For you, the dress code is casual.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Words, words, words.

Why I blog now is a fairly complicated story. I’m not one of those poseurs who claims they don’t care if anyone reads it. I do. I want you to read me. But that wasn’t always the case.

When I began this beastly blog, I was just starting to see the end of a hellish six years of writer’s block. With my progress not coming at the speed I’d hoped, I felt I had to do something drastic.

The years of being unable to write in a way that was true to who I am had left me feeling like I was a shell of the person I once was. With all these tragedies and troubles I’d faced and overcome in the last decade, I thought I should be more of a person, not less of one.

I had tried blogging before. It didn’t work out well. It was self-involved and petty. I was always a big fan of journals, but journals seem to move towards the boring and the bland, for me, and that’s what I’d been posting.

Now, though, something about putting my words here, in its little realm of the cyber-cosmos, somehow forces me to think outside the box and gives me the vehicle to try writing in different styles, something I get a kick out of.

However, when I started this blog last November, I was sure it was going to have one result: My discovering I no longer had anything significant to say. I was sure I’d discover that I no longer had a voice.

I was terrified. “The Last Ditch” became the name I chose for one reason. I was thinking this would be my last ditch chance to prove I could write. I was not optimistic.

Some people don’t believe in writer’s block. I couldn’t give a fuck what their thoughts are. It's as real as the day is long, and when you're caught inside its grasp, it's as self-negating as it gets. One can try and try and try to break those walls down, but some walls just don’t dismantle.

As I said once before on this lowly rag, writer’s block is simply the failing to understand yourself anymore. That’s all it really is. Eventually, you need to find your way back inside. They just don’t sell those kinds of compasses, though.

I tried for a long time to get back to who I was. To figure out how to bring that voice out of myself. And I just didn’t know what that was anymore. I had no idea how to get there.

But I was willing to try. Five months later, here we are.

* * *

What you don't know is that I'd planned to kill this rag in six months, if I saw no progress in what I was writing or how I felt about it.

That'd mean next month, death to the Ditch.

But no need to worry your pretty little head. For some delusional reason, I'm happy with where things are going.

Let's keep this wagon wheel rolling.