Don't mind me rambling

It’s been a static, borderline regressive, glaringly irritating year. Life has done its bidding and has prevented me from doing things I originally planned to, one of which was post consistently to Mother Died Today, but that isn’t my fault. Things have been largely beyond my control. Despite this, one thing that has predominantly affected my thinking is inadequacy. I imagine every writer has felt this, or feels this, in some capacity, as one would feel the scorching Nigerian heat lingering on their skin: annoying and painfully unavoidable. I hate thinking that I’m not good enough, but even as I’m writing this; I feel the words coming out like bricks dropped by some buffoon out of my mind; coarse, seemingly uncreative, definitely rubbish. But I’m not uncreative, and the words aren’t coarse, it’s just my mind thinking that way… right? Validation is a dangerous drug to get high on. It requires constant feeding, like a parasite, and that doesn’t happen. Parasites feed on their host when their host can’t do its job. How does one kill parasites? Well, this one. How does one kill this one? Maybe I should start with some questions. What am I writing for? Instead, who am I writing for? I don’t need the people who read this to answer my questions, but I want them to. I want them to love me. I want you to love me and my writing and say that you enjoyed what you read, but that’s not enough reason to exert the part of my brain that allows my vocabulary to bring my ideas to life. It’s weak and baseless. A house built on a foundation of sand that cannot withstand the heavy downpour of disappointment and struggle.

My mind is cast back to a poem I read by Charles Bukowski; I don’t know when, instead can’t remember when, titled “So you want to be a writer,” which I’m sure everyone involved in writing in some way has looked at, albeit with a semblance of annoyance. Charles says stop whining and write, but most importantly, stop writing at all if you’re not writing because of the call for expression, a deep bellow you most certainly have felt that doesn’t go away. This hunger is within me, I think… it is, right? Maybe I should say I’m evolving into a form of myself I don’t quite understand but will soon, given time. But that’s not true. Maybe I should say that my brain has been too preoccupied with tragedy after tragedy, but aren’t the best words born from adversity? Perhaps I can’t write at all, but that’s not true either. There’s proof that I can write. I hate the writer’s block phrase, which may apply here, but writer’s block for an entire year is such an awful excuse. Maybe, as most people propose, there is actually improvement coming. A new frontier previously unexplored. The night is darkest just before the day breaks, right? Convenient.

Wait, I know what it is.

There’s a yearning to be the best version of myself right now, but what’s the fun in that? Why should I know everything there is to know at an age so young? I have barely lived. There’s too much pressure on the young and lonely mind. The thing is, I can always be better, and guess what? I will. You will, too. It drives me mad. There’s just so much to do, so much! How exciting. How thrilling it is to put words on paper or screen. What a privilege. Do not take this lightly, young and lonely mind. Do not be boring and stagnant. Yearn and do. Let the infant flame within you burn. Let it rise until it devours every part of your being. There is beauty in your process, dear child.

Mr. Charles Bukowski says, “Unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it.” Be consumed, dear young and lonely mind. Genius is always met with fear.

“When it is truly time, and if you have chosen, it will do it by itself, and it will keep on doing it until you die, or it dies in you. There is no other way. And there never was.”

So you want to be a writer