On the plane tonight I finished Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending.” In and of itself that probably is not reason enough to restart the blog. If what I read is the inspiration for posting again then my devouring “I Want my MTV”, the oral history of the first decade of MTV, would be the top choice. But the book has put some thoughts in my mind that tie into what I’ve been thinking about recently and why I wanted to start writing again.
The novel, which is a very good read, focuses upon perception and memory and how we interpret our own past. We each consider ourselves to be the hero of our own story and we have created a mythology of our own legend. These memories define who we are but as we get older the question as to whether those memories are real or not become more and more in doubt. As Barnes writes, “History can be viewed as the lies of the winners or the self-delusions of the defeated.”
This made me think about how we document our lives, whether through pictures or videos or words. One of the reasons that I write is that I find it therapeutic to keep a record of my thoughts. Not that I feel that there is any historic value to them. In fact, for years I kept all of my writings to myself. It is not really what I write that is important as the pure act of writing and getting my thoughts out. For some reason I best express myself by looking at a screen and letting words flow from my fingers. I am more thoughtful and eloquent in this form and when I stop writing it effects who I am as a person. And I’ve spent too long of a time not writing and it is really becoming noticeable.
Battling the Current really is a record of who I am, or more accurately who I was. I wrote constantly from November 2004 until March 2011, which would just happen to correspond to when I got married. Now there are a lot of reasons as to why I stopped writing (mainly getting married, moving and switching jobs in the same week made my life so stressful that I can’t really describe it) but one major point is that the story behind the blog had come to an end. I started the blog to document my journey of being on my own, going out and trying to find the woman of my dreams. Once that story was completed I had no idea what the new story would be, which is a fancy way of saying that I was really wondering where my life was headed next.
I think I have it now. I still have a lot of growing to do and striving to become the man that I want to be. For years that was about creating that image as I sat at the end of a bar and looked at my reflection in the mirror. Now it is about more being than image and to stop paying lip service. The stories of our own histories that we tell ourselves are not always true. Sometimes you have to face some harsh lights. But that is how we grow. And that journey is what the next phase of my writing is going to be about.
So yes, I am back to writing every day. And yes, it will be the usual mix of pop culture and discussions of a bizarre world and the occasional derogatory reference to the state of Kansas. Some things never change. But the story has changed directions.
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