Supposedly

It's time to return to writing again as a way to process my thoughts. I think writing functions for me as self-interrogation. I've kind of ummed and ahhed over what kind of writing I want to produce. Sometimes I think poetry is the higher form to strive for. I went through a phase of thinking that writing about the self is no longer needed, the personal essay is everywhere and puts myself at the centre of the universe, inflates the ego, tries to dissect the self until it is entirely separate from the world, takes us further from being a collective etc. I thought that writing fiction or poetry would be the only way to meaningfully write anymore. So I wrote a short story and it was ok. It was about a girl going home for her mother's wedding in rural NZ and the local men that flirt with her. It really wasn't anything ground-breaking, and certainly didn't do anything to help form a collective. So then I realised that writing for me has never been about purity of form. It's a way for me to process my thoughts. A way for me to put my learning to the test. A way to develop as a person. I have so many thoughts throughout the day, both low and high-brow, that get lost if I don't write them down. And this immediate writing helps me develop to become a fully-fledged person who is interested and curious about the world. If I take away the personal essay (however informal it may appear in form) then there isn't really a person left over. If I take away the personal essay I lose both my interests and interest in writing itself.

Here's another one despite the ever present doom of what tf to do with my life. Another one because I quit my job and can't find a new one. Another one because my money is running out and I just really need a new email in my inbox so I can go out and buy a croissant. Another one because otherwise I will doom scroll until I need to pee.

Yesterday I went down a rabbit hole of looking into Judith Butler and now I need to loan Gender Trouble from the library because that is apparently my current obsession. The other four books I currently have on loan will not suffice, it must be this specific book on gender theory. Anything else I simply cannot give my attention to. I've tried - I started reading Hurricane Season and got absolutely fucked by the first four pages that now I need to wait until I'm feeling intelligent enough to reattempt. That book is not for the person who is stressing about their upcoming job interview. It will not crush that anxiety, the premise is too outrageous from the start. Then as I was waiting for the train I began to read Caleb Femi's poetry collection Poor and absolutely ripped through that to the point where nothing has remained in my brain. That was post-interview and I was too busy thinking about how I bombed in my nerves and how fucked the STAR method is. I am not hopeful but know that manifesting does work so should cheer tf up. The only thing that I believe can truly distract me from the growing depression (there, I admit it) I feel at the moment is Gender Trouble because I have always been good at creating new areas of interest not maintaining them. Things that I already like, put them in the trash. They are not enough for the coming storm, if previous experience is anything to go by.

I just read Alien Daughters Walk into the Sun by Jackie Wang and it made me so happy to see posts from Tumblr put into a book. Like it's something that I've always thought worthy of doing, but to actually see it done and popped up in the windows of my local bookshops is another thing. I think the immediacy of writing for Tumblr is something that we're told as writers to avoid. That is, you should instead take time to dwell and edit and construct a text. And yes, I know that largely this is how good novels and collections are made, but sometimes I think my best work comes from just dumping my thoughts all out onto a page. Because that's what I think. That's who I am. For me, that exactly summarises how I think. I'm tryna write some kind of novella/story atm and I am struggling. So maybe that's why I'm now like y'know what FUCK intention what comes out is what comes out. There has always been this thought that exists inside of me that is like I'll never be able to construct a piece of writing that I've planned. I'll never be able to plan what I write. I'll never be able to properly finish a piece of writing because before halfway I'll be like this is hot rubbish. Or I'll literally just start thinking I'm not gonna finish this and I won't. That is the practise though, pushing through despite every outward and inward signal telling you to stop and do something else. Which is also why I'm here, writing this down in the first place because I'm avoiding what I'm actually meant to working on. Yikes!

Plummeting down the text box though is a different feeling in entirety. This sudden, immediate writing fuels me, makes me feel unstoppable that I can just spill myself out here without knowing what the result will be. Looking back at the end of the paragraph being like these are the things that are actually on my mind. Sometimes Conor can pick up on a mood and ask what's up and I literally don't know how to say it because I don't know what it is. Sometimes my thoughts just float around my head and I try and try to grasp onto them, to turn them into something tangible that I can work with or ask others to help with, but I can never. They leave and I'm left with a head full of nothing, embarrassed that I'm so low without a way to communicate this without sounding like I'm turning into my Mother. Because that's where I've seen this vacant behaviour before, in my Mother as I'm talking to her in the passenger seat while she drives me to school, and she's nodding at the correct times but she's miles and miles away. She'll eventually admit she's thinking about something else. But more importantly there's incidents where she's in the middle of talking and will lose it, will lose the thought and it's impossible to get back. There's a few seconds of an attempt to remember, an embarrassed shake of the head, then finally an immediate task to distract herself from the idea that she's lost that thought. She'll usually go back to folding washing or reading a cookbook or leave the room entirely. It happens to me too, and it happens to my Mother, and it happened to her Mother. My Nana so bright and full of love but without her thoughts. I don't remember much of her when she was my Mother's age, but towards the end of her life she was without them entirely. What do dementia patients think about when they're alone? Do they reflect on their own lives or somebody else's? Do their thoughts become more external than internal? I worry my Mother is headed for this, and I worry that I am too.