Personal Journal

Bringing the Past Forward

When I thought about coming back to writing in a real way, I first had to deal with this wall, these obstructions that block my path.
I used to call myself “Pathless1” online, and I thought it was clever and meaningful. For that time in my life, it was, and very appropriate in a biographical kind of sense. The irony of it has occurred to me in recent years, and when I announced that I wanted out of my marriage 18 months ago, I changed it.
I’m still wandering somewhat aimlessly, entirely by the choices I’ve made and the circumstances they have put me in. It’s not a bad place, really, but I feel as though I know where I want to go in my personal journey, I just haven’t given myself permission to go there.
My mind conjures up images for me through which to see the philosophical situation I’m in. I’m left to analyze them. In some ways they’re very simple. Bear with me, because this is probably strange (for at least I’ve never heard of anyone saying that their mind worked this way). When I wrote the first sentence of this entry, my mind created the vision of an elegant, Victorian English garden. It is very comfortable, damp and cool in early spring. There is a large wall of red brick, and in this wall there is a large hole in the center. The hole is at ground level, and is large enough to comfortably allow a grown man passage. It leads back, into the past. However, it is covered first by a wire fence, just behind the wall. Then there are great swathes of vegetation, some lovely creeping vines with flowers, and some large and foreboding brambles, with thorns as large as deer’s antlers. It is very intricate, and altogether beautiful to look at.
This is what my mind does for me. It draws the picture, and I am left to describe it to myself, and to draw meaning from it. The hole in the wall represents the place from which I came, perhaps. An overgrown path backward to the time before I lost my mastery of my creativity.
I’m here because I want to clear the path and reclaim the forgotten part of my garden.

My description of it, the critic in me says, is trite and real writers will mock it as charicature.
Perhaps they will, but isn’t that focusing far too heavily on the audience, and not what it is that I have to say?
I believe I enjoyed the accolades I received when I wrote well, and that I perverted the point of writing, if indeed I ever understood it in the first place.
I was listening to an interview with a musician, I forget who. He said that the reason he wasn’t afraid of criticism of his music was that he wrote it for the experience of amazing only himself. He played his instrument because at times, when things really flowed, he got that feeling of amazement.
If I’m to write for any real reward, that reward is what I seek. The reward of amazing myself with the product of my own mind. It’s easy for me as an insecure person to become over-reliant on an external validation. But being insecure, I have an internal invalidator who is far stronger and more malevolent than any external factor. I have to deal with that. That invalidator is the force that has kept me from creating (along with a small army of poor habits).
Little by little, I will withdraw myself from bad habits, and learn to silence the Invalidator.

I chose my quotes carefully today because I wanted to focus on where I am in this moment, as I begin this phase of effort. It is not too late to redeem myself. The first step was finding myself courageous enough to start. And now I must be willing to keep at it.

Along the way, I hope I meet some new mentors and friends. Please comment on anything I write whenever you feel like it.

DP-colorado

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn


Those who abandon their dreams will discourage you from yours (unknown)
It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn