The End; Or, When to Quit vs When to Press On
Welcome what may or may not be the end of my blog. I guess anytime you read one of my posts, it may or may not be the end; this isn’t a very clear statement. But I have fulfilled my year long commitment, so I am giving myself leave from the tedium of the blog. It has been fun, it has been a bore, it has created epiphanies, it has felt like a school assignment, my mind was full to bursting with ideas, my mind was a bone-dry desert, and hours were spent staring into the oblivion of my laptop screen.
I’ve written about writing a few times. And I have opinions, but they shift. I’m fickle. I waffle. There is an abundance of ambivalence. Part of me feels like writing brings out my mediocrity. In the general population, the skill cap (and skill nadir) are wide, noticeably so, when it comes to writing. Reading the prose of someone who has never practiced writing and doesn’t have that natural knack is boring and often difficult. Punctuation and word choice aren’t only stilted, they are wrong. If spell check isn’t used, spelling blunders abound. Somewhere above the nadir and below the traditionally published authors, lay the vast swath of the rest of us. Practice can improve our spot in this continuum, but it has limits. If the spark of talent wasn’t there at the beginning, it doesn’t seem to show up later - God’s glass ceiling. Yes, there are exceptions. No, this general rule can’t be extrapolated and used without regard or second thought.
But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
Romans 9:20-21
The more I read great literature, modern and classic, the more I feel like I have the ability to see this spark in what I read - and the more I don’t see it in my own writing. This sounds self-deprecatory, and, well, it is. But it doesn’t come from a place of feeling generally horrible about myself, it comes from a place of coming to grips with reality, from a place of accepting who I am. I’ll flip sides for a minute. My writing isn’t bad; it has improved with practice. Sure, I have numerous family members who are annoyed by my overuse of semicolons and words of the sesquipedalian variety - big ones. I’ve constructed some eloquent sentences. I have done the research to know that, on the whole, I write properly. This change in my writing makes sense to me, even if it is frustrating to others, for I am emulating those I adulate: David Foster Wallace, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka. I digress.
I’m having trouble and mixed motivation in standing on the shoulders of these giants. I have opinions and ideas that I believe need to be written about, but the end result of writing on these topics doesn’t meet my expected caliber. The next step is figuring out how much weight to put on doing things I am actively passionate about versus putting in the necessary grind, having that gritty perseverance. I mean, I have a day job: I run a business. I have kids and a wife, unproductive hobbies, and even friends! None of this mentions that I have competing interests that like to argue about replacing writing. Should I be spending this time in nature? Exercising? In silence and solitude with the Lord? Volunteering at the local middle school? Spending more time pouring my limited vitality into my daughter? Of the autobiographical books I have read by authors about writing, they seem to place writing on a pedestal. Many of these authors have broken or nonexistent families, and when they have day jobs or other interests, these things never are close to writing’s level of importance. So while I periodically enjoy writing, the combination of my middling talent with my lack of reckless abandon towards writing leads me to this point: lowering my level of commitment and taking a break. I may head back towards writing fiction, for I find a deeper level of beauty and meaning in a story than can be found in nonfiction. Yet I may not. In my experience, absence makes the heart grow fonder.