I keep trying to write more. I really do. I’ve always loved writing, even if I’m not exactly Ernest Hemingway. I like interacting with the world around me through the written word. I like having that record of my thoughts and experiences to go back to years later. It provides a touchstone, something as tangible as a picture but more descriptive, for me to look back on.
So I’ve been making the effort lately. It’s hard, though. I’m not exactly the most interesting 31 year old in the world. Sure, I live in a cool city, have great friends and a wonderful wife, but I don’t get up to many exciting or interesting things on a daily basis. I’m not sure why that’s a valid excuse, since most people live pretty average lives. Maybe years and years of television and internet have rotted the creative centers in my brain. (don’t laugh, it’s a possibility)
I’ve even been dipping my hand back into poetry, something I left far behind me years ago. But it’s like trying to grab onto a greased pig. I’ll have a single line pop into my head – my life is built on silence/and the words in-between – for example, and the rest of the idea darts away, just slipping through my fingers. I’m left doing the one thing I always hated about writing, staring at a nearly blank page.
Part of the problem might be that I live a pretty regimented life nowadays. Get up and ride my bike to work, work, ride my bike home and either go to the gym or make dinner, shower, lounge around reading or watching a movie or catching up on a TV series, play with the dogs, go to sleep. Yawn. The worst part is; it’s not like this is imposed upon me, I do it to myself. I have no idea why.
But like I said, most of us live lives like that. Regimented, normal to the point of boring, predictable. Predictable to the point that any deviation is taken as an exciting new turn, no matter how banal. I probably just need to get out more. Besides, it’s not like I have nothing going on. I’m currently prepping for another interview for the podcast I started earlier this year, The Past Forward Podcast. I’ll be sitting down with someone who all of my friends seem to know, who lived for a time in my mother’s hometown, who I went to the same university as, who I’m Facebook friends with and who I’ve only ever met once. Oh yeah, she also lives on the complete opposite side of the country. I live in Portland, Oregon and she resides in Providence, Rhode Island.
So there’s that. It should be interesting, even though I have next to no idea what I’m going to talk to her about.
Plus, it’s going to mess up my regimented schedule. I usually go to the gym right after work on Wednesdays, but now I can’t. The sad part is; I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out if I’d have enough time to get a quick workout in before the interview or if I could just go after.
I need to calm the fuck down.
