elfs | The half-examined life

Today, in a completely different fora from LJ,

fallenpegasus mentioned his habit of collecting beautifully bound blank books but a reluctance to, as he put it, "do anything so gauche as to actually write in one."

I have the opposite problem. Every blank book I buy is a new promise that I shall write, or draw, or compose, or equate, something beautiful, something wonderful, something that will really be meaningful. Or perhaps it's a notebook into which I shall pour everything I learn as I study Kanji, or music, or emacs. And then, after a while, the book is battered and the crisp white edge greyed with the grease of too many fingerprints, the insides stained here and there with coffee, and the promise of the book is faded as it fills with unanswered problems, shoddy perspectives, crude doodles, crossed-out paragraphs.

All of my blank books end up only half-full. Like my writing career.

Oddly, though, writing is the one thing I keep doing. I keep hacking at it, hoping someday I'll get it right, I'll feel like my voice has arrived, my style is strong, my command of the language adequate. In the meantime, I'll keep soldiering on.