Writer's Rehab #23: The Hardest Getting Started

Getting started is the hardest part.

I am getting back into doing reviews soon, which helps, but the writing part of picking up a project is the part of this rehab vexing me at the moment. I shall probably get sick of the procrastination and just pick anything, something, to get started and release something short but good to get myself back into the swing of things.

I am a little sour to series right now, that era of stringing readers along I feel has passed, and I want future releases to be self-contained - either short stories or full novels. The middling 50,000 word novelette I feel too has lost interest for me. Some readers invest themselves, and if they love your stuff, you want to deliver for them a full meal and experience. I am probably wrong about all of these assumptions, but I have to start somewhere. Some readers would be happy to get anything from me, no matter how short or long, and I understand and respect that feeling.

Do something, release something, just do it.

I hear you, I do.

Ghosts, you know? I curse those ghosts which hang out in the back of your mind and plant the seeds of doubt. I curse the haunting, the feelings of indifference, the trap of not doing, and the paralysis of daily life. I am removing myself from distraction and it takes a constant effort, killing the links to news sites on my browser, not checking in every five minutes, turning off my phone's constant chatter of notifications about garbage factoids, and cutting off external sources of worry. Begone, sounds of the storm outside my window. Begone you hawkers of division and hatred we call the news. Hucksters all of the constant worry culture, a poison and mental toxin of our times we are too distracted to notice and too busy to do anything about.

You make it seem like what you say shall matter one iota in my life, when it doesn't. Those who run things have already made up their minds, and no fight or battle for this idea or that matters in my life. Culture of politics and information, you have failed those whom you serve, and now I feel it is us that serve you. I don't like being treated that way, as I get this disgusting feeling of servitude. You sell me a tea which brews in my mind that anything I care about matters, that your words or analysis can call those to action of like mind and feeling - and I get this gray and dour feeling those days are over. Those sanguine days of empty hope and poster board promises are over and we are too stupid to realize the rain came and washed it all away.

I am no slave.

Yet I make myself one to them in my actions and dependence on this worthless "information" of distraction and division.

Zombies, that plague and apocalypse we were promised came true. Though the infection here is not one where people amble about mindlessly eating brains, it is one where people amble about aimlessly spreading hate. Reason and compromise were dead before we even began this age, so how is it possible to change minds and build things together? A fact yes, one that either side shall grab for itself and use to spread hate about the other. Look at how hateful they are. Look at how brain damaged they are. Zombies they all, even humor, and even entertainment in which we use to escape is infested by such mindless zeal.

Forget bitcoin, dehumanization is the currency in which the smart people invest in these days. I grew up in a time when "war toys" were frowned upon, and we had this feeling that violent entertainment lowered us in a way. We were better than that. These days, I feel if the war toys and violent entertainment celebrates dehumanizing those who disagree with us...and we shove them in front of our children and say, "have fun." I feel a world war is a shameful thing, a point in history where humankind and dialog failed, where two sides moved so far apart death became the only solution to differences, and in my feelings not a game. It is though, history worth teaching, although a sad part of it in my antiquated and outdated pacifist mindset.

This reflects us. Who we were and who we are. And the mistakes we have yet to make out of ignorance and expedience. We are not dealing with a plague of zombies, we are dealing with the barbarians inside ourselves.

I have to walk away. Goodbye to that world where black paint and white paint never blend. One pigment made of oil, the other water, and their physical nature makes them impossible to mix and create interesting shades of gray. I can do nothing about those people who live in this idiotic dichotic existence, except reject them both and live my life.

My books, my worlds are more important to me than the noise which rings like social media tinnitus in my ears. This has really changed from just five years ago,when our phones and computers were not built for the constant stream of notifications and alerts which are heaped upon us like some sort of artificial addiction to information and stimulation. I remember having to wait until tomorrow to read the news of today, when it was delivered to my front porch in paper form.

No instant messages, no news alerts, no dopamine of the thrill of the "happening now" notification I stick into my veins like a shot of informational heroin.

I go cold turkey. So I remove myself from the hurtful things which profess to help keep me informed, because I often find the information they supply me is nothing more than propaganda colored to one side of the other. Even the supposedly neutral stuff, like things to buy, I feel grow increasingly so divisive I must turn them off to cope.

To find that quiet moment of reflection where I can dream.

Where a story comes to me.

Where the noise is gone and I can think.

And I look at what I wrote and I understand I am not done yet purging. I still have a way to go.

I seek silence and contemplation, though outside, the shouts of barbarians can be heard as the zombies amble outside through the fields. And the ghosts cast their shadows on my bedroom wall.

Social media teaches us our words can stop them. If we can only 'go viral' we can change the world. This is where I fail. This is what I say means nothing, it is just venting frustration and never to be taken seriously. This is me purging toxins, nothing more. I am likely a lesser person for admitting this, but I feel this is the truth.

History teaches us otherwise.

Positive words do not change the world.

Negative ones do.

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