The picture shows how I felt at the start of this year: exhausted, nestled warmly and comfortably in the sand, hiding under a blanket from the enormity of the sky and the sea.
I was talking with a friend at the Writer’s Center last night about getting back on the writing horse after a couple weeks of holiday shutdown, and I said something like “I didn’t feel like January River, I just felt like me.” I find that I play a lot of “roles” in my daily life; some of that is due to being a high-functioning introvert and needing to “turn on” in social settings or at my job-job; and some of it is just how different the requirements are in different situations. The opportunities to use poetry in a corporate setting are, as you can imagine, limited (although I have some ideas to change that). Bursting into song during an all-hands meeting is likewise frowned upon.
And that’s just my “work” persona. There’s also family, which has both “father” and “husband” roles, and “friend,” which has some variance. If you want to be really pedantic—I do, always—there’s cook and porter and plumber and consultant and a bunch of others. And you might say “ok but those are just tasks not separate roles requiring a wholly custom mindset” and I would reply “have you met me?”
It’s exhausting but it’s how I function. So now, back to the picture: I’m not saying that I was crushed by sorrow or in full winter hibernation, but I was having a hard time getting back into the swing of writing, which I’m characterizing here as “not feeling like my pseudonym, just feeling like the me who doesn’t grind out creative stuff on a weekly schedule”.
I posted about this on Threads and got some good advice: practical, tactical suggestions for how to start typing good words again, and this helped. Ultimately, I think it was deadline pressure that got me moving. I didn’t like that I basically posted “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” for two consecutive weeks; I could’ve/should’ve at least done a “Top 5 of 2024” link dump (the “clip show” of the blogging world). So the deadline did its job, which is exactly why I set it in the first place. You don’t leverage your entire (very successful, I might add) academic career on serial procrastination without learning a thing or two about harnessing pressure.
The result was A Lack of Resolution. I’m very proud of what I wrote over the course of four-ish hours on a Monday night, and I hope you enjoyed it (or will enjoy it…seriously, it’s like 1300 words; you can read it in literally no more than five minutes; please please read my thing and validate my existence).
So here we are. Oh, other thing: I’ve realized from following other far-more-successful creators that the created “thing” is like one percent of the whole engagement pie. I knew this, should’ve done something about it, and now I am. For example, I had done a TikTok where I showed the actual process of writing a poem and that got some good feedback. I think, more than just listening to the song or buying the CD (or MP3…ugh, dating myself), people want to be backstage with the artist, participating or at least closely observing and being a part of what’s going on. It’s that sense of being part of a tribe, of being an insider, of somehow playing a role in the creative process that I think really resonates with people.
So yeah I’m gonna do more commentary blogging on here…get out from under my cozy blanket. Which is fun; I used to do a ton of that on another blog, once upon a time. Also, yeah I know this isn’t exactly the same level as hanging out with Pearl Jam in the green room at Ohana, so, you know, I’m not trying to oversell myself. Just hoping, I don’t know, sharing more might be interesting. Like I said, it’ll be fun for me. So, that’s nice.
Final thoughts for the day: I’m on BlueSky now, so you can follow me there if you like. I don’t know exactly how this whole social media implosion is going to shake out, so who knows if that’ll be useful for long or at all.
Here’s what I know: I was around before Facebook and I’ll be here after (hopefully). The nice thing about a blog is that it’s mine. I do my own fact-checking, though, so be aware of that.
Did you know vinegar cures hiccups? It’s true!
—jr
