13.
Well, I did it.
On my last birthday, I committed to spending the year writing about whether I still wanted to write. My goal was simply to see what I produced… and to discover, in the process, if my joy of writing still existed. The project would take whatever form emerged from what I created, the one-year deadline my failsafe against getting stuck in doubt and refusing to move on with my life.
As I now feverishly finish this last bit of writing, tomorrow is again my birthday.
Yes, I wrote.
Yes, I enjoyed it.
Yes, I’m excited to share my writing with the outside world again. And increasingly nervous.
How will I share this writing? I’m not sure what to do, other than to put it on the web like a zine… and I’m not sure I know how to do that. Will I be able to make it look like I want it to look? I can’t just re-cut and re-paste scraps of paper until it’s right. But I don’t want to get caught in production questions. Does it matter how it looks? Nobody thinks I’m a graphic designer. I want people to focus on my words. Do I actively promote this work, or let it sit, unassuming, in the cloud? This was all much easier when I carried copies in my backpack, handed one to everyone I thought might be interested, left a couple sitting on the stack of alternative weeklies. Who will read this? Why will they read it? What will they think of me? I haven’t shared writing like this in so long.
If you are reading this, I’ve obviously pushed past this last set of creative problems. If you’ve read this far, you now see more deeply into me, take me or leave me. There’s no going back.
I’ve learned enough to take my next step. Let’s give another project a try.
the in-between*
© 2020 Barry Perlman