I'm just warning, I've watched a few too many apocalyptic movies today, scene a little too much tv, and feel a lot like a Bronte on a barren moor.
Today seems to be just one of "those days" for me. You know, dear reader, one of those days where nothing goes particularly wrong, but there is no unique motivation to do anything right either? Today is one of those days where I struggle between the instant gratification of our world and the solitary work of writing.
Today I tweeted, I tumbled, I emailed, I even updated the website, and even though I feel strangely connected, somewhat productive, I do feel somewhat lonely. And then my eyes turn to the binder. The binder full of sentences and scenes, events and characters and I realize that nothing about writing provides instant gratification for me. And while that should not be a bad thing, today: it feels like it is.
In an age of so much instant gratification, instant understanding, instant fame, have I lost the ability to look forward? Not just forward into the week, but years down the road? Part of me, I know, is afraid to look, terrified even--sometimes real-life weeks are just things to be dreaded; but another part of me wonders if its something our generation has failed to learn, lost even. We can't look past the next new phone, or ipad, or next trend in cars and if we do look forward its with this hopeless type of optimism that never connects to our own lives, how we will effect our own futures, how we will change what we don't like about our own surroundings.
So I type. And I write. And I pull myself into a story whose ending I know, but the journey is still foggy, and I'm amazed that I can't even look forward enough to see the finishing of it. Where I will be. Who I will be. What it will be when its done. And wow. None of me likes the unknown of it, the endless possibilities. It just leaves me feeling so sad. So sad that its not that I don't want to imagine my own future life, but it seems I can't. So I'll type this up, proof read it, post it and then unpost it, and repost it again, then tweet about it, and I'll get my instant gratification for the day and we'll be back at where I started: at the same blank page, at the same half-written scene, with my beautiful characters, gratification years away. You would think this would be less of a dilemma, right?