So, I haven’t been blogging very much lately. Let me tell you why – not out of a need for you to pity me, but as an explanation for letting you down.
It’s because of work.
I don’t mean it’s because I have a lot of work – truth be told, I have very little, and have had very little for many months. I’m talking about how we have made “work” into a noun (maybe it should be Work to avoid any confusion), a noun that exists solely because we “do it.”
My boss left a few months ago (I couldn’t even tell you how long it’s been), and since then our department has slipped further and further down the rabbit hole. Our morale is so low it looks like the tail end of the Vietnam War in our office; I loathe my job more than I can even explain, and I am not alone.
If you were standing outside looking in (which you are), you might think I was just being a whiny asshole. The job pays well, I’ve got plenty of free time to surf the ‘Net or pick my nose or whatever – what’s there to complain about? This brings us back to the fact that I haven’t been blogging. Allow me to explain.
Ernest Hemingway, when he lived in Paris, was a starving author. He rented a small room above a bistro, and he would go there to write. He used to say that he would write until he was almost spent – that, like a well, you should never pump it completely dry, but you should leave some water in the base for the next day and allow the night to replenish you. In A Movable Feast, he recounts a story of eating oysters and cold white wine after a particularly satisfying afternoon of writing. For those of you paying attention, this comparison between writing and sexual energy is not accidental. That’s why Papa kicks so much ass, but I digress.
I love to write – I hope I don’t come off as arrogant, but it’s one of the only things I’m good at. But, in order to write, I have to have something to draw from: hope, anger, frustration, joy, or peace. While I’m here at Work, these emotions fade away, leaving a desert of apathy in their wake. When I was trying to write yesterday, trying to find something funny to say about Eric and his experience with Samuel L. Jackson, I felt like I was wringing a dried onion skin. I hope the pictures made you smile, but I apologize for the tone and the dreadful meter of the paragraph I wrote yesterday. I almost hate to say it, but I’m ashamed of what I’ve written.
Yet, in writing yesterday, it was cathartic to some extent. When the well is dry, you have to break the dried earth and (hopefully) allow water to rush back in. I won’t go and make promises that I’ll write “every day” from now on. But I can say that not blogging is indicative of me withdrawing from the richness of life to go plodding along in my day to day activities. And, even though it’s just a stupid little blog that six people read, it’s all I’ve got sometimes.
So, there you have it. Please accept my apologies, and my thanks for your continued patronage.
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