just keep swimming

i don't really have anything to say tonight, but i'm going to force myself to write. why? well, i think it's good for me. my brain is constantly bleeding out my ears with each passing day and i can only assume that it needs some exercise once in a while too. maybe i can stop the hemorrhaging, or at least catch some of it on paper (figuratively, of course, as is the case with most things internet) as it oozes down the side of my face.

there was a time that i loved to write. i went through high school assuming that i'd spend the rest of my life writing: i was going to go to college and major in english, then do something to pay the bills while i finished two books, the first being the beginning of a very complex and well thought-out science fiction/fantasy epic, and the second being the great american novel. i started trying to get to both of those goals my senior year of high school; for my writing seminar class i wrote the first chapter of my epic and a whole lot of short stories to refine my storytelling style. looking back, pretty much everything i write sounds the same, except of course for that first chapter of the epic, which is just completely awful in every way. my regular style, however, hasn't really changed much over the past five years; if you are familiar with the way i talk, then you'll recognize my writing and vice versa. i'm overblown and overdramatic, i use far too much parallel structure and far too many semicolons, and i tend to sound inauthentically articulate. whenever i read back over something i've written, i always think to myself "man, i'm such a wannabe pretentious douchebag," but then i sort of realize that that's actually kind of the way i talk. so over the past two years or so, i've come to terms with it. i'm a wannabe pretentious douchebag.

i mean, seriously, i'm writing in all lowercase. how pretentious is that? in case you're wondering, i do that because i'm making a conscious effort not to correct my mistakes and to try and attempt to be sloppy. it doesn't really work, of course, as i'm still looking up words i'm not 100% sure how to spell (like hemorrhaging, which i did spell right, but i looked it up just to be sure), but at least i'm trying. i don't remember who told me to try and write like this, but i dunno, it's more comfortable to look at what i'm writing and see something unfinished than something finished that i look at and think is crap. i wonder if that made any sense? well, it did in my head, and i guess i'm the one i'm trying to impress.

anyway, like i said, i used to love to write. sometime during college, however, i guess i sort of realized that whenever any of my professors would try to help me refine my style, i would get very offended and hurt, and i guess since i figured i wasn't strong enough to take any constructive criticism that i should just stop altogether. so i became a poli-sci major, and for the next two years all i wrote about was eastern europe and presidential foreign policy--which i loved doing, of course, and a good majority of my papers came back with ego-stroking comments on my wonderful writing ability. silly poli-sci teachers, what do they know? most of their literature is written by people like Hannah Arendt, who while unbelievably fascinating uses four hundred words where two will suffice.

so where am i now? out of practice, that's where. it's not a terrible position to be in though, i think; i get to rediscover whatever little ability i once had and maybe try to cultivate it once more. and if i never really had any ability to begin with, at least i had the passion, and as far as i'm concerned that's far more important.