On Writing

The things I have to go through just to write anymore. The internet is a foul thing and its blog platforms are no exception. I have started and quit three different blog sites because first off they are mostly horrible and secondly they are ugly. The writing world has gone strange. The internet has made it so. Everything has a clinical feel to it anymore. Whether it's just the beast itself- this computer machine with no heart- or the fact that one has to read through it, it's become harder to connect to much outside of straight, deliver-the-facts journalism.

I don't know what's happening in Calgary-the city in which I currently reside. It's stifling here for a writer and for anyone unemployed for that matter. The economy is bad and the news tells us it's only getting worse. But the unemployment rate isn't as high as it was when oil tanked in the 80's, so there is some hope. Ah, hope! That glimmering wind ornament in the distance, the one with the tricolours and the circles inside other circles so it looks like a kaleidoscope taken out of its cylinder. I've never been one to put much stock in hope but I do have a wind chime because,well, they sound nice. So it's time to write about writing and just how the hell I am supposed to do it in this age. It is what I have to do- along with whatever job will hire me on the side. There is no other option. It's this or death. If I'm not writing my world turns to hate and I am all-consumed. At first I thought it was something I ate, some sort of malice- infested slice of something causing my internal organs to bubble up in a stomach acid-induced frenzy for the world and all it had done to me. But then I realized it was simply because I wasn't writing enough.
 All other organs are linked to the brain of a writer: the heart, the pancreas, the liver, the spleen; and they shut down and turn against each another if you stop writing. Jesus. What now? This is my fate. This is cruel. But at some point you have to accept who you are and what you're here for and like Mark Twain said: "The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why." Alas, the time one could save if they were one in the same.