Autumn is a time of change.
There’s something missing, something which I’m just noticing, and I’m not sure whether this absence of sensation is an awakened perception of absence or is a new and creeping numbness of the senses.
I keep writing when I’m too tired to think because it absolves me of the responsibility of thinking about what I’m saying. I’m starting to wonder if this is a healthy or useful approach.
Something needs to shift. My knees ache from spending all day sitting down. Everything I want is in this electric world-brain somewhere, how can I tear myself away before I dig it out? I keep waiting until the last minute and the laster minute to write or to escape just so I can convince myself I have no alternatives but to do the things I’m supposed to do.
If I keep acting like I’m being coerced, I’ll start to resent the dickbag who is exploiting me – who happens to be, in this case, myself.
Me, me, me.
I don’t like writing about myself all the time. It seems so self-indulgent, but I really don’t have a choice. I’m all I’ve got to write about, one way or the other. Solipsism as writer’s block. The universe revolves around me, and as it turns out that’s really goddamn disorienting. Nauseating.
I’m not sure if what I’m writing is any good any more. I’m not sure if I care any more. I’m not sure if I should care. I’m not sure what it means if I don’t.
Caring isn’t something that just happens though. Caring is work. Caring is commitment. And, really, I’m not sure how committed I’ve been. I keep waiting until the last minute, the laster minute, and writing as quick and as dirty as I can, and it comes out reasonably well because it’s authentic, but is that maybe all it is?
I don’t know.
Autumn is – I’m shifting away from ideas and into expressions. I’m shifting away from brainstorming and over to venting. I’m really not sure if I’m okay with this, but it’s hard to fight the current when I’m already fighting so many other past and future currents. I can only do so much, and I’m not sure how much of it can be this, and I don’t know what to do about that, since I love Problem Machine and what it has brought into my life.
Is squeezing snot, tears, spit, sweat, out through the back of my brain and into text enough? Is that what you want? Is that what I want? Maybe this had to be the end-game. Create a blog to question why we make things the way we do, why we make games the way we do, and it is inevitable that the blog will end up questioning itself, its own purpose, its own ends.
I’m not sure it has a purpose outside of itself any more. Does it help people to read this? Does it help them think? Is there some rhythm or poetry within it that elevates their hearts? Is there some new idea that subtly changes their perspective? I think I may have achieved those, sometimes. I think maybe I still do, sometimes. But it feels more and more like, when I do, it’s in passing, almost on accident.
It’s not a disaster, but it’s time to regroup and rethink. It’s time to figure out what Problem Machine is, what it can be, what it may become. It’s time to figure out where the walls of the sand castle I’m playing in begin and end, where they crumble, where they stand strong, packed with salt water.
The last minute won’t last any longer. The line I’ve been waiting for has gone dead. It’s becoming terribly obvious that squeezing writing out by pressure like a Play-Doh factory results in homogenous depressive ramblings, and I’m entirely getting tired of what they provide.
And Autumn is a time of change.
I feel similar things about my own writing. I know I don’t want you to stop writing your own truth, even when it feels lame or self-indulgent to you at the moment. Why should permission to express internal truth be contingent upon its perceived potential merit? How much truth would get filtered out? For me, a lot. I think your personal writing kicks ass, and some of your less-filtered stuff is the better for its spontaneity.
I have kind of noticed that a lot of the stuff I just do at the last moment and speak honestly for tends to be pretty good and well-received, but I also feel like… as I said, something’s missing. I honestly think it has more to do with me being bothered by my process right now than my end result. I’d like to see myself doing something a bit more constructed, a less pure expression and more creative expression. Results-wise, the main thing that bothers me about the stuff I write is that a lot of it has started feeling samey to me.
Of course, I understand that the exact same things that are bothering me may be what have drawn others to my writing. And it could be that where I end up happens to look a lot like where I am now. But I’d like to start at least thinking about what I can do here that I haven’t been doing, and ways to spread the stress and creativity of writing out across the week instead of letting it pool up in the nights right before I publish.
I hear you on that. I, too, would like to get better at planning and refining projects in multiple stages, and better at harnessing my creativity on a subject of my choice rather than being confined to what is most up for me at the time. But neither of us have been writing for all that long–we can grow, and we will.