Again I ask myself how to create lasting community outside of an expensive con that forces us to reserve hundreds of dollars and a weekend of time to hang with friends that live locally but we don't see as often as you want to. It should be easy to reach out and schedule something, but the mundane reality of parenthood and being a responsible adult with a job and a mortgage means that friendships slip down on the priority list far more often than they should. And that sucks.
Sometimes introversion sucks. Self-induced anxiety tends to suck all the time.
There are days I wish I was back in college, where my hobbies turned into my major, where there were no questions because the show had to go on, where I actually had leisure time instead of exhausted-do-something-mindless-in-hopes-of-restoration time, and where I could always find a group of friends to try things that we knew would probably fail. Our successes tasted sweet, and I feel I had more than my fair share of them with projects that had a near-zero chance of success. Our failures were glorious and heart-wrenching, but they taught us how to be better people.
Mistakes teach. There are days I don't know if I'm learning from my mistakes any more.
I ramble. I scream into the void and wonder if anyone hears or cares. I write - it's one thing I feel I can't not do. And yet, I fear being called a writer. "Writer" implies someone who Knows What Things Are About, and I've always felt very Socratic: "I know one thing; that I know nothing." "Writer" implies that I'll starve for my art, even though I know writers who survive by people paying for the words they write.
This year, I have a goal. I want to get something fictional in print somewhere in exchange for money. Call it a Resolution, even though I'm 2.5 months late. Whatever. I have this goal, and I don't know what I want to write. Like I need to discard my process in the quest for Writing Something Better. I know it's not the way to get anything done, since Perfect is the opposite of Done, but that idea still camps out in my head. I feel like I may be shooting myself in the foot by publishing fiction on this blog, but it keeps the juices flowing. I have faith that something will come out of my head that I'll call "good enough", and I'll shop it around and see if anyone else thinks it's decent enough for their readers.
I have a second goal: Spend more time with friends. Make new friends. Make time for people. Learn to be a socially active human again. Try to suck less.
OK, so this one's more of a metagoal, but I'll start with consciously spending more time with friends and we'll see how that works.
Yeah, I'm in a weird headspace right now. House crap and family health are pushing me around time-wise, but I still want to get published this year. It's a mental barrier, I know. I'll feel better once my first published story is behind me. I know I'll feel better spending more time with friends.
Screw it. Push through. Make it happen.
Now to get working.
Image Credit: By NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI).
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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