Love and Other Drugs
On every level, I consider myself a writer first, which is weird because I’ve done so little of it as of late. That and my “day” job which feeds me in a different but equally important way, needed to assume its rightful priority.
I am however, always writing, the words scrolling across my brain like a banner flown high over the ocean. Sometimes, a word or two would slip out and make its way onto a napkin, a scrap of paper, a journal or into my computer, then almost immediately be lost on purpose or deleted.
I wanted to write, even needed to. Absent the regular discipline of posting to my blog or to Examiner.com, my mind became the repository too much unsaid. A dispute in my family toward the end of 2009 was so massive that I couldn’t feel around the edges to move it out of my way. I lived with crushing grief, and prayed for grace. Writing should have been a ladder out of the hole I was in, but its rungs were too far apart and the rope people threw me only made a tighter noose. I sat in the dark for almost a year.
The only thing worse for a writer than not writing, is a close tie between writing something you know is poor or doing a type of writing you don’t enjoy. For me, the latter was a factor in what had become a growing, if unacknowledged writers block, my inability to write an interview or a critical review.
I enjoy interviewing people, my natural curiosity and propensity to find common ground makes me adept at getting people to open up. But taking an hour-long taped piece to an insightful 600 word interview required a skill set I not only didn’t have, but wasn’t interested in developing. They are “out there” these reviews of mine and best resemble a primer of ’Dick and Jane go to the Movies’.
My final aborted review effort was this past December when I was asked to write a column on Love and Other Drugs after an advanced screening of the film. I had a brief, unrequited crush on my seatmate which didn’t help. Plus, I hated the move. But I had hated The Ugly Truth too and still managed to cobble together a review.
But when it came time to write the article for Examiner.com, I could only think of one thing to write.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, put some clothes on.”
This does not a review make.
Adjunct to writer’s block, I started a new job at the beginning of 2010. Minus my previous professional swagger in an economy where I knew I could be replaced by someone thinner and younger (though not with better hair, I need to be clear on this point) made me reticent to write about my more controversial positions. I still think Sarah Palin is a doofus but I felt then, and now that more judicious self editing is appropriate.
Struggling to find wit and wisdom and with personal losses mounting, I had clearly lost my sense of humor, and I noticed that certain subjects had become decidedly unfunny. I can’t un-ring the blogger bell, and I’m not sure I want to. But I was part of our collective uncivil discourse and I feel differently about that today. We are either all in this together, or all against the other; the former builds bridges, the latter blows them up. Though I in no way blame Sarah Palin for the too oft said, Tragedy in Tuscon, I think her brand of rhetoric makes an impression on a certain disenfranchised element of our society.
All of the clichés we come to understand about the passage of time proved true. The new job is now one I’ve been proficient in for a year. The wound in my heart formed a scab strong enough to draw that part of my family close again. I raised $2700 and completed the 3-Day, 60 Mile Susan G. Komen For the Cure. In fact, amidst some losses were great gains: I treasured new friends, discovered other creative outlets and took some significant steps toward creating a very different kind of life for myself.
Moving to California is by far the most visible change from the previous 14, almost 15 years. I’ve started running again, and with this post, writing again and in my first attempt, more cautious, less caustic.
It’s a start.
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