Foghorn

I find myself longing for something new. When it comes to writing, I mean, and I’m not sure what that might be. For the past year I’ve been beating the same drum—there’s no progress, no sense of momentum or drive in the work. I look back on everything I’ve written and, well, I’m not impressed with myself. It’s not exciting.

At first I assumed this was a problem with my own enthusiasm and something that required buckets of therapy, perhaps the writing hadn’t changed at all and it was just my own nerve for it. But now I think I need to shake things up. I need a new format, a new medium. Something that will blow off the cobwebs.

The other day I sat down with all the text I had gathered from Volume A and tried to force myself into the Adventures mood; the one where I’m excited and typing at lightning speed and coffee is rushing through my veins. But after an hour of trying to force that kind of enthusiasm I realized that this just isn’t working. No, it doesn’t feel right. There’s something shameful about the work, something that doesn’t quite meet the moment. It’s lacking research. It has no sense of a journey or a story connecting all the disparate parts together.

It doesn’t feel punk rock.

I’ve always struggled with that, as I’m sure everyone does; trying to figure out what’s successful and what’s a flop. I used to measure it in retweets or hearts or follows, and then something I’d written in ten minutes would explode and I’d sigh. I could do so much better!

And then there’d be the flops. The quiet chunks of work from years ago that no one has ever read and that I still think about often. I remember that work like a foghorn wailing from some far off distance, warning me of cliffs and shallow tide.

That sound reminds me how I want all these words to click-clack together. Retweets and likes be damned.