It’s Like Hell Sometimes

The last couple days have been rather tough. Writing has been driving me crazy—pushing me rather hard—making me doubt things. A lot of questions have been coming up. Should I be writing? Should I be writing here? Am I any good? Am I getting better? What do I really want…

It all started with 24hour theatre and an innocent conversation. Being told that one’s work runs cold, no passion, no energy is hard to hear but I’d rather know than not know. I do have a hard time writing emotion—but I sure live it well. Instead of getting upset, I took the notes as a challenge—to really dig deep and try to create something with ‘more’ to it.

I guess where things got fucked up was asking for feedback. I don’t do well without help from others—work shopping my pieces—hearing what people feel and read from my pieces is very helpful and there are few people—and fewer in L.A.--that I trust to do it. So I handed it around and waited. On edge of course.

When I’m excited about a piece, I’m unstoppable. And for me—I’m excited about every piece, every line, every effort; I’m not very good at the ‘throw away’ mentality. Every piece I write does mean sometime, my time here at the keyboard is worth something, I just can’t walk away like the piece never happened. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just my thing.

The bad thing is this though--I’m greedy when it comes to input, work shopping, taking notes because I want to not just hear it but understand and see it. I know that I am stubborn when it comes to the “how’s and why’” and I should have known better… I wish sometimes I didn’t care as much as I do.

The thing is—I came close to giving up. Really giving up, walking away from it, accepting that I am not good enough. ThisClose. But in the end of the day—there was a sign of sorts, I saw it for what it was worth and now it’s just about choices. What to keep and what to let go, where to be and where to stay and what do I want most.

It’s still hellish—but only a tenth of the time.