Pretensions Aplenty

I would write, but find I can't. Woe is me, etc.

Le Penseur by Auguste Rodin, bronze, at Musée Rodin, Paris, c. 1904.

I want to be creative.

Seriously, I do.

I know that it’s within me to write.

But I make excuses.

I work too much. I am too tired from working. I just want to relax. I need a break from thinking—it’s too much to ask of myself. I just need to get to the next day. When said day arrives, I just need to make it home and get to bed.

And so it goes, on and on and on.

Nothing gets done.

Motivation is wanting; further, any idea worth its salt dissolves into obscurity—quickly forgotten.

This state is exacerbated by a sort of melancholic ennui.

Even if I do write, will it ever be anything anyone would actually want to read? There are so many people “making it” online anyways. What could I really say that would be worth saying? Besides, it’s all been said before. And someone somewhere has said it much better than I could ever hope to do. Why bother?

Yet I always have that nagging in my brain. What if I would just put even ounce more of effort? Would trying one last time—would that be the kicker? Maybe something might pay off.

Could I finally not just publish into the cyberspace void? Will there ever be a time where I can see my name in print alongside that which I have labored over?

But it all feels like a fantasy. Surreal. Too good to be true. Something that will never manifest in reality.

Middle-school me would write novels of elves, magic, and whatever. Thinking that I could be the next Christopher Paolini or J.R.R. Tolkien. I knew then that the odds were low. But despite being the oddball out and being made fun of, I persisted in my scribblings.

Later on when my faith came of age, when it became something that actually guided me in life, I thought maybe I could be like C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton, writing of Jesus and orthodoxy with wit and whimsy. However, I am not nearly as English as that; nor am I terribly clever. I’m just a wannabe. A nobody.

There may come a time where I actually write with consistency and discipline.

Until then, I only seem to write anymore when I have inspiration. It doesn’t make any sense to me to churn out content in quantity when the quality would suffer. Better to say little than a lot.

Perhaps I can say this, though: I want it to change.

I want to write more. I want to publish something—anything!—that is actually printed on a page. I would love to actually do something for a living that involved using my brain and the gifts that I believe God has given me for some reason known only to Him. Yet I endure again and again the vicious melancholic ennui, surveying these supposed “gifts” and feel within expressed something like a shrug.

I don’t know how it will ever change.

But please Almighty God, I hope it will.

“I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark ix. 24, RSVCE)