into the empty room.  That way I wouldn’t get distracted by all of the clutter.  And I’d clean it and empty it at the end of every day.  Seriously, I would have a whole room dedicated to being completely empty.  I think it would help me focus because I would take the bare minimum of essentials in there with me each day.  Some times I’d take a desk in there with me and some times I would just have a card table.  And somedays I’d take a couch in there but other days it would just be a regular chair.   Maybe some days I could take recording equipment in there to record music and other days I would just take a notebook and a pen so I could scribble some ideas down.   

I like that.

I think you need room to dedicate to your work.  It’s gotta be a whole separate place.  Not that it’s absolutely required but I think it can really help.  Maybe it can help your mind keep organized.  

I bet someday I have a whole big house that is all dedicated to writing.  And I bet my bedroom and kitchen and living room and bathroom will all be in one small corner of the house.