Start writing again

I knew this space would have to evolve when he said we would move to Kentucky. It's been difficult to find words that resemble adventure in a place that feels so unadventurous.

It's uncomfortable to feel like your words have gone away. For months I have avoided looking at this page, knowing it would taste sour to see it sitting here still, dormant.

When I was in high school, I told my youth pastor I wanted to give God my writing - the ability, the words, the feeling I get when it's read. Then I went to college and studied journalism, which my favorite, most influential professor calls "God's work" - a term many have scoffed at, but which resonated deep within me. I have no evidence that he meant it the way I mean it.

I remember a co-worker asked me what I my goal is in all of the writing. He was the only one I invited to watch me read an essay on stage at a church art night. Back then, I wanted to be Amena Brown. Still do, though I can't write poetry... my fingers can't remember the rhythm on the page. It comes out like this half-prose, half-poetry that I wish I could just read to you so you could hear instead of see what I'm saying. Like when my senior English teacher read Shakespeare "the way it should be read" and it awakened this desire in me that I've always been too scared to act on because I want to keep it sacred.

To answer his question... I want my writing to mean something to someone - someone who hurts, someone who needs joy. Someone who maybe doesn't look at a picture or a painting and understand what they're feeling, but know what they feel is real and good and that's what I want them to feel when they read the things I write.

Someone told me the way I write is too deep - can't be understood. And I didn't know then that I should tell him to stop trying to understand and let the beat of the words thump in your heart like a song whose lyrics don't mean anything to a waking brain.

A month ago, I quit my second job and now I write full-ish time for the paper. And I have weekends off. Suddenly it feels like the hours I've spent writing are worth something because the rhythm can be used (and published) in a bigger space. Once again, God's work. Not every story is worth a deeper consideration, but it's nice that some of them are.

In the months since I've recorded trips in this space, I've watched a lot of TV. I have a litany of excuses for it - and I maintain that TV is wonderful. But I've been wallowing in our lack of everyday adventure, lack of camera (cuz somebody stole it), and general lack of free time. Except now I have free time. But I didn't want to wallow, so watching TV has kept me from stepping down into the level where it irritates. I can just avoid thinking about it the same way you avoid thinking about debt or your relationship or whether that ache is something else. My friend the hypochondriac for the first time didn't worry herself sick thinking she was pregnant, and then she was. Of course she was.

Looking deeper at stories for work has me living on that deeper level I've avoided, and now I don't know how to turn it off - drown it out.

What does adventure look like in a period of patience? But then here's the real question: Are adventures places, things, or people?

Can anything be an adventure when you see mountains when you close your eyes and that's all you want all the time?

So I guess I have to start writing again.