writing about writing

It is rare that I sit down to write with no target topic in my mind. My relationship with writing is like a marriage – to maintain our love, I set intentional time for us to spend together. I bring gifts and quality conversation starters to the date so that we would make our time together rewarding. Usually, I want to peck at my keyboard after a week’s worth of events, most typically coloured by the hefty amount of reading that my advanced classes have demanded of me. Yet… it has occurred to me, as it has to some of you as well, that I have not written an entry for the last two months or so. I would very much love to use this space to explain myself in detail, yet… I would rather put it succinctly, rather un-poetically… to spare you, my dear reader, from the burden of having to share in my dealings. I did write during these last two months, but I didn’t complete any entries. As I scribbled my thoughts down, I found that I was being held back by some uneasiness, some discomfort with the authenticity of my words, the breadth of my vocabulary, my emotions, and even my ambitions.

I was worried that my views would be offensive, challenging, incorrect, impossible, or plainly stupid to some of you. That you would read what I had to say about the Nashville shooting and think I was biased. Or that you would have strong feelings about my opinions on Reese Witherspoon’s divorce, Andrew Tate’s release, ChatGPT 4, the Selena v. Hailey drama, Donald Trump’s Indictment, Blac Chyna’s conversion, Greta Thunberg’s honorary degree in Theology, Cobalt mining in the DRC, Love is Blind season 4, Rihanna’s Superbowl performance, Kamala Harris' visit to Tanzania, and more. Simply, I forgot that everyone is entitled to their opinion. That I designed this blog with the primary supposition that I had a lot to say about a lot… and there were people interested in hearing my views. Oh… the drama and the arrogance of it all…

I must say, to write about writing… which is what I find myself doing at this moment is as easy of a task as it is to drink water as one swims. Sure, one can do so successfully in sips and puffs, but that hinders the very act of swimming. The very act of saving one’s breath. This contaminates the art of swimming, like I feel I am doing right now with the art of writing. But what I find even more peculiar about this analogy is that drinking the water that one swims in also contaminates oneself. In this manner, my writing about my experience with writing, and the difficulty thereof, feels like a pollution of my soul. Like a robbery of the beauty that lies in my dancing with the words on this sheet. In the wrestling with the grammar of a language that I will never get to call my own. Of phrases that will always undergo screening by my inner translator, who sometimes worries that she is not doing a good job. A great job. Excellent*.

Unfortunately, maybe fortunately (I may never know), this inner translator works with a harsh critic. One whose eyes are ever upon the errors in the entries I write. She reads in between the lines in between the lines. She peruses the content of every sentence and paragraph and decides why they are lacking and how they will further demonstrate their deficiencies once they land before your sweet eyes, my dear reader. And I cannot help but protect you and your time from being pricked by incoherent words, muddled sentences, and illogical paragraphs. Which is why I feel that this is where my ink supposedly runs out. Which is why I feel the pressure to hurriedly promise that I will post more consistently in the coming weeks, years, and decades… until death does writing and I part.