What I Didn’t Write In 2011

When I was growing up, writing in my diary (or as I call it now, a journal — as all mature people do **insert sarcasm**) was one of my coping mechanisms for life.  When I was going through a hard time, which was probably a lot more often than I’d like to admit, I wrote it all down into my notebook.  Some days it was about a silly and temporarily significant topic such as my current crush and other days it was about wanting a friend to cure my deep loneliness.  Something about writing was very cathartic for me, and the habit carried on to my adult life.  I was an avid journaler for much of my 20s and when blogging became popular, it was the perfect outlet for me to share lots of random thoughts with the world.  In 2010, I wrote 24 posts, an average of 2 posts a month.

When I’m done writing this current post, I’ll have written 40 blog posts in 2011.  I guess I’m making progress looking at the numbers.  Honestly, though, I haven’t had much motivation to write lately…  or sing… or compose, for that matter.  It’s a rather sad existence for an artist.  There is much I could have written in 2011 but most of it went unwritten.  Instead, I’ve been asking myself some hard questions and maybe in between, wallowing in self-pity.  I guess I got tired of chasing after my lofty dreams and without even realizing it things just started to slow down.  Way down.  And then I just distracted myself with a busy schedule.  That always seems to do the trick when I don’t want to think about life.

As usual, I have no concrete answers or thoughts about where I am and what I’m doing.  The longer I live, the more I’m coming to realize that I really don’t have control over much, especially over things that I feel like I should have control, i.e. my life.  And I’ve found that the surrender that inevitably ensues after accepting that fact is rather demoralizing, instead of being liberating, as one would expect.

Or maybe I haven’t been actively surrendering, but more likely giving up.  And then somewhere along the way this year, I gave up on giving up, if that makes any sense at all.  So I’d start a blog post, a song, some project… and then just let it trail off into oblivion.  There is a certain carelessness that accompanies giving up.  I would think surrendering does not look like this.  I would think there is a kind of acceptance when it comes to surrendering.  But no, I haven’t really accepted anything and there is a part of me that is still stomping my feet, crossing my arms, and pouting.  I have to have this my way  or else.  At least I have the child-like thing down, like Jesus wanted.  Or is this not child-like but more like child-ish.

I seem to be doing my typical end-of-year reflections in this post, except, I won’t be sprinkling this one with any positive accomplishments of this year.  God forbid I do that, or I might feel like this year was actually good or something.