Words are great, aren't they. Of course they are, you're looking at them. Without them all this would be meaningless. Trying to find the right words for any occasion, though, is a bit more tricky. Like this. After typing the word "tricky" I just stared blankly at the screen for about eleven-and-a-half minutes wondering what to put next.
I've come to realise that those who write do it because, generally, they each have something they want to say. Whether it's a story they want to tell, an opinion they want to express, wisdom they want to impart or an idea they want to bludgeon you over the head with, the desire to share something with the rest of the world takes over and manifests itself in combinations of letters like this.
The problem I've been faced with in terms of my approach to writing is that I don't have anything to share. Or at least I feel like I don't have anything of significance to share. This little neglected corner of the web is only ever really frequented by me as a project to keep my fingers active and my brain making words, and even I'm prone to neglecting it fairly often. By the time another Wednesday comes around, I realise I have nothing passionate to babble on about and leave the existence of this thing in the back of my mind for another week.
Being trapped in a state of mild depression doesn't help matters. The lack of an active lifestyle pertains to the lack of an active mind, and not having the drive to work towards a completed goal of any life significance is just a by-product of not having the drive to do anything at all. Note that when I talk about depression, I don't refer to the figurative mopiness that the word's come to mean by teenagers who get given front row tickets to see The Wanted for their birthday when they specifically asked for One Direction ("God I'm sooo depressed"). I mean, like, you know, the actual real meaning of depression. The kind of "what-the-hell-is-my-point-in-existing" sense of hopelessness and monotony, having a five-hour lie-in every morning because the only reason you actually muster for getting up is that you've reached the point when you can't hold it in any longer and it's an absolute necessity to go and urinate.
Like I said, my depressed state over the last couple of weeks has only been mild and has generally stemmed from a lack of purpose (i.e. job), a lack of reason to actually go outside and get supplies (i.e. money) and the consequent lack of supplies (i.e. food). My poor and somewhat hungry state has kept me bedridden for the best part of a week-and-a-half with the most fresh air I get coming in those eight seconds wherein the full bin bag from the kitchen gets mercilessly dumped into the giant green plastic tub outside the back door.
You, if you're there, may well be glancing over this and thinking "Is this idiot sure he wants to write for a living?" to which I can offer the honest answer "I don't really know." I mean, I have ideas for stories to tell. One currently exists as an incomplete setup to a novel, a large proportion of which I'm going to have to pull out of some sort of figurative arse, poorly constructed from bits of imagination and sugary tea. Furthermore, I have two screenplay ideas (well, two separate premises involving the same characters and vaguely similar situations) budding in my head. The biggest problem is that none of them want to go on the page... or the computer screen.
Foresight seems to be a bigger enemy than hindsight here, and it occurs to me that the giant stumbling block in the way of me trying to be a writer (instead of just kidding myself) is that I still have inhibitions. I still worry that it's all going to end up face down in a pit of flaming coals, rusty spikes and faecal matter. So as long as I don't write anything, I can't have failed at it, right? As long as it stays unwritten and only semi-formed inside my imagination, it'll be fine and nobody will mock its worthlessness or be concerned for my mental wellbeing if this is the best I can come up with.
I would go on in a similar self-loathing fashion, but I think this article explains my state of mind (and how I can get out of it) a lot better than my fickle words ever could. I warn you, it's long, but it's the greatest thing I've ever laid eyes upon that comes close to a self-help guide. I read it shortly after it appeared online and vowed to follow the advice given within. Eight-and-a-half months later, I wrote this.
Perhaps I need a bit more time.
