last of the month

It's truly sad that for the month of August, there's only been eighteen entries (including this one). Life's been chaotic, to say the least. Chaotic but good. The last month has passed by in a blur, and I'm shocked to find September just around the corner (only two hours to go!). I've spent way too much time reminiscing this month, something I tend to do (I'm a sentimental kinda guy, for better or worse), and so there won't be any of that "monthly re:cap" stuff I sometimes try to pull off. Instead I'm hitting you in the face with two "note-worthies" from my daily journal entry for August 30:

(1) The "quiet wrestling" with things like vocation, duty to God, etc. continue, and though clarity's certainly beginning to come about, there's still much to wrestle with. This wrestling isn't some peripheral issue with no bearing on life but, rather, formative of my life's current and future framework. The future remains unwritten--"Stare at the blank page before you," anyone?--and how that future pans out depends quite largely on how this wrestling will tweak, re:work, and shape both my "worldview" and "manner of living." Much of this wrestling has been done with pen on paper, logging long hours at The Anchor with coffee and black-and-milds (would've been cooler if it were cigarettes, though), and the seemingly endless pages seem to be the culprit of this carpal tunnel I'm getting over. Much of these journals will find themselves coming to life, sort of speak, in September, when I start publishing them online (here, on the blog) so that I can be honest with myself, others, and serve as an encouragement to others who find themselves in this oh-so-common but oh-so-lonely arena.

(2) Last night Brandy and I talked about my writing, my tools and methodologies, those weird things I do as I get involved in my story to the point that at its close, something inside me has died. "You're weird as shit," Brandy said, "but you're fucking brilliant." Quite the compliment! Writing, for me, is an addiction, a major and irreversible facet of my life. "Whatever happens," Mandy told me the other night, "you know you'll always be writing." It's not something I do to, say, make money (anyone who thinks that the quick route to getting rich is writing a best-seller has just been flat-out misinformed; as it turns out, we rock-bottom aspiring writers are a quieter, less prolific, and generally out-of-sight kind of starving artist). I write not because I "want" to but because I have to. It's a compulsion, and whenever I'm kept from it for too long, I become irritable and impatient. Like a snapping turtle who just wants to be left alone. Why is it a compulsion? Hell if I know. But I do know that, besides sex, there's nothing as exhilarating as writing a damned good story. Taking a blank page (see what I did there?) and, from it, creating a story. It's a bit like playing God, you might say. And as much as I love writing, after I finish a story I feel (to quote Hemingway) "both sad and empty, as if I've just made love." 


It's been a good month. 
Koala out!