Feels like I should be more inspired to write, but it can often be tricky to come up with subject matter to write about. I had taken some notes a week or so ago regarding my living situation, my roommate, and the overall hipster-chic feel of it all. Then I realized that might be kind of boring. But then I thought to myself, is posting nothing at all really a better solution? Not really.
I use writing as a creative outlet. I don't seem to have to many of those these days as I used to. I loved to draw and doodle as a kid. I did a lot of blogging (complaining about how stupid my parents were) as a pre-teen. I did a lot of acting and musical theatre in high school. After that, video blogging was something I enjoyed doing rather frequently. Then I got into painting. Last summer I bought a camera and have been enjoying learning the fine art of photography, taking inspiration from artistic photo websites and seeing if I can get an idea on how to replicate those shots. Yet, I don't go out with my camera too much anymore.
Lately at works in times of ultimate lack of anything to do (which is rare -- Facebook is always at my fingertips) I have been known to spot a pad of paper and taken to sketching something silly on it. I've always had a thing for drawing an eye, and then designing a creature, usually cat-like, around it. But nothing really interesting. So I feel like I have this intense need for a creative outlet in random parts of my life but I haven't felt like I've been all that great at what I've created. In my defense, art is subjective.
I took a creative writing class in college and we had an assignment to submit a poem for the entire class to read aloud and critique it. Poetry has never been my thing, so I used a poem that I was inspired to write when I was 18, during a summer I had spent in Alaska and I was stuck on a boat for 12 hours a day. It was rhymey, about a relationship that faltered, all that expected, trite sort of bull.
It was submitted to the class and read aloud anonymously. Everyone hated it. No, like
everyone. Not a nice thing was said about it. Well, until our instructor asked if the author wanted to come forth and defend his work, which I did, and a nice girl in the class declared, "Well I liked the rhyming," probably seeing my humiliation forming in my eyes and about to stream down my face.
It inspired me to write another poem. It was a poem about how I personally believe art isn't 'good' or 'bad'. It's a way for a certain person to express themselves and if not another single person on earth can read the emotion that went into that piece, so what? If it meant something to the "artist", then at least one person got something out of it. And it also defended my personal interest in having poems rhyme.
Then there was another, probably also seen as terrible, poem I wrote about how there are a lot of things out there that I find I am okay at, but nothing comes to mind of anything that I really, really excel at. So that's sort of a downer, and do I still believe that? Who knows. I don't try to think about it. I live my day to day life, which a lot of people may find uninspired and going from day to day just living and not trying to achieve anything. Again, maybe true. I always have an idea of what I'd like my life to be like, and somehow either there isn't an intense motivation to get to that point, or my excuse that it's hard to balance a job and school without any other outside help is actually a valid one.
It's a topic I hate to think about and don't discuss with many people, but I see those who are successful out there and they are typically the ones who come from supportive families. Then on the flip side, I think ... but everyone I know seems to be more successful than I am. And then I think, yet again, most people who don't come from supportive families and are sort of down and out on their luck seem to never leave the small town they come from.
This has really just been a post of my progressive thoughts as I wrote this. Ramblings, really. This post started out with an idea, one I visualize as sort of a foggy, less compact cloud of ideas, and the more I wrote, the firmer the message became in my head and I was able to focus on a few of those certain aspects. It is at this point in the post that I will give it a title -- not that I had an idea at the beginning and titled it appropriately. Let's make that much clear.
To be perfectly honest, there are a lot of things I wish I could write about, but I couldn't bring myself to stand up and declare those stories of my life at the risk of certain people finding them, reading them, and knowing exactly how I am feeling about certain situations. That's what I have friends for I guess, but still... I don't know. They don't get the full, reign-free let-my-ideas-flow whole of it.
Suppose I could write those elsewhere... and publish those perhaps I figure out if I'm still in need to hide my thoughts from those people, whether if it's from realizing I can have complete honesty with them, or if they will no longer be in my life in a way that I have to fear their judgement.
