Marching into Summer a Guilty Man

Somehow I’ve left writing.

It didn’t leave me, but I am a child who waits for the perfect environment.

I need to be alone.

I can’t be tired.

I must have the perfect Jazz album playing.

I have to have had a good day.

I need to feel like I’m not being pressed for time.

Time is really the greatest enemy of mine. I don’t look at it right. It takes four hours to get to work. (It takes 15 minutes on average [but it takes an hour to get home]) I won’t start something I don’t think I can finish. I panic. It’s better to never try then to either miss a deadline or be late for something.

I read these essays on how other writers manage their time. Some writers wrote while working, parenting, spousing, and getting into other parts of life. Others didn’t do anything but write. Some wrote on napkins and small pieces of paper that they compiled into a great work of literature. Others wrote on a typewriter. Others use a MacBook Pro, and they write where the coffee is the color of toffee and the steamer interrupts the hip hop.

I wrote a blog post everyday for a year. None of the above environments ever happened. I wrote a lot of those posts on my back and on my IPhone. It might have helped me write a lot, but it didn’t actually grab me that discipline I thought it would. I stopped.

Now I have rewritten this several times and I feel like everything I write is stupid.

I went from a Joe Henderson album to a James Chance album.

And why do I even care about writing well? No one reads unless it’s boy wizards or a book that vindicates a feeling. No one even reads the hours on a store’s door. No one reads a menu. It has to be obvious.

Sometimes I lie in bed at night and be watching TV or trying to sleep and I just think about how I wish I was doing something creative. I lie there thinking about the process. I see myself writing, drawing, painting, designing, but when I come down to my “office” and open the laptop, I stare at a blank screen for a few minutes before drooling on myself scrolling through Facebook.

Everyone is writing more than me.

So I left writing.

I didn’t have anything to tell you on Facebook.

No opinions.

No declarations of adulting better than you.

No kid pictures.

No selfies.

No links to questionable news sites.

I just hang on to the awful thing to be invited to things. It’s also handy for birthday reminders or any news from my softball team.

Honestly, if I wasn’t on my softball team, I’d quit Facebook forever.

It’s ruining my writing. It’s ruining my reading. It’s ruining the world.

So I lie in bed with my back to my computer while I think of what I want to write instead of writing it.

Some say it is just as easy as just doing it.

Just do it.

No excuses, bro.

Just fucking write!

I will sit and scroll through Twitter or Instagram instead of write. I will stare out the window and stare at the cars driving by. I will turn on TV. I’ve got Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and I have the MLB package. I am savvy with YouTube. I will watch porn. I will do all of this instead of write. Draw. Paint. Create.

It sickens me. I have turned my back on who I am.

The world spirals and spirals closer to being something I don’t recognize, but I won’t write.

I have thought I was gonna die, but I won’t write.

I am on my second, third, or fourth chance at life, but I won’t write.

I am told on a daily basis that I am creative, but I won’t write.

So here I am trying to find writing again. Or something.

Mostly I am disgusted with myself.

I am better than this.