Ch-ch-changes

I haven’t been wanting to write much lately.  At first I was willing to chalk it up to Battlemoor leaving me more tired than I expected, and while that’s true, my writing malaise started even before then.

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it started around the time I started my new job.  A lot of things changed (for the better, I believe) because of that.  I haven’t had nearly the issues with depression since I left Costco.  My schedule has stabilized, approaching something that resembles a normal office routine.  I’m no longer having to get up at ungodly hours in the morning just to stock shelves and move pallets around.

And yet, I find myself without the drive to write.

I really don’t think that it’s my relative lack of suffering that’s killed my drive; believing you have to suffer for art is a dangerous, self-destructive path to go down.  No, I think the main problem is my schedule change.

Before, when I was working at Costco, I had most of the afternoon to myself.  I could surf the Internet, play the occasional video game, and still have time to write before my girlfriend got home and/or I had to go to practice.  But now, I don’t have that huge chunk of time to myself.  I’ve tried writing in the morning before I leave for work, but I’m not always fully awake yet, and the past few days have been tougher than usual.  I’ve tried writing at lunch time, but I often forget (whether I forget to write or forget to take lunch is a different debate).

It’s funny: it doesn’t feel like my schedule has shifted much, but I suddenly have much less free time than I used to.  I can’t just write when I feel like it any more.  Maybe that’s what I need to do: write at a specific time every morning, whether or not I feel like I have anything to say, and post it regardless.  Because I really don’t want to stop writing.  But my current setup isn’t working, and I’m going to have to change something going forward.

Does that mean the quality of entries will diminish?  I don’t know.  I think it does mean that I’ll have to really think about what’s important: quality or consistency?  Is the act of blogging an end itself, or is it merely practice for writing?  And if it is practice, I should be doing it whether I want to or not.  In fact, I should be doing it more especially when I don’t want to.

It’s interesting food for thought.  It doesn’t help that part of me feels that entries like this are a fancy way of wasting time, but I really must remember that whether or not something is a “waste” depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.  Did I want to talk about Battlemoor?  Then maybe this post was a failure.  But what if I wanted to talk to myself, hashing out ideas so that I could better understand myself?  Then I think I may have accomplished something.

1 thought on “Ch-ch-changes

  1. Servillo

    This was the biggest shift for me coming out of college and going into a regular office hours job. I usually structured my classes so that I started late and finished around 5-ish, did a good chunk of my homework in the hours between classes, and that left me an entire evening and some of the late night to enjoy myself. Nowadays, with a full job, and lots of things to do with friends on several weeknights (usually three, depending), plus whatever weekend plans come up with the SCA or family, I find my free time to myself has greatly diminished.

    It’s incidentally part of why I don’t show up on Fridays much anymore; I’m starting to claim that time for myself, since I felt I wasn’t get enough of it otherwise.

Comments are closed.