Well, I played myself. In my last (and also first) post I promised both my readers and myself that I wouldn't succumb to the pressures of keeping a blog that was polished to the point of giving me stage fright – and yet here I am, with five abandoned drafts thus far each consisting of one or two sentences, a Zotero folder stuffed with PDFs that I feel like I'm "supposed" to read and annotate in order to contribute to the oh-so-salient points I'm "supposed" to make, tab after tab open of articles written by people who my brain automatically tells me deserve to be read and listened to far more than I. Nice job, Will. Once again, I've completely psyched myself out, swan-dived right into my usual inferiority complex of "I'm an idiot! Who cares about what I have to say, anyways? Why subject people to my pointless ramblings when so many other people can say x or y thing better than I ever could..." and on and on. Woe is me!
It's embarrassing to admit that I feel like this, that I more often than not assume that my thoughts and ideas and opinions are "stupid" or "wrong" and, as such, I should keep them to myself (or, when I'm feeling really bad, not have ideas at all). Certainly there's a lifelong complex behind this – I was very much seen as a "problem child" and a "slacker" growing up and treated harshly as such – but just acknowledging that doesn't mean jack shit if I don't act on it, try to figure out a way to exit that particular mental swamp.
Okay, I think, and maybe you do too, that's a private therapy session right there, and then comes that great rotted thought once again, the knife that cuts me down: who even gives a shit?
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A few manic episodes ago I convinced myself that I was going to be the next Mark Fisher – manic Will has a tendency towards extreme grandiosity focused around creative output – and spent weeks hunched over in front of my laptop in my darkened bedroom, rocking back and forth as I fizzed with ceaseless energy and an unmanageable glut of ideas that had to be shared with everyone. I was a fucking genius, my life experience combined with my special and unique and indescribable way of seeing the world was nothing short of groundbreaking... there was such a sense of urgency that mania has always lent me that, when I'm in a particularly abject state of depression, sometimes tempts me to forgo the lithium. Sure, last time I got like that I almost moved to Death Valley, but, hey, at least I had confidence in myself and my work, right?
To be clear: I'm not going to stop taking my brain medications, especially just for the sake of a blog. How, though, to find myself some of that manic focus, just enough of it that I don't shit three or four sentences out, reread them, and mutter "shut up" before deleting everything? How to let myself trust that maybe I do have some ideas that are worth putting out there, that I'm not a complete doofus? And at the same time, how to gently pull myself out of that constant need to prove that I am smart, to focus so hard on my own intelligence that I completely ignore other aspects of my personality and life that I do, in fact, feel pride in? Where, ultimately, is the most sustainable balance, and how can I realistically strike it? All good questions, I think, and ones that I can't just sit and mull over without taking action.
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I will be honest with you: I didn't start writing this post with any pre-determined structure or specific point in mind. It is much closer to a rambling diary entry than an essay which, again, feels "wrong" – we've all read an article or twelve about the death of the personal essay, of the contrivance of auto-theory and auto-fiction and "vibes-based" cultural critique and so forth, and I have a tendency to take that sort of thing far too personally. What if my writing sucks? What if it's annoying and overdone? What does that mean about me?
But now I wield that little knife differently: who gives a shit? This is my blog, and I can write about whatever I want on here, and if it ends up being kind of ass then too bad. At least I am both making an effort to expand my writing practice and working up the nerve to make it public. That's why I started doing this in the first place, after all.
I'm not too sure what my next post on here will be about. It might be one of my current drafts (sneak peek: they are called Keeping a Diary, Incommunicable, and Meat! thus far) or maybe I'll think of something new. Maybe the writing will be more personal than I initially intended, maybe not. Maybe it will be terrible. Yet again: who gives a shit? Mentally I stab that little knife into my lack of self-confidence, of neurosis around my work and its reception. It feels good.