Today we came back from the beach. Back to normal life. I have to say that even though our vacation was fun, it feels really great to finally be back home. I don't remember where I read it (or maybe I made it up), but whenever I come back from a trip I think of the phrase "the best part about traveling is coming home". If you think about it, it works on so many levels.
...
It's almost 9 pm as I'm starting to write this. I thought of skipping today since the drive back home was long and tiring, but then I thought I would at least make an attempt at doing an entry1. Not that I have anything specific I want to talk about; it's more that I don't want to break the habit! The first excuse opens the door wider for the others that come after. I'm also not feeling super tired right now, so I'm pretty sure I should be able to bang out something half-decent in maybe half an hour or so? We'll see.
Something I was wondering about on the last part of the drive here was my initial desire to write stories. Perhaps one of the first things (if not the first) I wrote when I first started my blog was my old homepage (which you can still see here), where the central paragraph states as one of my goals for the blog:
Something I would like to eventually start doing with this space is to get into the habit of writing short stories, but I haven't managed to find a way to do it yet (writing posts/essays comes much easier)!
At the time I really felt like I wanted to create stories but didn't know how, and I saw the creation of the blog more as a stepping stone to the former than an end in and of itself. Now, however, I rarely (if ever) think about storytelling except in the sense of its importance for humanity.
Me being me, I of course started doubting myself and asking whether this change came about because my interests have honestly shifted somewhere else, or whether it's actually because I found a safe space in "blogging" that I don't want to stray from.
It's true that, for me, writing misc posts is a lot less unnerving than writing a story. On one hand posts are easy; I've already done lots of them and feel quite confident in being able to write them without much trouble. They're also "safer" in the sense that they can be about anything, don't have to follow any set structure, nor talk about a single thing throughout2. In other words, I don't care that much about what others think about my posts. But I do care what they think about my stories3.
That's what got me wondering. Could it be that the desire to tell stories is still in there and I'm just lying to myself that I'm "satisfied" with my current practice? Seems like a pointless question to ask, though. Wouldn't I know? It's like I'm going out of my way to find problems for myself.
...
I still love storytelling. Perhaps not necessarily creating the stories myself, but the act in and of itself is pure magic. Lately I haven't been reading as much, though. Actually, it's been a while since I read a "good book" that inspires me to write4.
I don't think I'm settled enough into this "daily vomits" practice to try and change it yet, but maybe once we reach higher numbers (50?) I could start doing the sporadic "vomit story" or something? Similar in spirit to what I'm doing now, but rather than being essays they would be stories.
It's actually not such a bad idea. I'm sure doing them this way, lowering the bar and making it a single day thing, will definitely help me lose the "fear" I have when it comes to writing them.
Thoughts:
- I got lots of post ideas during the drive home. I've noticed that they just seem to "pop up" when my mind is calm and not doing anything specific. My job is mostly to recognize them and write them down somewhere before I forget!
- Ideas are sort of like dreams. You have them and then forget. They might show up later if something triggers them.
- You can't really say an idea is "yours". They just pop up.
- People who say that it doesn't matter they used "AI to write something because the idea was theirs" really don't understand how ideas work.
- "The writing" is the good part! The idea is almost worthless.
- Now that I'm starting to build up a larger collection of these ideas, I'm wondering what should happen to this "thinking section". Maybe write the ideas I had throughout the day in here? Though that might make me work on them a bit prematurely.
On our way home we stopped at a restaurant way up in the mountains. I thought the foggy landscape looked neat.
Footnotes
-
It seems I'm calling these "entries" now? No longer "vomits"? ↩
-
Hey, as I'm re-reading this I noticed I used the concepts of "structure" and "proper form". Could it be that I'm projecting some sort of school-related trauma? Maybe I once wrote a story that was judged too harshly? This is something to look into. ↩
-
It's true that I care more about stories, and that's why I also care more about how they're perceived. It's like I don't want to fail at them, so I don't even try? Does that make sense? ↩
-
Recently during our trip, after much urging from my niece, I started reading "The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England" and I have to admit I'm feeling some of that "itch" to create something similarly fun. On top of this, there's also that same niece who is in the midst of writing a sprawling epic fantasy series (which seems to be a sort of rite of passage for every bookish ten-year-old), and I have to admit I feel a bit jealous about her excitement for her work. ↩