A (hopefully more permanent) return
Because it's summer, maybe, or because I'm back to spending some much-needed time alone, or because I miss the however small and fleeting sense of community I once got here, or maybe because I just really miss it all - I think I'd like to start writing here again.
I stopped writing when I stopped frequently questioning my identity and my purpose. Looking back on it, I'm not entirely sure what changed. The semi-optimistic answer is that I finally became really, wholly comfortable with myself, and that made me complacent - with no real reason to self-examine, I just stopped. And some of it probably has to do with the fact that I went to college to get a degree in journalism. It turned what was once a means of relief, release and expression into a tool of trade. Writing was no longer about expressing the truths of my own heart and soul but about what I could say about others. And not, unfortunately, about their innermost beliefs and identities, but about their superficial details, their ages and hometowns and one-line opinions on the weather. I stopped searching for anything deeper, either in others or in myself, and so I found myself with hundreds of words to write but nothing really to say.
I have forgotten that it takes effort to look at oneself critically, honestly - or even at all. It once came naturally with the self-centeredness of adolescence, but now I can go day by day concerned with nothing but practicalities - will I find a job? Where will I live? How will I move? Will I have to pay for the impressive damage I have done to my own walls? And I'd like to believe there's more that I should care about than that.
So this is me dipping a toe in. Maybe I'll find I have more to say once I give it a try. At least I really hope so.
I stopped writing when I stopped frequently questioning my identity and my purpose. Looking back on it, I'm not entirely sure what changed. The semi-optimistic answer is that I finally became really, wholly comfortable with myself, and that made me complacent - with no real reason to self-examine, I just stopped. And some of it probably has to do with the fact that I went to college to get a degree in journalism. It turned what was once a means of relief, release and expression into a tool of trade. Writing was no longer about expressing the truths of my own heart and soul but about what I could say about others. And not, unfortunately, about their innermost beliefs and identities, but about their superficial details, their ages and hometowns and one-line opinions on the weather. I stopped searching for anything deeper, either in others or in myself, and so I found myself with hundreds of words to write but nothing really to say.
I have forgotten that it takes effort to look at oneself critically, honestly - or even at all. It once came naturally with the self-centeredness of adolescence, but now I can go day by day concerned with nothing but practicalities - will I find a job? Where will I live? How will I move? Will I have to pay for the impressive damage I have done to my own walls? And I'd like to believe there's more that I should care about than that.
So this is me dipping a toe in. Maybe I'll find I have more to say once I give it a try. At least I really hope so.