failure to launch

What happens to the artist, in particular the writer, who chooses not to write?  And why on earth would he or she make such a choice?

For me there are many lame reasons why I avoid the blank page.  I have a great fear of posing as a writer only to be outed as a hack and a want-to-be. I also tell myself with some frequency that I am self-indulgent and myopic because my writing leans toward memoir and has been a life long journey of self-realization.  I am afraid of being abandoned by family members who find my writing to be too self revealing and do not want to be mentioned on the page.  Their personal desires put me in a bit of a bind.  What is autobiographical writing if not about the life one has lived.  Leaving out key experiences that involve other family members stifles creativity.  But, let me be clear, it is no one’s fault but my own that I chose not to write.  I struggle with the idea that writing without a  goal is meaningless.  “Are you working on a book?” people ask.  “No,” I respond, “Just writing to do it.”  But that is not entirely true.  Ever since I was a child, I have believed that I was meant to write a book.  Is time running out?  Will the voice inside me which cries, “Tell my story,” eventually be silenced by neglect?  Am I afraid to fail?

I am now reminded of what I have so often told my children.  “The only real failure, is the failure to try.”  The hardest part about trying for me is believing that I have something universally meaningful to say.  Selfishly I want assurance that I will be profound when really my only job is to write.  The rest is out of my hands,  If I try to edit before a single word  touches the page, I am defeated before I begin.  And isn’t that the hardest part of all?   Every day a new blank page.  Every day the risk of failure.  Everday beginning anew.

Back to my original question, why would one chose not to write?  Laziness?  I recently attended a workshop with Dr Joe Dispenza, an international lecturer, researcher and teacher who is driven by the conviction that each person has the potential for greatness and unlimited abilities.  He said, “Ignore the fear and step into the river of change.” There I am standing on the banks of a raging river, afraid of drowning, standing like a statue watching the wild current push downstream.  I want to fling myself into the current, not because of a death wish, but because I want to live.  I want to dare to take the wild ride into the unknown with only my own words to buoy me, to carry me.  If I do jump, my goal will not be just to reach the other side.  No I want to boas far down river as I can.  I want to see what lies ahead.  Where will the journey take me?  Is that not inevitably the real reason to write?  To find out who I am and why I exist.

Deeper meaning.  Ever deeper. That’s what I want.  How deep can I go?  My now deceased mother often told me, “You create your own problems.  Why are you so serious?  Don’t ask so many questions.”  Who would she have been had she dared to ask, “Who am I?”  She made it indelibly clear to me that I was not to air the family’s dirty laundry.  Piles of untold stories never to be cleaned or hung out to dry, but just left lying damp in baskets stacked to the sky and beyond.

I would be amiss if I did not mention my fear of depression.  It has now been four months since I last took a Prozac the antidepressant I was first prescribed in 1992.  Yes 35 years later, I finally weaned myself off this powerful drug.  In the past, my forays into writing have more often than not triggered bouts of deep sadness. But today I have a new life.  I have no intention of isolating or of  forcing myself to write.  I will simply sit down each day and wait.  Isn’t that’ the hardest part, waiting to see what arises?

Because, you see, not to write is to die, and now, more than ever before, I want to live.  I want to venture out onto the page of life where I hope to thrive, to find adventure and to hear the voice of my soul speak to me and through me.