Would You Just... Keep Going?

Here's the thing. I'm putting a new post on this blog tonight. That is happening. That is happening even though there's a voice telling me I can't do it, that I've got nothing to say, that no one cares, that I'm making a fool of myself and everyone is laughing at me--

--Seems paradoxical, that everyone could be laughing about something no one cares about, but the voice sounds adamant...

It really is the worst, this voice. If you don't have a voice like it then I think you're very lucky, because mine sabotages every single thing I try to do in my life.

But I guess there has to come a point when you stop listening. When you go ahead regardless. And that is what is happening here. If this post is a mess then it's a mess. And I'm getting up tomorrow and doing it again. And that post can be a mess as well. And every post can be for the rest of my life. But I am not quitting this time.

I wrote a draft of this where I tried to explain all this stuff so you would understand. But the voice sabotaged it all, shut down my brain and threw me off course so I had nothing to put up, hoping the days would turn to weeks, the failure would build, and I'd go back to boozing and not trying. It's so much easier, in a way, to live like that. Feeling worthless, but also never having to ask to be valued.

But I've had enough. So this is going up. I guess I can't explain it now. I guess this won't make an awful lot of sense, unless you already have an inner voice like mine, whispering piercing nothings all day in your ear. If you do then you already get it; if not then maybe I'll be able to write it someday.

* * *

There's this advice about creating art, I can't remember where I heard it, but I've been saying it for years: To make good art you have to first allow yourself to make a whole bunch of bad art.

It's got a ring to it, right? You can tell how wise and true it is straight away. The thing is, though I've repeated it a lot, mostly to impress girls, I don't think I've ever actually lived by it. I always write so carefully, polishing and pruning, removing any trace of what I think of as my clumsy, ugly, embarrassing real self from proceedings before I hit that "publish" button. And that's so hard to do, and so hard to sustain. And the more successful the writing gets, the more I feel it has to be done. And the pressure builds to a point where I can't take it and I quit.

So maybe it's time to just say motherfuck it and let go, to stop hiding my ugly self and instead let him out into the light and let him blink and look around and get used to the fact that he can be out here, he can be himself, in a way he hasn't since I think before the acne, since before the bullying and the depression and all the rest.

The alternative is what I've been trying for a decade now, and that clearly isn't working.

So here we go. I have no idea what's going to happen. But that's part of the fun.

See you tomorrow.