The problem is that I have forgotten how to write.

That's why I am not posting anymore. Not with any regularity, anyway.

I have not written daily in years. It is something that I sacrificed to my wife, the journal burning at her feet at the altar.

I used to write in the mornings. I had the time. I didn't start work until nine. I work from home. So I would roll out of bed at you know seven thirty or seven forty five and I would have a coffee and I would get right on to the computer more days than not – we can call it four days a week – and I would take a quiiiick peek at my email – and if we didn't have an OUTAGE level problem at work then I would allow myself to let work sit until nine and I'd start writing. I'd write about whatever. Mostly in-my-head stuff. Monologuing.

With Penny, I wake up at seven. I make coffee. Sometimes I try to get my workout done in the morning – it only takes 25 minutes - and then at eight I enter the kitchen and take care of the dog and chitchat with Penny for half an hour, and then it's eight thirty and I'm probably going to shower and get dressed and then it's past nine and on most days because work is busier and I have more responsibility I will just log in and start cranking - remembering where I was with tasks and problems - doing a little prioritizing or sending a quick email out – that kind of thing – then I have the 10AM group meeting most days and after that it's eleven and I'm already exhausted. By eleven if I have nothing urgent to do, I can in theory do a chore. Step away, go to Stop and Shop for groceries, read a book for half an hour because I feel like it. But I never feel like writing during those windows.

I just .. don't. By eleven the "I deserve" voice becomes louder than the "I want to make something and learn a craft" or hey maybe less lofty a goal just bitch on paper and force myself to tunnel my thoughts into a focal point that exits my consciousness as a word and then another and then another, the deserve voice overpowers whatever else is in me and then I'm beating off to internet porn or watching a youtube video about how millenials think they're different from Gen Xers or taking a nap.

I'm not claiming I used to be a great writer and I'm not now. I've never been a great writer. But not with any real skill. That's not the point. The point is, I used to write a lot more and now it's difficult. Evenings are family time almost all the time. I cook most evenings. By the time I am done with the workday and cooking and some dog like activities there is virtually no way I can sit down and think about actually making something – actually directing my thoughts enough to come up with absolutely anything at all to say that would be written down and persisted. I am not saying I couldn't do it if someone made me or I was properly incented. But there's no internal drive at that point. I always feel like: I have spent my useful energy. Nothing will come out of me except shit like I AM SO TIRED and WHY AM I EVEN DOING THIS AT ALL – I tend to have a lot of what's the point of all this anyway type thoughts constantly running around in my head and I work to make up lies to myself about why I should do this and should do that even though I know whatever those things are, are not that important – so I do have to continually burn energy to sort of fire myself up to say, pick a new JIRA bug off the pile and start looking at it. I have to convince myself anew, every day. And I do.

But by the time it is over I am tired. I hate that I have to admit this. I think other people burn hotter than me. I see youtubers and motivational speakers. They are the kind of people who proclaim they wake up at 5AM to meditate before 5:30 hard cardio crossfit until 7 and then crush it all day with family and job after. They seem to push harder. I don't want to push that hard anymore. Maybe it is a function of age as I'm nearly 50 now. But I don't think it's just age. I think I have a deep seated lower energy level than those people - there is not as much gas to power the engines. Or maybe there is exactly as much gas but my systems make much less efficient use of it by attempting to run multiple conversational threads in my head at the same time, one about the present, one about the future, and the third thread, the self-aware one who spews information about what an absolute dipshit I am being at all times.

So I just ... don't write anymore. I keep thinking about it as a fantasy

Yesterday, with the day off, I went to the paper store and bought a new notebook to write in. Then I got a book out about writing from the library, ordered another online, and got a third on audiobook. I stayed at the library for thirty minutes, completely unusual for me. I sat and forced myself to read there because I knew if I went home it'd be harder to read later. There's something about being home that makes me want to just unravel. I tried to notice things about my environment when I looked up from the pages now and then: the old, unusually tall windows for a library, five feet vertical, the blue sky outside, the slightly musty smell of books that I love... and the near lack of people. One girl in a study cubby looking at apartment listings online on her notebook, swiping left and right on pictures of shabby options, as best I could tell from my brief walk past, involuntarily snooping. Another guy walking around that might have been a patron. That's it.

And I read this book for a while and it's decent but I keep thinking now that I've read these books before because one melts into the other and it's all the same advice which probably means its the right advice when so many people say the same thing and why do I even bother reading similar books over and over when not a single book on writing has made me a better writer?

The point always remains. All advice can eventually be reduced to Writers write. In other words, the people who are writers tend to be, for obvious reasons, also the same people who write a lot. Writing a lot can mean more than just writing – it can mean editing or learning a new subject because a character in a book needs to be good at Kung Fu or working out a plot to a story or figuring out the best way to frame what someone said in the article you are writing for the local paper. In other words, writing can mean other things that are a part of the writing process. But writers take part in this process constantly.

Not haphazardly. Not two days out of thirty.

And lately the biggest barrier in between me and writing more is, honestly, me.

Me and my energy levels and motivation. Me and my ho-hum what's the fucking point of everything default point of view. I can't seem to make decisions on what to do most of the time with my energy and I make excuses that what I really need to do is my duty - caretaking the family – sacrificing for work.

And of course the continual sense of doing my duty takes its toll after a while and this makes me low and depressed and less willing or able to try to do anything about it.

Part of the problem is a fear I have of getting back into it – doing the work to write more often once more, to value it again seriously as a hobby – and that once I'm in a good stride again, my job will surface with a true Ion Storm of shit to toss around for months. A single long month of stressful work throws me off of just about all my hobbies until I summon the will to force myself to "get back into them." Work is a violator who cannot be negotiated with, one that might appear at any time to put down any upstart thoughts and ideas before they grabbed hold.

I had the following idea yesterday. Taking the challenge to earn a single dollar with my writing this year. I'd have four months. I wondered if taking the challenge would help motivate me. I think I remembered somewhere that agreeing to do something for someone else – the public nature of it – is often a good trigger for getting personal projects done. Because you don't mind letting yourself down, who cares, right, so let's not write today, but you'd never let a stranger down, so you will write so you can say to your partner in agreement: Yes, I did the thing we agreed I should do.

When I put it in writing it sounds ridiculous though.

Who would pay money to read shit like this? Good god. Diary of a high functioning neurotic.

This is what I wrote into that notebook at the library as i read

I am trying something new today.
Writing longhand in a notebook.
Reading Brenda Ueland's book
from 100 years ago, IF YOU WANT
TO WRITE.

I read in the Wayland Public Library.
It smells musty. There is
almost nobody here. I suppress the
urge to feel like these spaces are
irrelevant. That is my adult voice
talking. The one who works and
codes. The one who has to move
at lightning speed.

Reading and writing require the opposite.
Slowness. Mindfulness.
I try to reconnect with the
part of me that wants this.

Ueland suggests a motto to follow:
Be BOLD
Be FREE
Be TRUTHFUL

Her assertion: The truthfulness
will save it from pretention.

The windows near where I sit
are long, five feet tall, then another
window on top, casement might be
the word, for opening with a hook eye

I told myself I would do this
for just half an hour and I
am already feel myself trying
to back out of it.

Back to reading.

“You are talented and you are original”
You must be sure of that.
Says Ueland.

“we let dry obligation ... take the place
of creativity”

“Families are great murderers
of the creative impulse....”

“we have come to think Duty should
come first... but duty is the
by-product!”
Writing should come first.

Jerista aside: this is the fundamental
problem with my life. At 49, I have
allowed duty too great a place
in my identity.

“want to assure you... no
writing is a waste of time”...