The Persistent Quitter

This bears reposting until it finally sticks for me, since all of 2016 was essentially lather, rinse, repeat.

Originally written 2/28/2015:

So I read something simply astounding today. I simply couldn't find words to express the emotions it evoked within me. I was devastated by its intensity.

Then the most absurd thing happened. Reading this stunning article left me with the overwhelming desire to stop writing. Forever. Never try again. Simply quit. Again. It really is what I'm best at after all; the single action and reaction I've practiced and perfected my entire life.

I read this inexplicably beautiful work about language and place and loss, and then I saw that it had been sent into the world on the same day as my most recent blog post, with its tiny writing sample, and my mind shuddered for a moment then screamed, "Stop right now! Oh my lord, you are embarrassing yourself!" And I cried, because I'm splendidly well suited to that reaction as well.

Then I became stubborn. Obstinate. Tenacious.

Yes, my writing was silly and rather pointless in comparison, lacking in every way the mastery that made the article I'd just read something that will leave an imprint within me that I'll never shake. Of course it was. Of course my work is rough, and kind of crap, and at this point really unfit for sharing about with other literate beings. I've wrote stories from the very first moment I was sufficiently able to read and hold a #2 pencil, but I quit completely in 2005 when I decided that if I couldn't write something publishable, something profitable, then it was a pointless exercise in self indulgence and a waste of time I should instead be spending "adulting around the island, adult, adult, adult."

So after 9 years I started over. I was scared, and rusty, and completely directionless with it, but I sat there and gave myself permission to write terribly. This attempt lasted three months. At which point I allowed life to cajole me into giving up, again. Over and over I come back to the belief  that because what I'm doing isn't lyrical, or epic in scope, or heart wrenching, or whatever the fuck I'm hung up on, that I must stop. That I'm delusional when I begin to hope that writing is a calling of which I'm worthy.

I started over again in January anyhow, with the timed free writes and the prompts and a project I'd probably be ashamed of if my grandmother ever read the stories. And its garbage. Truly awful - with cliches, astonishing grammatical errors, and my continued abuse and overuse of poor little commas. But how will it ever improve, ever grow, ever learn or develop if I keep quitting? Why do I expect such greatness from a skill I've consistently abandoned every time I start to feel ridiculous and foolish?

So my writing is young, and rubbish, and will likely never encompass topics as noble and venerable as those encompassed in the article I read today, but its mine. And writing, badly, hurts just a little less than not writing at all, which is a pain I can no longer handle. So I'm writing. I'll keep on writing. Writing the things that appeal to me, the threads I find that pull me away into the wild, and I'll bring back those stories, and if they're never anything more then something I share with my framily, then that's fine.

It's all fine.