Write more

Slowly, but steadily, I’m starting to get back to the miraculous world of creative writing (or creative nonfiction, if you please) and it feels wonderful. I have a history of getting excited and then losing interest but I hope I continue writing this time around. As much as I love this site, keeping a blog here never felt too natural, entries written here are meant to track the process of completing a goal and that’s the way I like it. Of course I’ve posted a lot of thoughts under different goals but it feels a little weird to have entries scattered around the site, although they are all under my name on my page. I felt like I needed a proper blog, too.

What I’ve noticed is that I absolutely love writing reviews, especially of books! I might not always follow a traditional way of writing a review, but expressing my thoughts and feelings about a certain book (or a movie or an album) makes me feel exhilarated, and I love it. When there is no pressure of deadlines or minimum word count or the likes, it also makes the whole writing process that much more enjoyable. I used to love book reviews in high school and I was fairly good at writing them as well – in Finnish, that is. Now that I’m trying my hand at English reviews, I also hope to perfect my writing skills and increase my vocabulary!

Here’s hoping. :)

I write and I write but the words do not come out as intended. A sentence. Another. So blunt, no form, no poetry. I am very rusty indeed, and when it is not certain what is actually expected, half of my energy goes to guessing and not fully to writing (which should be the case). The clock is ticking, so there is no time to waste. A draft is ready, more or less, tomorrow it will be under close observation, essential changes will be made, and a deadline is set to this Friday.

It is very hard to present yourself in the best possible light and according to expectations.

It feels like I’m living in an existential emptiness, right now, while I’m sitting on the floor, looking at the computer screen, the last sunbeams seeping through the blinds, I feel just how fragile life is, how little being alive truly matters.

I have a friend who is going through a tough time at the moment – well, truthfully her whole life has been somewhat rough, and she has become dependent on other people, unable to really make it on her own. Reading her thoughts about the things going on in her life at the moment, the confusion and certain despair with perhaps a hint of bitterness because life didn’t go as planned, it all made me feel strangely weightless, I feel like I’m floating in silence and emptiness.

I don’t think life is unfair, I’ve long since given up on thoughts like that. Even if you weren’t born to greatness, you can till aspire towards it. I know that materially, my life has been better than my friend’s, and I don’t feel bad about that, because it doesn’t make me any better than she is as a human being. We both come from ‘broken homes’ (though in this case it just means that we have never known our fathers), and I wouldn’t say that our childhoods were that different from one another. Still, I can but guess the amount of uncertainty and pain that she feels right now or how stressful everything must be for her.

And here I am, fretting over the possibility of someone I don’t even know being interested in me, thinking about what kind of clothes or shoes or accessories to buy next, and it just… We’re so separated today, us, the human race, our lives are separated to a point where everybody is alone, whether or not her or she acknowledges it. Everything is so free today – don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate the freedom of speech and freedom in general – that we have lost the meaning of connection, we have forgotten what it means to be together and now we’re just floating in time, passing each other silently. Or perhaps it is just me?

I’ve never read the book, but I’ve always thought its title is the most brilliant one ever. And if I had to sum up everything I feel right now, it would be with this book title (by Milan Kundera): The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I can’t stop thinking about existence, the state and quality of being, if I did, I would lose an integral part of me, I would become someone else. Life… is fragile. Even the slightest change can turn everything upside down, and it can end so abruptly, without any kind of warning.

A light sigh, breath on my skin, drawing my outline. Almost touching, yet keeping the distance. Electricity pulling to get closer, a slight brush of hair, sending shivers all over the body.
Breath, painting me into existence, and a silent whisper:

“Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in
Like waves of sweet fire, you’re safe within
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in
And carry you over to a new morning”

_{If only…}

I think I’m doing fairly well with this goal. I’m not writing much, and it’s nothing spectacular, just musings about daily life but it actually makes me happy. I’m starting to enjoy writing again, and I know this is all I’ll ever be able to do with words – write captions about ordinary life. Storytelling is just something I can’t do, and I’m quite okay with that. I still have a way with words, occasionally at least, and whatever I write I can write it beautifully. I’m still not confident enough to get this goal off my list. Knowing myself, this time might be like the ones before: I’m excited for a while and then something happens and everything gets forgotten.

“I’m sure you’ve all been there before, at least once or twice, getting ‘too’ involved in fictional lives and happenings, living alongside a character you know did not exist outside its creator’s (and yours) imagination. Yet it did not matter, all that was important was that life right in front of you, so alike to reality and still mere fiction, a hiding place, an alluring promise, an enticement of something that could be, if only…

You might have found yourself falling in love with a character in a book, or a film, even a TV series. The longer you live their life, the stronger the bond seems to become and after every pause, every break, it gets harder and harder to let go, to accept the fact that it is all just imagination and not real.

The pain of letting go, stepping back in to reality, it never gets easier, the pain cuts into the flesh like a red-hot blade, and it always hurts like hell.

I feel that every single time. Be there a character I can identify with, who is fascinating beyond ordinary, who strikes a chord with me, I become so involved that the surrounding world seems to get drained out of all its beauty and captivity, so that all that is left to surround me is mist and grey, all the colours have disappeared, they’ve been absorbed into the characters and fictional worlds. All life has escaped into a story that could never exist in this reality.

It’s rather sad, really, but the colours usually come back after a while. Once the mind has gotten enough time to accept the undeniable truth – that the hero will never appear, not in this life, not ever. And one can only dream of fiction, not ever enter its realm, no matter how much one would desire that above all else.”

_{It’s like you fall in love with a character and then confuse it with a real person, after a while it gets hard, even impossible, to separate the two of them anymore, you get confused as to who it is you actually love, because the face is real but the mind isn’t and it gets so hard to tell the difference and at the same time you know it’s impossible either way because your world will never truly collide with the object of your love and it breaks your heart.}

I haven’t written much anything the whole summer and I feel I’m losing my touch, it’s been so long since words seemed to obey me and I could just produce text without having to put much effort into it. It’s true I’ve never written anything more than just journals or blogs but perhaps I could try my hand at something else, like poems or really short stories. I should just start practising and write something, say, at least once a week for starters. I miss that connection I used to have with words and writing, I really want to feel it again. :(