I am spending too much time thinking. About how things should be. About what I should have done in situations. About opportunities missed. About minor failures. I keep thinking about the epitaph I'm most afraid of: he had such promise. I am afraid of squandering what meagre talents I have. I am afraid of my children finding things that I wrote and saying "I didn't know that dad used to write." I am afraid of dark, sarcastic mumblings that I would make to hearing such a thing. I am afraid that I am becoming, have become bitter for no good reason. I've written on here, before, about how I am "trying to figure out what place writing has in my life." That is true. What is more true, and which encompasses and envelopes that question is another, stronger drive: to figure out how to deal with the fear I am hiding behind. It's the same fear that I've lived with, fed, and learned to lean on. It's the fear that allows me to scoff and hide, and the fear that keeps me safe from anything that would make me put myself truly in danger of artistic failure, personal failure.
I seem to remember playing hide and seek with that fear for a while, and finding some places to hide from it where I could enjoy creating — writing. I'm looking for that place again.
I've got to put down the duckie.
Yes, all of this started with a tiny jolt from a silly video this morning that made me think, and has kept me humming and thinking all day.
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