Okay, I have to admit: I have no idea what to do with an actual blog. Nope, not a clue.
I opened my LiveJournal back in 2003 when I graduated high school as a way of moving from the tried and true method of handwritten diary entries of adolescent angst to the most secure (yet, public) adult (eh?) angst (somuchangstomg) of the online journaling community. I loved it; for years, I was an active participant, writing of vague relationship complaints and terrible, cheesy poetry crafted from the brain of someone with no sleep and too many unrehearsed feelings. What I had then was real desire, visceral to a certain degree, to document encounters and engagements I can barely remember save for those few feelings I had managed to write down.
It is worth noting that I’m one of those people that writes things down to remember. And in the most ironic-“that’s not irony” sort of way, most of the things I wrote down back then were moments of unfettered longing, disappointment, and struggles I had with my emotions and my (gasp) inability to write. You know, those things you don’t want to remember. (Ha ha; there…irony). All of the things I’d rather not remember are the exact sort of things I wrote back then, since that was all I could get out of my brain with my hands. I suffered, really suffered, with writer’s block for most of my adult life. I couldn’t put words to page if I cared; THAT was the kicker. If it was a paper for a Psych class, or a document for work or something along those lines, I could mechanically do the thing with the words. Then, when I thought I would have a go at writing that space opera that’s been building in my mind-scape for so long, I would find myself staring at a white screen, the whole of written language completely escaping me. Frozen, terrified of judgement.
I still get little bouts of anxiety when I write if I’m not on fire with inspiration in the moment. I still find it hard to write when I’m at a section that “doesn’t excite me”. It’s so much easier though, now, to put words on a page without judging the first syllable before it has had a chance to have a moment in the light. With the weight of The Block off my back, it feels much easier to put words to page. I write things that make me feel good things, I write things that make me feel excited…I write things that make me excited to write.
And so here we are, writing again in a space that once held the bookmark for a diary. Now, I hope, the space I write in will be one of joy. There will be disappointments; I will not succeed at everything and I will lose and fail all over the place. I’m not concerned about all of that right now. Right now, I’m focused on taking those first few steps toward something I’ve always wanted to do: share stories that make other people feel.
-V. Raylean
A Portly Bard's Stage 