Friday, 11.06.2015 - 6:05 pm.
I have a hard time coming up with ideas and focusing on them. No...I have a hard time writing. I am focused, and I have a lot of ideas. I just cannot find in me the discipline to sit down and put them into words. And this is not about my PhD research, my problem with it is that I don't work on it all the time and I feel guilty for that.
I'm talking about my blogs and my literary writing. I keep so many "favorites" in my browser, in hopes to write about them in a near future. I do not. I suppose I get too self-conscious:
Is this post good enough?
Will it be interesting for others?
Is it too disconnected from the reality of my country, shouldn't it be about what's on the news and not my narrow, privileged experiences (let's call this survivor guilt)?
Will it have any gaps in the arguments I present?
Will it attract trolls (in over a decade of blogging I have rarely experienced such a thing, I cannot believe my good fortune so far but you never know)?
Will someone even care (that is not a troll)?
And there goes my motivation. My ideas evaporate after that.
There's a call for short stories in the university literary magazine and I have an idea. I have the basic narrative, based on that one week years ago when a friend went into a coma and died, and in between the get-togethers at the hospital and then at the wake, I learned my ex-boyfriend of years was indeed my ex-boyfriend and was getting married to the woman he overlapped me with. Man, I just can't let it go, can I? I can't, by now it seems like a juicy, cold-hearted story for me to turn into fiction. Actually, I'm not quite sure I'll mention the ex-boyfriend thing at all in the story, to keep it short and sweet.
See, I'm excited about the idea but I feel I lack the proper physical space and mental state in which to sit down and write it. I dared to look at my notes just today, and only because I was home alone for a while, as Andrew too wanted to be alone and went to run some errands by himself (he's been moody today. I know it's not toward me or because of me and he confirmed it. He has mood swings from time to time and I'm glad at least he acknowledges it).
Anyway. I'll make the effort to have the story ready for the deadline next month. And in spite of all this, I have been fairly regular with my blog updating lately. I suppose everything comes down to following my instinct and volition and not caring about the questions above.