Personal Journal

OLTL dialogue

Yes, I watch a soap opera. One Life to Live. I justify my $95 dollars a month for my total cable bill (TV and internet access) through my addictions to Internet games, the Soap Opera Channel, and for the NHL Center Ice hockey package in the winter and spring. All of those things take me away from my writing, but then, if it weren’t those it would be something else. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Yes, maybe they keep me from reading and writing. But sometimes my exposure to any of these things brings me inspiration, or some sort of self-realization. There was an interesting moment in the past 10 days or so, between Rex and Jen. Bear with me while I provide this background information to help build some of the backstory. Jen is a confused young woman, mostly a tramp/party girl. In her recent troubles, she fell for Joe, a pastor-in-training. She tried to seduce him, and he refused many times, until Jen hooked up with Rex to spite Joe. Rex is a bit of a wanderer/rebel. He recently took over the new nightclub as owner/operator. He is a pretty party boy. He was smitten momentarily by Jen, and they got married on a whim. Then Joe decided he wanted Jen, and Jen wanted a divorce. Jen, having an inheritance of some largess, was blackmailed by Joe for more money in order to get the divorce. That’s essentially it of the backstory.
Everyone knows Jen and Joe are wrong for each other, and that Jen didn’t care a whit for Rex. Rex displays this abject realism about Jen, though, and doesn’t seem to truly want a divorce, though he doesn’t express any emotional pain in the coming of it. He does try to talk Jen out of it, which brings me to my moment that I found so poignant.
In the Rex’s club, Jen and Rex talk privately. Rex says that Jen and he both know Joe’s not right for her, that she’ll get bored of the quiet life of a pastor’s wife. Rex says to Jen, and I’m paraphrasing but closely, “You’re just like me, Jen. You need the excitement, and the music and partying, because just like me, you can’t stand the noise you hear in your own head when there’s nothing left to hear but the sound of your own thoughts.”

I apologize if that’s not so poignant to anyone else.
But I think of all the obstructions I allow to interject themselves between me and any effort at writing something meaningful, and my own head gets too quiet, and I hear shrieking “No, no no” and I don’t understand it. Every inch I get closer to letting go, some Newtonian force reacts equally and in opposition, and I find myself stuck. Only momentarily, though, as I turn around and head in the opposite direction and let go of any more effort to pursue that goal, and I find any shiny bauble to occupy my attention, so that I can forget about the noises of my own mind.

Too focused on the destination, not open to the process. That is where my problem is. I was supposed to be this noteworthy thinker and poignant author. Some part of me exists in fantasy at the far end of a spectrum of plausibility. I was to be like Hemingway or Steinbeck. You know, whatever, I realize that’s ridiculous. As I wrote yesterday, the best I can hope for is to engage in writing that impresses ME. Everything else is irrelevant. If I don’t impress myself, I won’t impress anyone.
The criticism I give myself is inappropriate. I’m so far removed from the writer I once was (which is a far cry from being the writer I might be, yet) that I can’t hold myself to any standard whatsoever. I need to experiment, like a child. The critic needs to be removed, if not forever, then for now. I can’t get started if the noise in my own head hurts to hear.
That’s why I’m journaling right now, here. That’s why I tried to get into the journal group here. More voices would be better than my own by itself. And I know there are writers from whom I can learn.
When I was in therapy, one of the chief things I learned was that there are separate archetypal personalities within myself, child and parent. The parent persona needs to do some protecting. I’ve done it before, actually.
But that damn critic is just so strong…
So, that’s as far as I can get with this subject right now.



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