1) The cost of inaction is not much truth be told if I accept my life as it is. I have amazing friends, family, wife and work yet what is missing is my creative soul. I feel I traded that in somewhere in my first marriage and it has taken me decades to realize how much I miss it. As materially wealthy as I am, my soul is poor and starved for action and the more I have done this writing exercise, the more I see how it is to get out of inaction.
I have so much more to gain by trying that the only failure that will string is the lost chances to write. I see myself writing regularly and lately my visions for work and love have gotten clearer as if I was in a fog and until writing cleared away the cobwebs, I was merely content. Now I am full of energy, working out, writing, loving, planning things, it’s as if I am running out of time, and I want to get it all done and now.
For the first time since I started on my UCLA extension classes, I am wondering what made me think I could actually write. This is the first time also I took only one class, and yet it feels as if my entire certificate for creative non fiction depends on it. The class is for personal essays, how to write one and get published. We have only written 5 essays but it feels as if I have written 50. The worse part: my writing absolutely, without any doubt in my mind, sucks. I mean it’s awful. Instead of showing, I am telling. Instead of describing people, I am using stock characters. And grammar? Forget about it, it looks like I stopped around 8th grade.
At first, it was easy to blame the class (teacher sucks, essays too general, no lectures, etc) and then I realized that the issue really was me. My first topic was about my grandfather, the second about my mom and sisters opening up Ziba, the third about my difficult writing, and the fourth and fifth about cancer. Each topic emotionally loaded for me, but more importantly not really dealt with at the time so as I began writing, I lose myself into that time period so the writing resembles that of a child.
Writing about Ziba and my dad;s drinking is just plain hard mainly because I have such mixed emotions about it. When Ziba started, I was at UCLA and then Law school and I was 13 when my dad drank and it has had a powerful effect on me. The main reason its hard because Ziba is in my lifeblood and I love my dad so much now, more so because he is one of the few people I know in my life who did a 180 turn in life to save his family. I have so much respect, pride and love for him that it’s hard to look at a time when I felt nothing for him. As for Ziba, it;s just hard to write about it because I have the guilt that I could have done so much more and that perhaps I didn’t have much to do with it for it to be successful. In a way, maybe I am riding it coattails, but then I see my family and they just don’t see it like that and won’t let me either.
Finally, my love and cancer. This part’s the hardest just because it was so recent but more importantly it involved someone I love so completely that it’s hard to imagine being without her. So here I am, in a personal essay class where all the essays are so personal that they don’t mean much to others because I havent dealt with my own issues, and thus the writings are full of meandering thoughts and emotions that frankly aren’t very fun to read if I was totally honest with myself. Let’s hope I figure it out soon before I truly feel like a failure. I am open to suggestions 🙂
I am struggling with who I am, who I want to be and I am nearly 40. That’s the latest mantra in my mind. My desire to be a writer, to be a lawyer, to be truly great at something is getting lost somewhere in the shuffle because I refuse to do the day-to-day. I rather indulge in fantasies like winning a Trillion dollars (who does that?) than sitting my butt down and creating something new. It’s easier to dream and imagine but so much more difficult to create (except for tension).
by Jemal Yarbrough
So I approach being 39 with some dread because I have to answer to myself. I happen to find a list of things I wanted to accomplish by the time I was 40 and was disappointed to see that I had managed only 5 out of 50, but then it hit me that the others did not matter to me as much. I need new goals, new things to achieve. Actually, that is a lie, I only have one goal now: to be a published writer. Too often, I have made excuses, too often have I blamed others, too often I sit at this desk and write about wanting to write but then write nothing of value. Too often, and so instead of a new years resolution, I made a birthday one: WRITE.
No matter what. Write. Write lists, write journal, write morning pages, write something, anything. Just keep that pen moving (well in my case fingers over the keyboard). I can’t help feeling like Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon during the mirror sequence. I am surrounded by versions of myself but each of me partially hidden by my image while I look for the elusive antagonist (in this case, The Writer). And with a loud Kiyaaahh, I shall break those mirrors, break what’s holding me back, break into a new kind of Bruce Lee, the kind that kicks ass with words rather than kicks.
It took me quite a while to start writing today namely because my eyes kept wandering over to other sites (flickr/install new mac updates/Mac App stores) and thoughts (I really need to finish watching the Justice League of America Season 2/I need to get a physical/why isn’t my Apple TV synching to the Macbook). It was as I was starved for intellectual stimulation or perhaps because I knew I was already behind on my post a day self-promise. Yet somehow, it does not sting as much as I thought because I an constantly thinking of writing. However, there is the 900 pound gorilla in the room: what to write about. As much as blogging is satisfying in that I get to vent, I know I haven’t gotten to the real task: to writing original content. That’s a new problem because in high school, I stumbled onto short story writing, at UCLA personal columns, and now blogging. It appears I cannot write unless there is a significant part of me invested into the words, and that’s a bit scary and troubling at the same time because I truly believe if you are a writer, you should be able to write in just about any genre and so with that in mind I am going to attempt to write my first short story in years.
I haven’t decided if I am going to post as I write or when it’ complete, but I know the progress will be noted in my writer’s group (the first such group I ever have joined), and perhaps as a testament to the seriousness of my writing when I start my Writer’s Studio seminar at UCLA. Either way, I know I need to do more than just whine on here or talk about her friends or my feelings. I need to produce so I can finally make the transition from would be writer to actually being one.
The words just sit there. The guilt sits behind them. Yet nothing moves. I plead with the clock to slow down, to let me gather whatever’s lying around so I do not feel like a fraud. Yet nothing comes. It is as if I am spent from fighting the cancer in my beloved, and while the movie reel in my head sputters along, the projection screen is blank.
I can’t stop thinking of writing, and seeing every conversation as potential dialogue. It’s as if my body is become one huge receptacle for ideas and possible stories. Yet I want it to stop. I feel like Scott Summers from the Xmen, unless I put some glasses on, I can’t stop the lasers from destroying the world near m me.
Just stop, I beg regretting ever having starting this muse yet it grows just like the enemy in my love. Her body betrayed her and now I feel like my mind is doing the same. The words keep growing and I pray they don’t spread to my hands because I need the energy and the strength to by her side.
I want nothing except for her. She is my life. Without her, I am just another person, but together we become one unit that can take on the world. But we have been let down by our bodies, hers turning against her and making her wonder what she did to deserve this and mine seeing everything as a reason to write.
But both of us are wrong. All we is the present and blame worry sadness don’t belong because the reality is we will both survive, one as a writer and one as former cancer patient. That is our new reality. It doesn’t take anything away from us, it just has made us a thousand times stronger.
While we will kill one cancer, we will allow another one to spread so it can kill the doubts worries and sadness in others. In hindsight, maybe being an X Man, isn’t such a bad thing.
I have a need to be read so I know I exist. These are my words, and I need to share them. Too long, they have gone silent, and worst of all ignored by me. I had convinced myself that writing was enough, just like breathing. But after a while, you need more than air to live. Life isn’t just a series of breathing exercises yet for a while that’s how I treated my life. Something I just had to do. No vision. No motivation. Just passing of the day and really just being lucky enough to be around people who loved me for existing and providing me with everything.
So why am I whining because I know I am a fraud. I know that the words coming here now are just so simple and don’t even come close to the poetry in my head. It used to be so easy and now I am lazy and dull. I stopped listening and hearing what the words were trying to tell. So now I just sit here, listening to amazing religious songs with a cold cup of coffee trying to convince myself at 38 that this is what I want to be. Yet every moment feels forced, made up just so I can say I wrote.
I am a writer. It’s what I tell myself when I wake up every morning, and the first strokes of the words comes easy. Yet after a minutes, I find myself tweeting/emailing/posting/reading/searching/paying bills all throughout the precious time I have managed to find to write. It’s as if my body is telling me to get real and go back to my superficial life. And I oblige. That’s the sad part. I know I am failing myself and yet somehow I still continue on the path.
I am a fraud, but at least I know it. And knowing is half the battle, Gi Joe reminds me. But wait, I feel like a fraud but does that really make me one? It’s the question that nags at me. Who am I, really? Am I the thoughts in my head or am I to be defined by actions? What is it about slamming these letters down that makes me feel like a light weight heavy lifter? Is it the guilt that the joy I felt when I first learned to transform my thoughts into reality seems buried, muffled underneath the chorus of doubt and guilt? Or is it just not meant to be?
Should I remain a fraud or for once be the man I said I wanted to be?
