In thinking about my malaise or writerly dysfunction--it seems to me that the key (if there is one, and who knows) is to keep writing even if I have no hope of it meaning anything past my own action of doing. Is that zen? Should writing be about action only?
Isn't that what people do? They do things for the joy of it? Even though this is more about exhaustion and confusion than joy. If not school, then what, working in a grocery store the rest of my life? And if it is supposed to be only about process, how does anything ever get done? This post already has too many questions. I don't know how writers do the hard stuff--I don't know what sustains them through the bleakness of probable failure.
But then, when I train for a half marathon, I know it's not to win. This makes me a tourist, I suppose, not an athlete. There is something in the completion that has value to me, even if it doesn't to anyone else. There's something to setting a goal and then reaching it. Is that something enough to build a life on, though?
This morning I tried to start a kind of ritual: some sun salutations, hot tea, then writing. It was awkward, and I got very few words down, but it's maybe a start.
I don't know why I feel so despondent when I confront this research paper. What the fuck is wrong with research? Nothing. I have learned some cool ass shit about bees. Stingless bees, naked honey hunters, Varroa mites that decimate whole hives. Mark Twain even wrote a brief essay called The Bee where he posits that bees are really human. It's wonderfully funny and weird, as though written under the influence of a fever.
It's late and I need to sleep.
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