Currently, I have found writing to be a struggle. I'm at that point in the semester where I have more work than time. I'm buried in ungraded essays and reports, and, by the time I get my children to bed, lunches made, and my clothes set out for the next day, I'm lucky if I have the energy to turn on American Idol and watch Simon insult a few contestants. I often wish I could be as brutally honest as Simon when I grade papers. Then I could write comments like, "I hated it. I've read tubes of toothpaste with more personality." With a British accent, it would sound charming and funny.
However, this is more than just not having the time to put pen to paper. This is a struggle to string together words in complete sentences that communicate a coherent idea. (I just experienced one of those struggles. I couldn't think of the word "communicate" and sat on the couch for a few minutes coming up with sound-alikes and near synonyms: elucidate, postulate, commiserate, copulate, stipulate, amputate.) I've been through similar writing droughts before. I once had a poetry instructor tell me in a graduate-level writing workshop that my poems showed "no sense of line break." I didn't write another poem for about two years. The only cure I've found for this problem is to keep writing, no matter what kind of shit I generate. Consider yourself duly warned. What you are about to read will be uninspired, self-centered, and possibly bitchy.
This is not where I wanted to be at this point in the Lenten season. First, I wanted to be in the process of moving into a bigger home. (After, literally, a couple of showings a week for almost two or three months, we have received no offers. My coworker, on the other hand, sold her house and is moving into a nice three-bedroom by a lake in a about a week. I'm so happy for her.) Next, I wanted to be almost done with this whole exercise in forgiveness. (I've learned anger and pain don't dry up and blow away. They sort of mutate into resentment and avoidance. Considering my track record these past 40 days, I should have stuck with avoidance. It's much easier to maintain. As the old saying goes, out of sight, out of being a pain in the ass. Or something like that.) Finally, I wanted this blog to make a difference in my life or somebody else's. (Being a writer, I am prone to egomania, to believing that, through language, I can change things, win friends, influence people, gain a little fame, make some money. At the very least, I wanted to know that I was being read, that people would miss me if I stopped. Right now, I think that even my wife and best friends are tired of me.) Here I sit, at the end of Lent, pretty much a loser on all three counts.
Maybe that's why writing is so difficult for me at the moment. I feel a little lost, when I wanted to be found. (Yes, I stole that one from "Amazing Grace." I'm even stooping to plagiarism.) I've lost my sense of purpose, maybe even a little hope. Things just haven't happened the way they were supposed to happen. Maybe I do have readers I don't know about. Maybe there's somebody out there who's been wondering when I'm going to post something again. Maybe not. Hope and inspiration, for me, are about as difficult to sustain as rare, tropical orchids.
Maybe what I need to do is invent a fan for myself. Maybe that will rekindle my enthusiasm and inspire me to continue writing. I'm going to call my fan Claire because I like the name. (I've also have a thing for actress Claire Danes. My wife knows about my fixation and even bought me the complete series of My So-Called Life for my last birthday. That's true love.) Let's give Claire red hair and a penchant for falling in love easily and being hurt frequently. She has reached a point in her life where she thinks nobody really cares about her. She's maybe in her late twenties or early thirties and has experienced some hardships. She got pregnant in her teens and now lives with her nine-year-old son in a one-bedroom apartment which she can barely afford on her salary from Wal-Mart.Then, one night, she discovers my blog by accident, and, for some reason, Claire connects with my posts. Each day she checks to see if I've written anything, and, on the days nothing new appears from me, she goes back to old posts and rereads them. Claire is my number one fan who I don't know, but not in the Stephen King, Kathy Bates, Misery kind of way. What I write simply matters to her, the way certain writers mean a great deal to me--Anne Lamott, Flannery O'Connor, Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, etc. (As an English major, I've fallen in love with many authors.) I'm Claire's friend at a time in her life when she's pretty much alone. I, and what I write, matter to her.
So, I dedicate this posting to you, my unknown reader, Claire. In a lot of ways, you have a great deal in common with Joan of Toulouse, the blessed for today. She was discovered by Saint Simon Stock, who granted her permission to be "affiliated" with the Order of Carmelites. Those seem to be the only known, verifiable facts about Joan. She lived a life of deprivation, service to the poor and sick, and instruction in faith and holiness. That's it. Other than that, she pretty much labored in humility and anonymity. She could be the patron of my faceless reader Claire, who struggles every day to take care of her son, Duncan (another name I like), pay her bills, keep her head above water, and maintain her sense of hope.
There's that word again: hope. Coming up on Easter weekend, hope is what I should be focusing on. It's what we've been headed to for 40 days. It's what being a follower of Jesus is all about. If I can't find inspiration and hope in His sacrifice and forgiveness, I might as well turn in my Christian membership card. So I will keep writing, keep hoping that something good will come out of it. That's all I can do right now. (There we go. Uninspired, self-centered, and a little bitchy--I warned you.) Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, we all have to struggle at times, Claire.
That's our so-called lives.
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