I love to write, and I hate myself when I don’t put any words down for long periods of time.
To make myself feel better I blame everything else for my failings. I’ve done this for so long that I’ve convinced myself that all of my false reasoning is actually truth, and it’s caused me to fix these “problems” that have been causing me not to write, and they are becoming increasingly extreme.
It started as simple things, small distractions. I blamed the business of my home, so I moved my work to the library. I blamed the Internet, so I disconnected myself from it. I blamed my social life, so I set aside times that I pledged to do nothing, no matter the cause, other than write.
Those small inconveniences are trivial and have been experienced by everyone that has ever worked towards completing a project. But my issues had only just started….
I blamed my job for taking away so much of my time and leaving me too weary to focus on my creative tasks. I blamed where I lived because it didn’t offer me enough excitement, enough culture and art to fill my brain with wonderful ideas. I was blaming everything about my life for why I wasn’t writing as much as I wanted. My thoughts were getting extreme. I scared myself to the point where I had to run away from it all.
My blame game caused me to quit my job. I bought plane tickets and moved 4000 miles away from my home to a place I had never been before. Now it has been two weeks since I arrived in Massachusettes, and I am only just now beginning to understand what this move was all about. I told everyone I was doing it to find new job opportunities, to explore a new area of the world, to try new things, to uncover my past and create a new future. None of those was a lie, but they all were a blanket that covered the full truth. I did all of this because of how much I want to write, because of how much I want to be successful at my craft.
I ran as far as I could to escape the fears I created for myself. I did all of this to avoid the roadblocks I put in my own path. All of the reasons I put blame upon have followed me here, and they’re gaining new friends. Not one of them is real, though. I know this. The only thing stopping me from writing is my own laziness. I have to stop this way of thinking before it goes even further. It’s already taken me away from everyone and everything I know, except for my amazing girlfriend.
What if I start blaming her? She’s been through all of this with me. She’s heard all of my reasoning before. She packed up everything alongside me and came with me across the country where she would be just as lost as I. If she is all I have with me now…she can be the only thing left I can tell myself is in my way.
It ends now. It’s already gone too far.
I’ve just been too damn proud and frightened to admit my own laziness as a writer. I’ll now shoulder the blame I placed elsewhere.
I won’t make that mistake again.
