i used to write a lot. like a whole fucking bunch. if the measure of a good book was purely to have "enough" written material to be able to physically make one, then i'd be a fucking brilliant author by now, let me tell you. this is where the whole writing things gets a little tricky though... even a bit messy. i wrote books and books of complete and utter bullshit writing throughout highschool. it seemed as though from the minute i walked into 9th grade (my god, i just realized how old i am... fuck) at least a good half of my life should be dedicated to just writing about the other half. there was no need at all to justify it, much like everything else normal people were doing in high school. writing was just this thing that i had to do and i didn't even matter at all that none of it was even remotely interesting. i would sit down with a pen and whichever latest black notebook i had on me and just decided, regardless of all other influencing social factors at the current moment, to just write.
it would take at least a few years for me to realize that writing on its own was never just simply the noble action i thought it was in the form that i was using it. because seriously, what the fuck is the point of a written piece of prose if no one but yourself is going to read it? of course, i am the most absolutely wrong person to be making this point. like i said, i've been writing like a mother fucker since i was 12... 90% of which no one but myself has actually read. i am a hypocrite at best... but i still feel comfortable in stating that that 90% is quite potentially meaningless and probably useless. being the fucking packrat that i am though, i have managed to keep all of it. shoeboxes. they do the trick. somehow i had also found the need to save every single email i had ever written or received. a while back i randomly checked my old hotmail account to find that, because i hadn't checked it in over 30 days or something, they had taken it upon themselves to delete it all. sure, i was a bit disappointed... but it didn't take me long to realize how freeing that little mis-hap was... as simple as it was.
what i'm wondering is, maybe the complete annihilation of all these fragments of the past is an amazingly healthy way to live your life. the natural world, examined across decades and centuries, is really just one giant campaign for the idea/inevitability of change. maybe burning all your notebooks, shredding all your old letters, and deleting all your old emails is something worth seriously examining.
i've spent the good part of my life trying to avoid change. looking back on all the writing that i'd done over the years, i would have to admit that most of it was really about that very thing... my frustration in dealing with change, and my every attempt to will it to stop. my greatest fears were either that people would change around me, or that i would change and forget them. either way, it just felt like death to me. change meant that something would have to stop existing... in my head it was never "the beginning of something new and exciting" or "a path leading to pure potential". the anxiety i'm feeling these days reflect, i think, an odd little battle in my own head between the desire for drastic and abrupt forms of change, and the need to maintain all the little parts of my life that have just always been there. i never needed to justify my need to hold on to my past. now, the more i think about it... the more i feel like i do.
so it's the same old story i guess. holding back while fighting a need to move abruptly forward. the idea of being different always made me feel better and more interesting when i was younger. now it kind of just scares me... and it's making me boring (as this seemingly neverending piece of worthless writing might best explain).
i need to sleep on all this, and soon, figure out some new justifications for all these things... maybe figure out how to do some more interesting writing. not just this whiny BS. no more fucking 9th grade.
