Field Guide

1.
I want to write, and write well. Everything else is just a fancy. There are things I want to do, and things I want to accomplish, but at the end of the day, when I’m about to fall asleep, the last thing I think about is writing, and if I’m going through my life trying to accomplish that. I feel like I fail at it, this life thing, this grown-up thing, and I get overwhelmed. I’m drowning, and I can’t even save myself.

2.
I’m a bit mad, sure. I’ve got to be, right? A fool, a mad fool, to think that I’ve got a shot at it, that somewhere my dreams are waiting for me to get my shit together, so I can finally write that novel, that screenplay, and that collection of poems that beg to be let out. But really if I’ve learned something over the years, it’s that if I want to get something done, I should just do it. So I am. After almost four years of not writing seriously, I am taking the pen up again. Been writing every day, well, almost. As far as first drafts go, everything is crap. I could go on.

3.
I’m a simple girl, with simple dreams. But it would take the world to get there, so I hope my dreams will be patient a bit longer. Someone I admire once said that writing is a lonely art. And I have found it to be true. It’s going to be an exhausting, self-deprecating and melancholy journey.

4.
I am mostly concerned that my greatest and meanest fuck-up is myself, and the voices in my head. Partly why I have created this journal is to discuss all these terrible fears and feelings I’m having, and to draw out all the doubts and write them down, so I can have a place for these thoughts and shut them up for a while. Perhaps if I did this I can write in peace, even in small intervals. I am also planning to record and observe my creative process, more for my own curiosity than for any other important-sounding purpose. I have always been fascinated how other creative people deal with their own life and all the shit that comes with it outside of writing. I am also maybe thinking that someone might be interested in this, in the future. In me, and my life, or parts of it that I am willing to share. Or at the very least, my mind. I happen to think it’s interesting, what’s going on inside my head.

5.
But hey, I don’t have any high expectations, whoever you are who might be reading. It just helps to think that I’m talking to someone, I guess. Plus I couldn’t afford a shrink right now.

6.
I used to be embarrassed to refer to myself as a writer. It takes a bit of ego. The first time I voted though, I had to put down my occupation in the form they hand out at the government office. I wrote, writer, and for a split second, felt extremely proud and giddy.

7.
I was out smoking awhile ago, and I was thinking if I should just pack my bags and go. Whenever you watch those movies where the characters make for the big city without a lot of money, being sustained only by their fucking hopes and dreams, it makes me want to swear off this life I have now, and to go traipsing away, homeless but empowered. But where would I go? This city, this country, is too small for such theatrics. Still, it’s an idea that won’t die. Maybe I’ll let it fester for a bit.

8.
Are you there?