Writing is Life

Writing is life. Writing extracts that which darkens our souls and lends light to those blackened remnants of our passions. Without writing we go postal. Without writing we go psychotic. Without writing we visit counsellors, psychiatrists, priests and confidantes.

Life should be experienced from the inside. We should learn to describe our world and emotions from an internal perspective - not the external emotional bloodbath of movies, television, books and the like. We desperately search out kindred feelings but we're unable to express that which lies deep within us.

Writing teaches us to reach down, to grab a handful of the hodge-podge trapped within and release it to the wind. Who cares if anyone reads? Who cares if only the electrons check out your sad state of affairs. Once these vile gases leak out, the pressure within diminishes. Freedom then springs upon us like a flower in May. Beautiful change and silken laughter become available to us once again.

All because we care enough for ourselves to write. Write it down people. Get it out. Save yourself.

How Did We Get Here?

I just looked over my titles of recent blogs - Cattle Prodded Masses, Islam - An Orgy of Murder, I Am the Last Confused Man - and I realize I have a gift for titles that grab. Too bad no one reads them. The good thing so far is the content hasn't been deemed worthless. Of course, one day that may come to pass. Someone may actually stumble across this writing and respond with, "Oh my god, this blog is crap!"

Writers live with that stigma hanging over their heads. We write and write and write and often it sucks. Then we hit that moment of lucidity where all the planets line up, God Himself gives his blessing, the masses are in a funk and boom! there is a gem to capture everyone's attention - for a moment.

Criticize writers all you want. At least we have the balls to put it out there. At least we have an attention span long enough to contemplate more than our next party, meal, screw, game or whatever distraction is top on everyone's list in THEIR particular moment. Society today lives like it will never die.

I'm not attempting to be morbid, but do you really have nothing better to do than watch 36 hours of football over the weekend? Or how about 100 hours of TV a week? This shit is ROBBING YOU. This shit IS STEALING YOU LIFE!

I'm a football and basketball fan. Hell, even Tiger Woods has made my sports window. But I look back over my life and wonder at all the hours I used to spend watching SOMEONE ELSE DO SOMETHING I WANTED TO DO! Give me a basketball and a hoop over watching the prissy-assed pampered NBA millionaires any day.

I suck at golf, but I love the serenity of the manicured courses. I love the challenge of attempting an excellent drive or a putt of any kind. In football, there is nothing like a perfect spiral settling into someones' outstretched arms or making that one-handed grab in stride.

Screw television. How many times have we been told "TV is the great wasteland". This has been a quiet little voice for decades. Are we going to continue to avoid life by living through electrons presented to us by people who "have our number?"

Do you realize you are programmed by government and corporations? Oh my god, he's on a "big brother conspiracy kick!" Wake up people! I'm not presenting fiction! Step away from your television for three weeks. Turn it off and get a life. See what I'm talking about.

We have a world. We have beauty all around us. There are smells, tastes, concepts, relationships and countless other aspects of LIVING that we deny each time we sit in front of an ever-more technologically enhanced BOX and allow anything resembling life to leach away into fat cells and dulled minds.

So sure, criticize the writer. Make fun of his or her manic ideas of freedom to live and breathe without electrons dominating our life. Criticize the opinions we dare to form and put out there for consumption. At least we're paying attention and are brave enough to express our thoughts.

This is my rant and confusion for the day - How did we get here? How did we get to the point that life is not a short gig and beauty is something to be viewed antiseptically.

Of Writing and Confusion

As I stare into the radiation bombarding my eyes from my monitor, I muse over the day and wonder at how I think I'll ever make a living as a writer. I am ill suited to the discipline required to work well on my own. No time clock, no pressure of a boss, why in the world do I presume to think I can write for money?

The human psyche is not something to trifle with. We are only here for a short while. That is such a trite statement. How many billions of humans have expressed that very same thought in nearly countless languages? I still must ask myself these questions. If I don't get into a writing mode soon, my family will be bankrupt and I will feel disgraced.

Am I waiting for that calamity to motivate me? What keeps us from achieving our dreams? I have dreamt of writing for a living for decades. Now that I'm on the cusp, why waffle? Is it a fear of success/failure? Is it laziness? Hell, is it self esteem?

I am a confused man. That is not to say I'm stupid, poorly educated or ignorant. I simply get confused by all the contradiciton of this world. One day I'll understand. That day involves death of some nature, I'm certain. I must reveal myself to this world if only through my blogs, books, webs, tweets and other communicative medium.

I fear I'm entering a stage of persecution. Persecution for writing that which is on my writer's heart. Everything I write is not necessarily my belief written in stone. I like the liberty writing gives you - the liberty to create and take on persona's you otherwise would never live. I like writing the bad guy. I like the decadence of fiction. Good fiction. I love a great story. I crave the ability to spin a yarn everyone falls in love with. Yes, that's that "Great American Novel" kinda thing. Can't help it, I want it.

So I'm off to continue my writing career. Wish me luck. The confusion grows thicker the further I progress ...