so embarrassing

On the home page to this scintillating blog site I wrote that I am a writer. Because, you know, I feel like a writer. I have the urge to purge all of my thoughts and feelings and wonderings and preachings on paper. I am happiest at my computer penning (keyboarding?) ridiculous things that help get shit out of my brain and heart and on to the page (screen). I love language and reading and words and turns of phrase and clever quips and all that belongs to the writing craft - except for, you know, the actual craft. It's just too damned hard. First person omniscient, sentence structure, flashbacks, flipping p.o,v., commas for God's sake. Commas! Who in the world actually knows how to do any of that stuff? Well, writers I guess. Which is why I feel like such a fraud. I didn't even know what kind of things to list about writing.

I shrivel up and become a cranky witch-dragon with three heads - one Medusa, one Kraken and one Megalodon - when I don't satisfies this urge. And the terrible thing for my husband is that I never write. Like Neverrrrrrr.

I spend my days with a continual low-grade hate-on for myself for never doing the thing it is I love to do and feel a soul's prerogative to do. Maybe it's that I was a writer in a past life and its residue is what makes me say that I am a writer. But, from all of my scroll-learning, writers seem to hone a craft. I fear that even if I do write, I will never hone my craft. It all feels too overwhelming in a world where so many writers have already honed theirs. I'm paralyzed by their perfection. Envious of their commitment and struggle and triumphs. Though comparison is surely a devil's game.

Let's be honest. I am as much of a writer as I am a ukulele player. Which is to say I am neither. I want to play ukulele. I want to write. But I never do. Play or write. But the thing is, I would never say I am a...a...ukulelist (?) but I really do tend towards saying I am a writer.

Can you say you are something you know you have the potential to be even if you are not it yet?

Isn't that like visualizing or something? Build it and they will come? Fake it till you make it? Maybe that's what I'm doing here. Faking my craft. Faking my way through blog posts. Pretending. But isn't that also okay? Doesn't doing something, anything, create some sort of cosmic ripples? 'Kicking up energy' as my friend says.

Punt myself onto the page, if you will.

I think part of my problem is that I have a vision of what I actually want to create and what actually gets created is so far away from that vision it makes writing almost impossible because each keystroke is more proof of my failure. Concrete, cringe-y evidence of my inability to write. I think Ann Patchett said something about needing to forgive ourselves for what actually gets put on the page. I suppose you can't go wrong with forgiveness in general.

Forgive myself for the writing that comes out.

Forgive myself for not learning more about my 'craft'. (I can only ever say that word with a snide tone, with quotation marks, with italics.)

Forgive myself for being snide about my craft. (craft! craft 'craft' emoji eye roll).

Forgive myself for being me.

That too.