Regaining a voice

I will admit that this return to blogging has been very uneven so far. I am still working on a writing schedule and the fact that I have taken nearly two years off from writing has resulted in my talent and creative muscles suffering greatly. It is amazing to what degree creativity really is like a muscle. Writing right now is very similar to me as those first few workouts; you are enthusiastic at first but then you are discouraged by your first effort and then you are sore in ways that you cannot recall. The main challenge is not to write something brilliant but rather it is just to write. I have to sit down day after day and put words to paper and eventually something will happen, much like hitting the treadmill day after day until the pounds begin to fall off.


What I find now as opposed to when I started this blog in 2004 and certainly compared to when I was a teenager or in college is that I no longer assume that what I write is brilliant. I truly thought as a teenager that I was on the verge of writing the Great American Novel or penning some brilliant satire. I’ve looked back at those stories and those first twenty pages of numerous novels that I tried to write and have realized that they were horrible. Just embarrassingly bad with no form, structure or hope at all. There was talent there and I can see my humor working at times but it is so immature. But that is one of those wonderful blessings of youth, you think you are good so you work hard and do a lot of crap work until one day you slowly start to improve.

While I may never be brilliant I do think that when I was blogging regularly I did have a run where I was writing something that was interesting and even though I have the talent it has really hit me that I can’t return to that spot because my voice has completely changed. If you think about it the blog really captures my early 30’s when I seemingly spent my nights in bars, listening to bands, playing trivia and having a series of relationships fail in more and more ridiculous ways. The posts capture the thoughts of someone who still feels young and who finds himself in a city where he knows no one and is trying desperately to find any meaning in life at all.

But that isn’t my voice now. To be honest, I’m not sure what my writing voice is now. I no longer feel young. I still can’t say I feel mature or middle aged but I just feel different. Like I can no longer bs myself into thinking that there is this grand mythology surrounding my life. Not that anyone should take that as a complaint. I’m happily married to the literal woman of my dreams, a woman who when I first met I turned to a friend and said “One day I am going to marry her”, so it is not as though I have any desire to go back to those days. It is just that my life has settled down and I am not sure how to write about a life where I am content. Hell, I am the only person who has a challenge dealing with the fact that he can now consider himself to be happy.

I guess I am writing this to say that I am not sure where I am going with this and it might take me a long time to get there. Some of it will be crappy. Ok, a lot of it will be crappy. Last night I read a David Foster Wallace essay as well as one from an old friend and it just drove home how far I have to go. But I really want to make this work. I have to find my voice again.