An interlude + a short bit

I’ve been feeling a little lost when it comes to writing, and maybe other things too. I’m sort of questioning why I’m doing what I’m doing and whether or not it’s the epitome of cringe.

When I decided to start writing again, even without an audience, I wanted to dedicate energy to doing something I loved doing in the past. I struggle a lot (likely because of low self-esteem) to find things that I love. Lately, I’ve been in a sort of haze, drifting through the days trying to remember what I like and what I don’t like. Usually, I stick tight to someone, adopting their hobbies and habits as my own while disregarding my interests and desires. Co-dependency comes easy, I have to consciously work against it.

Writing is probably the only thing that’s remained a constant interest in my life. I was a good writer before college, a good writer in college, and a good writer outside of college and in my career. For a while I sort of lost that constant. I think I let some other voices (or my own) convince me that I wasn’t good at writing. But, when I look back at my life the places I’ve had the most success in are all directly related to writing:

• Winning awards for my writing in HS

• Winning awards for my writing in College

• Multiple writing professors telling me my work is good

• One writing professor directly told me I should continue doing this

• Getting my writing published in multiple literary journals/magazines

• Being a writing consultant

• Winning awards for my writing/content at my first job

Despite all of that info, I gave myself a bunch of reasons why that couldn’t be true:

• The professor was just being weird to a younger impressionable writer.

• I only placed as a finalist for a fiction award because nobody else competed.

• I only got published because there weren’t that many submissions to the journals I was submitting to.

• The only people who liked my writing were my other fiction-writing friends.

So, I’ve been slowly trying to combat those internal negative voices. Polishing up work and submitting short stories to magazines in the background. It’s not something I really talk about with anyone because it’s kind of pathetic to then follow it up with “yeah they didn’t take my submission.” I started reading more fiction and more gay writers in general. I read a short story recently and thought “Yeah, I could do that” which sort of pushed me to keep going and make an effort.

I don’t really know why people read this. I have some suspicions:

• Friends who have a passing interest in my thoughts or creative life

• My partner who feels compelled to read what I write

• Past acquaintances/online followers who read this, less out of curiosity and encouragement, but in amusement, a sort of “dear god that’s cringy” consumption

That last audience type is hard to fight against because writing anything is inherently cringe and this type of writing feels a lot like shouting into the void1. It’s also hard to think that people are really laughing at you behind your back, even if that’s just an anxious thought. But, cringe or not, there’s something valuable and therapeutic about the practice. Plus, being 100% truthful here, but I just assume most people think I’m a little cringe or weird, not insightful or entertaining.

Anyway, I might cut back a little bit or refocus some things as I work through all of this. Until then here’s another part of The Dream Loom that I’m just starting to shape:

The Dream Loom Continued

At night I dreamed in vivid color of a scenery in constant flux. Melting waterfalls of blues from cities in the sky and crawling vines of green clinging to a city underwater. They say you have more than one dream a night, but the ones you remember mean something to you. I dreamed I was an astronaut, floating in the black void of space. Then I dreamed I was a king, sitting on a plush red throne in a drafty castle, wisely handing down justice to those kneeling before me. Finally, I dreamed of you and me and our small dog walking along the trail by the river. Together we watched him play with the other dogs, barking and whining as he chased them around the trees. We sat on a bench and talked as he made circles in the tall unkempt grass. You leaned in and whispered something incomprehensible to me and I realized a nagging truth: you were alive and this was a dream. I woke up with tears forming in my eyes. The problem with dreams, I’ve started to realize, is how hard they are to tame, how unwilling they are to bend once reality sets in.