I started this blog because a few close friends had personal pages of their own, and they formed a community that functioned rather like contemporary social media--only the things that people wrote were a lot longer on average, and generally had more care put into them than what you see on Facebook.¹ People occasionally write substantive posts on Facebook, of course, but it's certainly not the norm. Anyway, when I started reading my friends' blogs, I felt a pull to join in, an unconscious impulse to participate and be social. It felt nutritious, like I was finally getting vitamins that I had been deprived of for years.

I used to know what to type whenever I sat down with the intention of posting. That's how I remember it, anyway. I treated it like a daily column. I didn't have a defined subject, but usually I wrote about myself and events from my day. I don't know if I stopped updating simply because I grew older, or if it was because my life no longer provided me with regular topics. It would seem to be some mix of both.

At any rate, I have felt the lack of writing in my life quite acutely for a very long time now, but I haven't done much about it. I've kept a personal journal, and tried writing a few short stories and some poetry, but most days have gone by without being recorded. I don't know why, but I feel a need to record my time, to bring my memories to life outside of my head. Since I don't draw well or play an instrument, language is the only medium I know how to do this in. Mostly, however, I've been too depressed to write.

If anybody were to give me a real daily column, that would probably go a long way to curing my depression. For now, my plan is to update this blog a hell of a lot more regularly. Like, once a day rather than once a year. There's no one to give me writing assignments, so I might as well give one to myself.

Well, that last sentence is not exactly true; I do have writing assignments. I should be writing a couple of academic essays for my last semester of graduate school. It turns out that I have no interest in doing that. I have been back in school for three years now, and I think I've known all along that, whether or not I enjoy doing class readings and specialized research, I am simply not a natural student. I never did anything to advance my career, only to satisfy my own curiosity or challenge myself. I didn't want a reputation among academics. I was never afraid to look like I didn't know something. I wasn't interested in contemporary developments in theory, the latest research in a field, or burgeoning new subjects. Even though I made friends, I felt out of place in every class, and nearly every conversation.

I don't know what to do with my life yet. Since I've been in school for this long, I might as well get my Masters Degree before I leave my Ph. D. program, but that's as far ahead as I've planned. When I'm done, I am going to try to move with my girlfriend somewhere cheap--probably Berlin--and see if I can muster up the discipline to write fiction. So far, I haven't done this because every time I've tried, I've been stopped by a huge amount of doubt, a lot of thoughts that can basically be summed up as "what's the point?" I don't know why this is. I love reading fiction, and I even love reading my own fiction when I look back on it after a year or so. It uses parts of my consciousness that are otherwise numb, makes me feel more complete. I feel this when I'm writing, as well--a minor sense of exhilaration, if that's not an oxymoron. Nevertheless, I have always stopped before completing a story, before getting a first draft. I don't see a plot coming together, I don't feel like I have the authority to call something that I'm writing a story, and most of all, I don't see the point of my writing. Maybe the world needs writing, but other people, millions of them, are already handling it quite capably.

I feel somewhat differently about this now. It has helped to have a girlfriend who is a singer/songwriter with amazing honesty and beauty, and who insists that everyone has a need to make some kind of art. I get into a lot of arguments with her about using the word "art" in this sense--it didn't have the meaning of creative work in all the various media until around the Romantic era, and it is not at all clear to me that every culture at every time has had analogous behavior--but regardless, I have to admit that people really do seem to need some creative activity that suits them, that allows them to become their full selves. It's a cliché, really--everybody has a calling of some sort--and I've always resisted believing it, but I can't deny that it accords with my experience. Maybe that's an element of maturity: coming to understand the inexpressible weight behind vacuous-seeming clichés. Whatever the case, I feel a calling to write, and I've been miserable when I haven't done it, so I might as well find out if I feel miserable doing it as well.

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1 For the record, Twitter doesn't interest me much, and I have never tried to make a Tumblr. As I type this, I realize that this may be out of ignorance, although it certainly doesn't look like a verbal medium.^↩