self indulgent word vomit

Every time I have sat down to write anything in the last month and a half, I find myself doing that thing where I start and stop, then I work on an unrelated project and daydream until I find that somehow an astounding amount of time has passed and I still have responsibilities to take care of. 

It seems that much of creation – be it content or art or the self – is the constant stopping and starting of whatever it is that you’re working on. I have gotten back into watching youtube video essays and every creator I’ve gotten into watching has some video about this idea. I used to call episodes like this writers block, and while I fully believe that some of those moments in my life have been writers block I think on the whole what I find is something more boring and sinister. Working on anything, even if you are excited and passionate about it, can be exhausting. We are simply humans almost constantly crushed by the weight of the world around us finding our escapes as best we can. 

I had this grand plan that I was going to pump out one short story a month to try and really hone in my writing style. As much as I would love to be the kind of writer that just pumps out as much as she can come up with on a moments notice, I am not James Patterson. I don’t have ghost writers. I just have an intense need to write and create, and I was not born to insanely rich parents who can just support their writer daughter while she tries to start and finish her first novel. I also (for better or worse) have a soul that cannot stay still. I need to move, to be outside, to separate from the work from time to time so that I rejuvenate in ways that are beneficial in every aspect of my life. 

I also have an incredibly physically demanding job which is both a blessing and a curse. I pretty much don’t sit down for twelve hours a day, three to four days a week. The last time I had a job like this I was finishing up my undergrad and used all my spare time to write my thesis. Getting home from shifts where I have literally been shat on, all I have the energy to do is eat, shower, and try to get better at killing zombies. This time feels…..different. Bigger. More important to my life path. Not that wrapping up my disaster of a degree wasn’t truly cathartic, but staring at the four big projects I am working on sprawled across screens, boards, and notebooks in front of me feels chaotic and right. 

There is also a significant amount of doom about the future of art in general on the internet. AI is here to take over the actual process of critical thought in everyday life. It seems to be working, as most things that are supposed to make daily life easier. Students are no longer writing their own essays, corporate people are running to chat gpt to write their emails. I worry about whether or not absolute slop is going to be written and published by and through AI for sure, and that it will sell because we have collectively lost the plot on what it means to enjoy art or media of any sort. Where does that leave my dreams? Are all my future writings doomed to an AI machine somewhere that will allow people to mimic my writing? Will my characters be fed to these beasts and spat out as easily digestible tiktok tropes? Are we not all collectively hurtling toward a future in which art and media is no longer able to critique the world in which we live in favor of being able to boast that we all read 100 books in a year? 

There are a number of reasons I don’t like AI, from the horrific environmental impact to the fact that silicon valley seems all too eager to fully turn us all into more dense little data blocks easily bought and sold in markets made to keep us satiated enough to never question the nature of our existence. Panem et circenses, if you will. Except the gore is much more in our faces. I have to believe that there is a future in which AI doesn’t take over our lives in such an invasive way, otherwise I will lose my mind. 

So here I sit on a foggy, cold texas morning in what has become my office space in my parents house trying to focus on one project at a time. I currently have pinterest, this document, and three different browsers with different research tabs open on my three screens (the only perk of having worked from home towards the end of the pandemic is knowing just how many screens I truly need to get anything done). I am flanked on either side by cork boards and a whiteboard filled with half baked ideas and scribbles. Truly if anything were to describe how I treat my own creative process it’s really taking stock of what my setup looks like everytime I sit at my desk. I have to physically separate myself from my phone, which sits in a container on my wall near my stress cigarettes.

In order to combat the writer’s block I feel coming on, I seem to find myself reaching to writing a word vomit piece of self indulgence. The thought is always that screaming into the void will help me feel better enough to actually put the work in. Isn’t that what a blog is for? Void screaming publicly? Self indulgent pieces that will never make it very far? 

May the gods take this offering and ease my fucking suffering.