The last time I posted was over 4 months ago. During that time frame, I missed a lot of things that I usually write about, like the holidays, spending time with family, and major life events. I missed Thanksgiving and Christmas. I missed freakin Valentine’s Day: The national holiday that forces people to recognize the love that they have in their life, and to acknowledge it with a display of affection. That’s practically my motto. I saw it coming, I knew I had a chance to write about it, and I let it pass by. Just like all of the other opportunities to write.
To be honest, I tried to write a couple of times, but I noticed everything was falling under a similar theme: getting older and letting things go.
I think the reason it kept creeping into my writing was because I felt like I had lost a lot of control of a few things before I was ready to give it up. For example, I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted and I didn’t have to work out, and I would basically be not terribly fat. I think that would have been a body shape I could have lived with: Out of shape but not terribly fat.
But my body has changed a lot in the past year and I’ve noticed things don’t come as easy anymore. I went bowling for a company event a couple of months ago and I tweaked my hip. That’s a fucking embarrassing injury. Not only did I do it to myself, I did it to myself rolling a ball.
But it’s not just physical attributes that are changing. It’s an early-20s, carefree mindset. I think I realized that there’s a difference between getting old and growing old, and it has a lot to do with perception. Everyone “gets” old. If I forgot that, bowling certainly reminded me. But there’s a stage in there where you are hopefully growing and not just…getting. I think that change happens when you begin recognizing where you were, where you are, and where you want to go. There may be some reluctance, but I think that stems from selfishness. We don’t like to totally give up something until we are ready. For me, recognition was the thing that helped me get past a few struggles.
Another reason I hadn’t written is because I felt like I had nothing to write about. I was worried that I had lost the creativity that pushed me to start writing in the first place. When I started this blog on Xanga, I had so many unexplored thoughts and ideas. Vetting them out online was like having a big burden lifted off of my shoulders. But at the end of 2013, I felt like I kept looking into an empty bag of chips hoping that there was one chip left and I had accidentally just missed it when I looked in there 2 minutes ago. All I could think about was loss and letting go.
I fully realize that I started this post saying that I didn’t write because I kept repeating a theme, and then just repeated it by writing about why I avoided it in the first place. But my goal for this new year is to try to regain the creative edge that pushed me to write in the first place. I have a couple of theories about how to get it back, but I’ll start by trying to focus on ridiculousness and trends.
More to come in 2014.
Thanks for sticking with me.
– Bowling For Themes
