Ahab Time

This entry might nearly be about nothing. I am really getting a bit desperate to simply get any old thing written. Always seems like it’s going to be a weird entry for these that don’t get done until the very end of the month. Reckon it won’t be for much longer - though I should try to make these last couple entries count. To clarify for those tuning in for the first time, I announced a couple entries back that I was going to no longer be posting an update per month, which feels symbolic in a way of this era of my writing journey ending. There’s a few reasons for that, and I probably did a better job of explaining most of them the first time I mentioned this. Still, I can’t help but be aware that my feelings about this blog, about writing in general, have continued to shift in a weird way… Perhaps spiral is a better word. This month, for my penultimate entry of this era, I really don’t have anything to say for myself. In fact, I’ve often found myself wondering who myself even is these days anyway. Ah, but before we get into all the fun, lets carry on with the tradition of this blog by jumping into the the monthly writing updates first:

I’m about certain I’ve said this exact thing for the past several entries, but this month I have not written shit. Oh, but dear reader, this is a level of not having written shit that goes far beyond my past entries where I claimed to have not written anything but kinda did. In fact, I would say that this month I’ve written negative amounts, in that I’ve actually abandoned multiple projects this past month - okay I know that’s not how the math works there, but it definitely feels like I’m regressing sometimes. Again, I’ve said this before too, but the book I finished back in July really kind of hurt to write and it makes me wonder why I do stuff like that. Whether it’s that alone, or a combination of the million other factors of my life that aren’t going too great at this precise moment, I couldn’t say. All I know is that nothing’s coming out. There is no joy to be found, at least everywhere I’ve looked.

Was that dramatic enough? You know, I never came close to finding the tone for this blog. Nothing about it has ever quite worked. The design itself is ugly and cringey, just something I set up on the first day after registering for the website and never returned to, though I had meant to. I had so many dreams, and each of ‘em was goofy. This blog was certainly a curious manifestation of those dreams, that is, my aspirations of being a real writer. Well, I know now I was a real writer, maybe never a very good one, but I toiled through the pain and made myself compose at the rhythm of unhealthy deadlines - all for no real reason other than my own ego it seems. I can’t even say if I had any thoughts of publishing that last book while writing it. If anything, I think I saw it as a life preserver at the time. It was a new story that I needed to write, to rekindle whatever the thing was that stopped being so kindled over the past year and a half. I wrote because something possessed me, and when it was over and gone, I withered. And now I hate writing. Kinda. For now?

Perhaps you wondered up top what the title of this entry was about. Let me get it out of the way and state that in no way do I see anything worth relating to in the character of Captain Ahab. I do not see myself as like him in any way, and I do not wish to view my craft in the same way that he viewed his white whale. I find nothing joyful in the comparison, yet there are some ugly things that I recognized while reading that old book. It was my summer goal to get a large portion of a very old manuscript rewritten, and I wanted to do it while reading through Moby Dick (this was in part a throwback to a better summer). Well, September is almost over, and I just finished the book the other morning. I’m an unfortunately slow reader, if you didn’t know.

So what does “Ahab time” mean? Well I’m glad I‘ve asked myself that, so allow me to explain. I believe my heightened levels of burnout, levels of which I’ve yet to ever experience where it comes to fiction writing, are the result not of one painful novel, but of years of trapping myself in a cycle of flailing at hope, neither my life nor my writing really improving as I remain committed through the changing seasons to my deadlines, my future goals, the dream that one day I’ll write something worth having been written. Nothing but willful stubbornness bolstered by a grim, toxic commitment to a fantasy. I never envisioned success, I just saw the long road, the grind, the heartbreak, the years flushed - somehow that’s what writing became for me. And it was while under that mentality, possessed by the filthy muses, trapped in Ahab time on a futile journey, where I spent most of the past couple years, most of this quarantine, as my health and happiness burned away, filling my house with smoke until I can hardly see or breath anymore, my hands covered in ashes, and oh boy, what a goobery way to live, y’know?

So I don’t know what I need now. I’m not going to quite writing, I’m not even going to actually stop my publishing journey (I still have one queryable book and at least one other pretty close to being query ready). But the thought of writing makes me sick and sad, and I just don’t know what to do with that right now. I think I should get back into music, or try to do anything creative and collaborative with friends or new people - but how the hell do people interact these days? Seriously, how are y'all doing it? It seems like everyone I know is back out there, and that’s fine and all, but I’ve spent the better part of this year trying to come to terms with being in public again, and it’s just not a super chill vibe for me still is all I’m saying (also someone close to me just got a covid diagnosis, so yeah, “that whole thing” is still very much a serious fucking issue in my book). Perhaps this is another sign that all I really need to be focused on right now is myself and moving forward. Already I’m healthier than I’ve been in years, physically at least - working out and leaving the house more often has been incredibly beneficial, but I get the feeling I’m still not ticking all the health boxes yet. But please, no one should worry about me, because I’m doing all that I can and I think it’s all going to work out eventually, so we’ll all just have to accept the fact that I simply had to phone in this entry at the end of the month. Anyway, how do I end this one?