Eating the Sweetest Truth

Still working through some stuff here

I’m having an interesting day

I actually set a goal to write on my big science fiction story. I channeled it as a reward lol

But then I didn’t actually do it

And that’s what I’m thinking about

Because I do want to write it. These past few years with it have been the first time where’s it finally felt like it’s coming out naturally

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There’s a huge section of that science fiction novel that I was thinking about patching together, finishing up, and then posting here. And this past Friday, I set a goal for myself during the day to write part of that. And then I didn’t. And it was everything that happened after I realized I didn’t that was truly eye-opening.

Quick bit of context: on Thursday it became a reality that my 3 year old son and I are now going to be spending lots more time together. And I have figured out some of how we’re going to do it, but for the most part things are still churning. Because once that became a reality, I felt the ground shifting beneath me. And started pondering some changes. One of them ended up with me going down a rabbit hole about my writing.

My first stories ever were a bunch of Thomas the Tank Engine fanfiction stories that I dictated to my Dad. At twelve I wrote (and finished) my first Star Wars. It is awful. It’s really terrible lol. But I’m still proud of it. My first big long story bloomed in 8th grade, and the big one, the eventual map of writing mind, erupted in 9th grade, and has never stopped. And so I wrote it, and so I continue writing it, and so I called myself a writer.

But I’m not. I’m not a writer. The only story I want to write for free that I care emotionally and empathetically about writing, is just that one. I have no impulse or inclination to write anything else. Like that, anyway. I do love to write, especially around the jolt of a new idea. But once that’s gone, the follow-through vanishes to. Unless there’s a particular reason I need to continue to.

I’ve done more because I’ve felt obligated to, or the felt the urge to respond to something - and like if it was my job I could do it. Like if my employment depended on it, yeah I have the talent and the moxie to write shit. But the only story I really want to tell is the big one. Every time I think of finishing, I feel - once it’s finished, that’s it. I don’t want to write anything else.

I don’t know what that makes me, or if it means I’m a terrible person, or what. I just have things and people to take care of, and I know what I’m good at and honestly what I love to do. But it no longer feels right to say it’s who I am, because being who I am is an act of unconditional love, and I feel if I truly was a writer, then I would undoncitionally love and want to write everything I write. And I don’t.

(this will be repeated as I continue to process it)

I really have no internal, emotional, unconditional desire to write anything else. For example, I’ve been pondering some thoughts about the recent “Mandalorian and Grogu” movie, and about how it’s the first Star Wars film that’s actually about Star Wars itself. I feel my brain crunch and mince all of the the different points of egress, nuance, and critique. And I do it again and again. And I feel no desire whatsoever to write it down and post it anywhere. Again, if I was being paid to I absolutely would write it and do it. Because I’m good at writing, and that skill has worth and value, and I’m allowed to need to be fairly compensated for the value of my contribution. But the only writing I want to do for free is my science fiction novel.

And so I don’t think I am truly a writer. Because there’s only one story I feel truly compelled to write about.

Does that make sense?

I’ve always kind of done that. Like my podcast scripts for Outbound; even though I have the series mapped out story-wise, and I love the story, and I love my boy Chris M; I don’t feel like writing the season 2 scripts at all. Not for free anyway. .

The science fiction novel is different. Because that’s where I used to throw the shit that I needed to process and figure out. Like, the lines of that story came from me feeding my feelings and events and friends and conversations and emotional storms into its maelstrom, and that’s why I couldn’t write it down. Like I would try again and again, thinking “got it now!” and then it would fizzle out once the initial inspiration went away. And I had a lot of shakiness back then, a lot of avalanche, chaos, and turmoil. I wasn’t emotionally stable until my thirties, and I kept writing the story throughout. And that novel needs steadiness in order to become written in words. That’s the only reason I’ve been to write any of it, recently, with any consistency at all.

I don’t have 30 plus years of writing experience, I have 60. Because I wrote inside and outside. I did double time.

I’m a Trekkie. My ideal world is like a paradise. I don’t like dystopias, I have never really been interested in reading them because that’s not the world I’m looking for or want. And nowadays it seems like everyone is competing to write the next great dystopia lol! Like, why?!

And Trek isn’t perfect, but it tries based on paradise. It’s source isn’t chaos or turmoil. And neither is my story, and I don’t want it to be. Like, it’s not a paradise, and there are bad actors in there, but the overwhelming amount of society wants a Union, wants like a perfect, or perfect enough, place. To settle into. In the past of the narrative, there was a Union like that for awhile. So, like, it’s in their blood. They remember and know what the goal is, what they’re trying to get to, what they want, because it’s written in them.

And of course they do. Because it’s what I want. I write this story because I’m done chasing the turbulence, the intensity. The existential storm. That part of my life was over years ago. So much of writing is about conflict, and I have no interest in leading with conflict anymore. It’s there, because conflict is a part of life, an invasive force. It’ll always be there. But my people don’t choose it. Even the morally gray ones are just trying to restore balance, trying to overcome the external chaos around them.

This new chapter with my son is hitting me so much harder than I thought. Like, externally everything is probably going to stay the same and get harder from here, but internally it’s like “yes, this what I want. The dust is settled. At the very least, everything that happens now happens inside serenity.” Like it feels like I finally have room to stop chasing the tumultuous intensity of everything that came before this week relative to him

And that’s how I feel about my writing. When I realized that I didn’t write anything Friday, as I set out to do, I calmly thought “that’s okay, no worries, you’ll come back to it.”

Like ten years ago if I did that I’d be freaking out, like “I felt so inspired and I said I would do it what the hell why didn’t do it, I felt the inspiration ahhh!” Friday it was calmly like “all right cool, that’s okay. That’s perfectly okay” with a little grin on my face.

And that’s huge. That’s larger-than-life. Like, it’s “come on in, don’t worry. This is a sanctuary, not just a shelter.” It means my creativity is longer the eye of the storm, it’s the place where there are no storms. No tornadoes, no acid rain, no zombie apocalypse. No dystopia. Anywhere in sight.

That strife that I once identified with, that so many writers go through to tell the story; I don’t have that. I already did it. I’m not suffering for my art anymore. And I’m not saying anything about the quality of people or writing that come from creators who do that or are living through it, and whatever his/hers/yours/theirs journey is, I empathize and wish you all whatever you seek from writing, from your creations. Rah rah! Trr-r-r! I don’t know what this means about my own seeking, but as of recently I know what it’s not. I know who my characters are, I know where they’re going; they know who they are, they know what they want, they are at a kind of inner light with themselves, and I’m not changing that. My imagination has worked hard, has created hells upon hells, to give them what got them there. I don’t want to talk about that. There will be plenty of that in the world around them. I wrote the endings to the hells, and then started the beginning there, at the end. And wrote my characters through the story again, this time with everything they needed. Because I’ve found everything I’ve needed. That’s where my characters should be; I believe that’s where all characters and their authors should be.

I know who I am, I know where I’m going, I know what I want, and I’m at a kind of inner light with myself, and I’m not changing that. And so be it if someone finds that uninteresting. I don’t find conflict that interesting. Because it’s not the only thing that’s interesting. It’s just what I was conditioned to find interesting. A conditioning that at times is hard to see, but I do my best. A conditioning I’m doing my best to make “No longer”. So…no longer. No longer. I can do writing dammit, no-conflict or conflict. I can focus only 1% on conflict and still make everything surprising, I can still make it resonate, you can know what’s coming and it will still hit you right in the chest. I can’t make any other story do that except this one, and I don’t want to.

This weekend, I going to look in earnest for copywriter jobs. Story jobs. Hell, I’m even thinking freelance articles, or grants; I used to do that for a whole theatre company, I’m good at that too. I’m not withholding the worth of my creativity anymore. I know what I’m capable of. I’ve always known. What’s different is that I’ve stopped believing that aligning with my worth means keeping it private.

What’s held me back was a self-trapping need to define an identity - a title, a label - based on passion. And I love my passions. I love doing writing. I love doing performance. I love being a dad and doing dad things. I love singing when the beat and the sounds and words and the breath-paused won’t leave. I love dancing when the movements and flows won’t leave and I love my damn values, and I love to stick up for them.

And maybe I’m being overly-forthright about this lol. Writer is a broad term after all. Why can’t I just write the way I write and identify as a writer that way.

But labels have always made me trapped, made me feel like I have match a certain kind of behavior, or a certain kind of thinking, just like I did frequently when I wasn’t emotionally stable; and all that does, and has ever done, is continually resurface the very chaos that I overcame and left behind awhile ago. I’m not a writer, or a performer, or a dad. I do those things passionately, but I don’t know what the combination of all of them means, or is; and I don’t know, and am not sure if I ever want to know, the label for that. I just know it’s not rooted in the chaos of where it all solidified from.

So cheers. Now I integrate. Hello, my name is Bryan. I’m not a writer, but I do write, and I’m VERY good at it. I’m not a performer, but I do perform, and I’m VERY good at it. I’m good at others things too. I’m ridiculous. Sassy. I make funny noises sometimes. Sometimes animals ones. I’m uncertain about a lot, and a lot more certain about certain things. There’s a great deal going on in my life right now, but nothing unfathomable and nothing impossible, even when it feels that way sometimes. I am many things, possible and impossible, certain and uncertain, curious and informed.

But my creativity exists in one spot. And altogether it’s paradise.