Where to go from here…

     It wasn’t the heat, or the palm trees, or the traffic, or even the little old Mexican women selling shish-ka-bobs from carts on the sidewalk, waving brown paper lunch bags over the meat to keep the flies away, but the tile in the bathroom, that let me know how far from home I really was.

     Now this, I thought to myself, this is a real California bathroom. I ran my hands over the cool pink ceramic on the walls and listened to the honking and old brake pads whining in the heat outside my window. It was difficult to grasp that I was really in Los Angeles. I leaned over the counter and peered at myself in the mirror, trying to remember why I had come to this place. I couldn’t for the life of me pin a name to the man looking back at me.
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I like this, but I don’t know what to do with it. I didn’t plan well and I’m hoping something comes to me eventually. I don’t like to write about this part of my life, since it was something I planned to leave behind. I didn’t do anything at all in Los Angeles, I stuck to a mundane routine, barely saw any of the sights, stayed indoors and went home after a few weeks, so there really isn’t much at all to write about.

I liked these two paragraphs, and I’m hoping that I can use them as a backdrop for something better. So for now this little project is finished, but they’ll be here for safe keeping.

Beginnings

     I’ve recently decided to make a stronger effort towards writing. I’ve made a few meager attempts at writing in the past, but never stuck with it for longer than a few weeks. Underneath it all, I fear I’m only doing so because for the last year and a half I have been obsessed with Haruki Murakami, and after I finally find a copy of After Dark, I will have nothing left of his work to read, and have only begun to write to fill the void. Any reason to write could be considered a good one, but I worry that everything I write will be a poor copy of Murakami’s work, and fail to fill any void left in me at all…
     On the other hand, many guitarists learn by imitating their heros. It takes years to gain the skill to play your own song. It takes years of imitation and practice to paint anything without a visual reference. I suppose that inspiration comes from just about anywhere.
     I’ve wanted to be a writer for a long time. I can’t remember when I began thinking about it, its just one of those thoughts that passes from time to time. I’d love to have something put into print, but really I think what appeals to me about it is the idea of being a story teller. I’ve never been that good at telling stories. My best friend, Ben, was a fantastic story teller and I always admired him for it. I don’t think he ever realized how well he could captivate a room full of people. We would get together and laugh and talk about the good old days the way all old friends do, but the stories were always livelier and funnier the way Ben told them. I’m still not sure what it was that made it that way. Some people are just born story tellers. I think writing is appealing because it doesn’t come to me so easily, just the way I could never tell the story as well as Ben could.
     My talent was always drawing and painting, which I love, but it is so natural I don’t even have to think about it. Ive spent years of my life not drawing at all and years later, picking up a pencil, I’ve somehow improved. Beyond that, I don’t believe I have any real skills, and now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think I have ever pushed myself to achieve anything I’ve wanted. My whole life, if something wasn’t easy immediately, I didn’t bother with it. I want to be a writer because I’ve never pushed myself, and writing is damn hard. Even if you’re good at it.
     Either way, I’d like to give this a real shot. I’ve already gone to CVS and bought a brand new notebook and a set of fancy pens. (One of my favorite things to waste money on, though none of my countless other notebooks has ever been used for anything other than a coaster or occupying space on a shelf in my office.) I’ve gone to Borders and bought a book of creative writing prompts and another on character development. I even read the opening chapters of the creative writing book, instead of opting to skip the introduction and skim along and skim along and skim along for the one writing prompt that appeals to me, as I’ve always done, and I’ve got to say I’m quite glad I did. As it turns out, everyone attempting to write is just as bad a lazy, procrastinating, self defeatist as I am.
     So, thoroughly believing that THIS time it’ll be different, and with a spring in my step, I set to work, quickly realizing that the beautiful little notebook I bought is relatively useless; Writing by hand takes so long I can’t remember what I was trying to say by the time I reach the end of the sentence. You can’t delete anything in a notebook, and irreversible misspellings would drive a perfectionist like myself insane and force me to rewrite an entire page, painstakingly, in slow, immaculate handwriting.
     That is how I found myself here, on WordPress. I’ve got exactly what I need; an easy-to-use, no frills writing program, and a journal complete with a pretentious title and stolen header image. As it stands now, I’m not planning on sharing this journal with anyone, and I don’t know why I’m writing as if for an audience. The book I bought says that you must make time to write every single day, and while I would love to have a journal I could leaf through years from now, wordpress seems to be a great way to consistently update and keep track of my progress on my journey towards… What ever it is I’m working toward.