Why I Write - extract from a notebook
Being inspired to keep handwritten notes again. (Thanks @Tom Cox)
3 Red Cabbage Heads is a free and reader supported publication. Subscribe now to support me, you can upgrade to a paid subscription, it doesn’t give you any more access to my words, but a handwritten note and a small gift, probably completely useless, are yours. My words are free.
I’ve been trawling through my old work, cos why not when you are having a hard brain day? I used to write notes all the time but sometimes I forget for around a few years. Spurred on by Tom Cox I’m trying to get back into it. I’d love to have a decades worth of notes to look back on. Anyways, I found this lurking in the back reaches of a notes document on the computer. I am going to try more to write physically by hand. I’ve even retrieved my trusty Waterman ink pen to refill, just need to choose the colour; green, brown, or purple ink.
Sometimes I feel that I have nothing, nothing to write any longer and then I rediscover that words are the be-all and end-all of my life. That all I need in life is words, for without them I could not express my feelings, my thoughts, my being. If I don’t write, I can’t sort any of it out and begin to know myself or my ideas. I would implode, the effort of holding it all in would consume me. But I have to keep away from the scary stuff. I have to skirt, dodge and evade the pain and create calm and comfort. Language is so powerful and yet so gentle. It can be totally destructive or it can create life itself. It paints, it weaves, instructs, desires, it gives all and takes everything and I seem bound by it. With most of life I feel so uncomfortable, as though I don’t fit the key-hole; and I feel like that so much at times and I don’t know what to do. I have no control, no aims, no goals to reach for; I am drifting, wasting time, wasting my life on nothing. With words I am found.
Looking back at this, I see some of the traits of undiagnosed autism. The feeling of not fitting in for example. A theme that permeates my writing. Characters written as on the edge of their world looking in, trying to wrest an understanding of life from what they see rather than automatically participating in it. Which is what I always do/did.
Short one today, cos no brain. See you again soon.
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