06/03/2014
Caumsett
Hey there faithful brethren... I know I only have two entries on this blog in over a month. I feel like I should apologize for that. Thing also is in the last week I have written a lot. I just don't know if all of it is fit for being out here in this ether.
The first entry was inspired simply to start the thing in some loose sort of a direction.
The second was a fairly complete thought or idea that maybe carried on in that same direction I'm not even really sure.
Over the past week I made a commitment to myself to write a minimum of one thousand words every day. So far I only missed one of those days. Maybe not the most mind blowing accomplishment in the world but I am actually pretty proud of myself for that. It's not been often in my life thus far that I've made a commitment to myself and stuck to it for any length of time.
The commitment came about as I was musing how I truly do believe that writing for me is (or at least can be) therapeutic in a number of ways. In addition to that it is something that I have always (since around the age of five or so anyway) fantasized about possibly doing for a living. Or if not for a living then at least enough that I could in good conscience call myself a writer.
For years and years this fantasy (for that's all I've ever allowed it to be) has played at the back of my mind. Through all the dark, dirty, nasty, bogs of life I've dragged myself through as well as the brightest and sunshiniest moments along with everything in between... Being a 'Writer' was always there lurking in the background. If you look at most of my life and how I lived it and what spent most of my time doing you'll see very clearly that I was going to be the world's first writer that almost never wrote. Absolutely never edited anything. And above all showed almost no one the tiny bit of writing that I did manage to eke out unless it was three o'clock in the morning and there was a few gallons of booze and some cocaine involved. And despite all this my words were someday going to change the world.
Fast forward to a week ago and there I was... five months sober with this 'fantasy' still gnawing away in the back of my mind. So I decided to move it a little farther forward in my mind and put in a little effort. I know that if I'm not stopping every thirty seconds or so and there's any kind of flow going on a thousand words takes me about thirty to forty five minutes to commit to a blank screen. If this writing thing is actually something I want to do in any seriousness whatsoever that half hour should not be something that I can't dedicate out of every twenty four hours. So I did!
Now, as I did not envision this forum to be about me coming to terms with my inner writer it is something that for me is tied to my recovery from alcoholism. I also see it as tied to my foray into alcoholism in the first place.
Let's start with how it ties into my recovery...
I've lived my whole life with this idea that I want to be can be and should be a 'Writer'. I've also lived pretty much my whole life running away and hiding from anything and everything that I actually am and certainly from anything and everything that I can be. The most profound and damaging way I enacted this escaping from myself was through active addiction. (I know I tend to switch back and forth between the words alcoholism and addiction. To me there is no difference between the two and frankly I think that if anyone wants to quibble their priorities need readjusting)
One of the reasons I still hold on to this idea of writing being in my productive future is the age and the state of innocence that I held when it first became a dream of mine. Five, maybe six years old. And it's stuck with me all this time through thick and thin. Maybe I just want there to be something to that maybe there is something to that. Doesn't really matter because if I stick with it there WILL be something to that.
Now one of the things that was always able to put me and keep me in a place of horrific self pity was the fact that I had this dream and never did anything about it. Sure I dabbled here and there. I joined a website for artists of all kinds and began to put some stuff out there. I built a website and even started not one blog but at least two during my last dip in the pool of sobriety. But once I leaped off the wagon again it all went bye bye along with the job I had, the girlfriend I had, the apartment I had, the self respect I had, the respect of those around me that I had, etc. and on and on.
Well kids, it seems to me that if I am to stay on the straight and narrow for a little longer than I have in the past I need to do some things differently than I have in the past. Makes sense right? I think so. So do most people who stay sober for any significant length of time and are happy to do so.
Well... Enter a commitment to no one but me. A commitment to find out what might happen if I put effort into writing. A commitment to give myself a chance in a way I never have before. The obvious fact is I certainly have nothing to lose. What would I be doing for the half hour that I spend writing those thousand words? Watching TV? Playing a video game? Doing nothing but wondering what to do? Most likely that last one but none of the other choices are more fulfilling in any way shape or form than the feeling I have when I complete another day.
So to sum this up because boys and girls we have reached our thousand word mark and as this is intended for the blog I don't feel it appropriate to ramble much further. Just another little slice of 'ol Burton(your sometimes humble narrator)'s inner goings on.
Thank you for reading listening imagining. Thank me for giving myself the chance to stretch my fingers. Thank my evolutionary predecessors for developing the fingers in the first place, they come in quite handy...
...and so on...
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