Chronicles of a Procrastinating Novelist Volume 12: Musings on Guilt and the Necessity of Solitude
Disclaimer: This was composed on April 9th, 2018, and is not a reflection of my current state of mind.
I’m really grateful to be by myself today.
God, writers are a selfish lot. Or maybe it’s just me. I spend so much time in my own head, thinking, and thinking, and thinking. Worrying, analyzing, angsting. And then when I can’t stand my own head anymore, it somehow makes it onto paper. Be it story, blog post, or diary where the need for the censor drops away.
Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes I’m making up stories. Sometimes I’m learning. Synthesizing what I see with what I’ve read, or experienced. But it’s a lot of brain time. So much one might be justified in calling it indulgent. Spoiled. I only have it because of the sacrifices of other people working so I could be happy and live and go to school where they taught me to think even more deeply. I only have the time because of the good will of the sister with whom I live and who is the only one who loves to read what I write and is the only one who really understands how much all that stupid brain time is necessary to the writing time. And even when I’m finally supporting myself, I’ll still owe everything to all the others who paved the way for me to get there. So, guiltily, I’ll keep thinking and writing.
I’ve been told to turn it off. To learn to take a break. Find a mindless way to occupy my mind. I haven’t. Alcohol will turn it off, after sending it into a muddled tailspin from relaxation through insight down to rage and weeping. Nothing else is mindless. Exercise. Computer games. Coloring books. Painting. Playing music. Listening to music. Meditating. It all requires concentration, and I end up analyzing it afterward anyway. Maybe I don’t get the point of these exhortations. Turn off your brain. Take a break. Find mindlessness. The more time I spend chasing them, the worse I
feel about myself for failing to achieve them. So I just enjoy the hobbies and don’t bother chasing mindlessness anymore. And I feel guilty for never finding it.
You’d think I don’t really need it. All the thinking time that leads to the writing time. One imagines one can just sit down and write. No. I need the space. The solitude. The introspection. It’s as necessary as air. And its absence breeds dysfunction. Grudging resentment toward the obligations that filch away the time. So as much as I love friends, love family, love my sister, if I gave up the thinking and the writing down of what I think, I’d just give up. So ultimately, it’s back to selfish. Selfish self-preservation. And the guilt that drives me to feel like I have to constantly explain myself.
That’s what I really want. To be free of the guilt. The constant nagging worry and hope. I hate hope somedays. Hoping one day the right words will come. Hoping that someday I’ll finally be good enough. Hoping that maybe I’ll figure out the key to just not caring about it anymore. I envy the ones who have it figured out. Who are close enough to God not to worry, or who are more selfish than me and only care about themselves or are perhaps less selfish because they’re content not to have hope satisfied. I want to be free like them. I want to stop making my mind and feelings into a prison. And that’s really hard. Thank God I can at least write it down.
So feeling bleak today. But that’s okay. Everything unto its season and all that.
Thank you for reading.
B
