I wrote a book when I was 17. (Don't hunt it down—it's not worth it.) Before then, I'd written a number of shorter pieces, each of which felt like a piece that knew what it was doing; once I started to write the book, though, I pretty much just wrote the book. Books, apparently, are very big!
Towards the end, when the book was nearly finished, I found myself with a sudden urge to make something that wasn't ordered. I took special relish in writing with the intent of pushing away from anything that seemed like it knew what it wanted to be. The things I wrote then were formless and curious and special: little living things poking their heads up at the world. And then I finished the book, and eventually found myself in a different kind of groove.
That pattern has been pretty consistent for me ever since. I'll find myself hewing to a pattern for a good long while, then I'll work on a project that is itself a pattern, and then I'll find myself adrift and patternless for a while. A few other tendencies follow suit: in the patternless place, I find myself suddenly and relentlessly omnivorous, searching for any kind of inspiration that isn't what I typically devour.
It's convenient that HEY impulsively decided to offer up a writing platform just as I found myself omnivorous and drifting again. (I wouldn't have written for any other platform, but I've been loving HEY too much not to enjoy its stubborn, punk-rock attitude towards the Internet in general, and found this was exactly what I was looking for.) I'm coming to the end of something that's been looming for a long, long time, something whose pattern was and is too demanding for me to have looked away much for the last, oh, ten years or so, and at last I'm starting to confront the fact that I will, at some point, have to genuinely move on.
I'm not there yet. It'll be another handful of years before it's really, truly over. But I've crested a hill that, for the majority of my adult life, I didn't entirely think was crestable. More on that sometime before 2024, I'm sure.
Anyway. It's convenient that this space suddenly exists for me, because I need to be here, I think. It's about that time. Where is this going? Who knows! But it's nice to have a little place again to make a mess.
(An alcove, if you will. You use this word, alcove?)
Towards the end, when the book was nearly finished, I found myself with a sudden urge to make something that wasn't ordered. I took special relish in writing with the intent of pushing away from anything that seemed like it knew what it wanted to be. The things I wrote then were formless and curious and special: little living things poking their heads up at the world. And then I finished the book, and eventually found myself in a different kind of groove.
That pattern has been pretty consistent for me ever since. I'll find myself hewing to a pattern for a good long while, then I'll work on a project that is itself a pattern, and then I'll find myself adrift and patternless for a while. A few other tendencies follow suit: in the patternless place, I find myself suddenly and relentlessly omnivorous, searching for any kind of inspiration that isn't what I typically devour.
It's convenient that HEY impulsively decided to offer up a writing platform just as I found myself omnivorous and drifting again. (I wouldn't have written for any other platform, but I've been loving HEY too much not to enjoy its stubborn, punk-rock attitude towards the Internet in general, and found this was exactly what I was looking for.) I'm coming to the end of something that's been looming for a long, long time, something whose pattern was and is too demanding for me to have looked away much for the last, oh, ten years or so, and at last I'm starting to confront the fact that I will, at some point, have to genuinely move on.
I'm not there yet. It'll be another handful of years before it's really, truly over. But I've crested a hill that, for the majority of my adult life, I didn't entirely think was crestable. More on that sometime before 2024, I'm sure.
Anyway. It's convenient that this space suddenly exists for me, because I need to be here, I think. It's about that time. Where is this going? Who knows! But it's nice to have a little place again to make a mess.
(An alcove, if you will. You use this word, alcove?)