TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

05 – The Writing Workout or, Daily Weirdness

It?s a beautiful Sunday morning with the sun winning the nightly battle against the dense fog that blows in from the sea. A common saying among the locals is, ?It?ll burn off by noon?. Mornings are dreary and cold, afternoons are sunny with just a hint of the salt breeze from miles away. I?m pounding away at the plastic keyboard, trying to rekindle some of the fire that my writing has lost in the past weeks and months.

You need trouble to be creative, Faulkner understood that. The fire of a conflict that?s external and internal at the same time breeds an energy that pours out in the form of something creative?or drink?or any other number of vices that pass for coping mechanisms. The brand of vinegar that sours inside me is sweetened only by getting in front of a screen and just pounding away while trying to make sense of the weirdness I experience on a daily basis. I could also be working out at this time but the writing seems much more appropriate ? the muscles can only build so much before the genetics and foul realities of the Amercian diet take over. Writing doesn?t require one to stay in shape ? only to stay angry.

No matter how I try ? the clutter and strangeness that must be issuing from me just seems to take over into whatever space I inhabit. It?s not something I enjoy, it?s in fact something that I?ve always wanted to do away with. The uncluttered cleanliness of a minimalist environment. Then, reality sets in and I find myself decorating my walls with traffic signs, my ceilings with aircraft sectionals and my computer screen with strange Russian imagery. The weirdness either comes to me or from me ? I don?t really understand it. It starts while I?m on the ?loo, waiting to do the biological business of the day when the door slides open slowly. It can?t be a person, they?d bang it open like Alan Funt while throwing a camera on me to record my shocked expression. Then, tentatively, whiskers and then a small face appear around the door at knee-level. It?s the cat ? we keep her food in the bathroom for some weird reason. She?s checking to see if the coast is clear for her to feed. I glance at her from the book or magazine or newspaper I was reading and she disappears into the house for parts unknown. She?s persnickety or so full of personality that it requires mammoth amounts of patience not to be cross with her when she obeys the inscrutable exhortations of her soul. In the street, on my way to Somewhere the weirdness does not end. People sense something about me that just tells them ?He knows where he?s going? and compels them to ask for directions.

Often the strangeness of life means pain, or embarrassing situations that sit inside me and molder because who wants to own up to the fact that their life is just so strange? And so, I don?t write. I don?t talk about what happens to me, the little things that make you want to stick your head in a bucket of water and scream for mercy. I don?t write about the ways that life just loves to stick it to you while others sail on and make it look easy. They then have the nerve to wonder aloud why you look so crazed or out of control.

It?s a gargantuan effort sometimes not to lose it. To smile and take deep breaths and tell yourself, ?It?s okay ? it?ll get better? and it does?eventually. But first you must pay the price for the sins you?ve committed and most often, done it without realizing that you?ve let yourself in for some pain. You must learn the lesson and avoid the pitfalls ? it?s most like walking through a minefield and learning where not to step by having your legs blown off. You must have more legs than a centipede to still be walking but don?t lose hope! There?s always a new lesson. Just when you?re sure you?ve got it you get blindsided by something that knocks you to the ground like the entire Green Bay defensive line.

Your outlets are yours to choose ? it?s either give up and take a long walk off of a short cliff or learn the lesson. You get to ask yourself every time, ?Is this how it ends?? and you don?t give up because by God, you aren?t a loser. You know that you were meant to do something with your life and that you aren?t going to end it curled in the fetal position trying to find your courage at the bottom of a whiskey bottle. So you smile that little smile, get up and brush yourself off and start again. Wounded but not mortally. Down but not out. Bent but not broken. Those promises that you make to yourself, that you won?t do it the way you?ve seen others are like the little mantras that you chant while sucking air and running and trying not to give up. You are supposed to be better than this ? you are supposed to be stronger. You will not give up because you are not allowed to give up. And people wonder why you talk to yourself. They don?t know that it?s little pep talks that you?re giving. Don?t give up ? don?t stop ? keep going and you?ll make it. This IS NOT how it ends.

But when does it get easier? It doesn?t. When does it stop hurting? It doesn?t. The good times that come as a result of the lessons you?ve learned are like small nuggets that are hidden in the mud and must be revealed by a pick or a shovel and by much blood, sweat and tears. One of the major questions you ask is, would you still do it if you knew how much it was going to hurt? The answer is yes because you also didn?t know how good it was going to feel to succeed. Once you finally get There - by God, you know you?ve accomplished something.

The victories are usually quiet, small affairs. Doesn?t seem quite right, does it? Everyone knows when you fail ? why aren?t the successes broadcast? I do not know. I also don?t think that it?s quite fair but it?s not up to me to make the rules. I do know that the way you can smile to yourself and when the little voice inside that?s been telling you that you?ll fail, when it comes up to you and says, ?Well, you made it ? I guess I was wrong??it makes up for all the other things that you go through. Even if the successes were shouted from the rooftops, it?d just seem phony to you. You need to hear it from the little guy inside that?s the truest sense of you-the most honest. When the most honest part of you can say, ?You made it?, then you know you have.

Through the desert, over the mountains. Past the fires and the bitter cold. It?s through the heat and pressure that the iron inside you is hardened, sharpened. You can?t prove what you?re worth if you never throw it out on the market to see what it is worth.