Writing The Exhausting

One of the things that you may have noticed if you have followed me for some period of time is that the nature of my writing has changed.

To a large extent this is a conscious choice on my part.  There are types of writing that I find I enhance the thoughts I am trying to present and conversations and exchanges that I am hoping to enable, and types of writing that do not; generally, it tends to be the thoughts around current events or social issues that fail me the worst - not that those are not worthy of being written about, just that I do not write of the well nor manage the conversation well.  In a way this strikes me as incredibly odd, as originally when I started this blog a long time ago, that was what I thought would consume my writing.  Of course, I also once believed that success in blogging was literally waiting right around the corner if I just threw up my shingle, wrote a few posts, and sat back and waited for the world to recognize my brilliance - so my judgement on such matters is highly suspect to start with.

Instead, as I have worked to replace the things I thought I would write on, I find myself writing on the more mundane things that are happening in my life, and the more internal.  The mundane things - vacations, hobbies, animals, The Ranch - are good practice in descriptions for me and, I hope, give you a bit of insight into what sometimes feels like the slow moving schizophrenic collections of activities and beliefs I call a life.

The internal writing is harder.

I have always been more comfortable writing about the my internal life than speaking of it, so much so that it can drive those close to their wit's end trying to find out what I am thinking. It is nothing personal that I  am aware of - in point of fact I often simply do not have opinions on lots of things (trying to get me to choose a place for dinner is a hopeless endeavor; I just like food); if that is the case for something relatively simple, the deeper things seem to come with much more effort if at all.  Writing is much easier - as the saying goes, talking is hard.

But even as I push into the internal, I find it exhausting.

In the change of pace and focus, I am advancing into things I had not anticipated would be problems or cause me this level of almost shying away.  Rather tragically for my ego, it is not the sort of interesting items that make for good reality shows or anguished biographies:  my issues are largely pedestrian and hardly the sort of thing that makes for riveting movies about misspent youths and failed lives.   And yet, as I continue to write and begin to force the paths I go down more insistently, I find the resistance grows.

The point of course is not to name names or make those involved uncomfortable about such tings: I made an agreement with myself years ago that I would not write anything personal about someone else that, were they to read it, they would feel uncomfortable reading  or I would feel uncomfortable explaining.   I, of course, am fair game for my own words and postings:  if I desire honesty and believe it enables good relationships and exchanges (which I do, and believe that such things are necessary if we want to have an actual future), I need to be able to bear the slings and arrows of my own words and discoveries.

The point of this missive, I suppose, is to both beg your indulgence as well as apologize in advance if you find or will find that the tone of the writing has changed - but not entirely of course:  I still intend to post on the mundane as well.  This is not meant as an insult or slight to you and hopefully will not feel as if you were lured in under false pretenses, especially if you have read me for a while.  I am driving towards something I cannot fully see or explain at this point, a level of clarity about myself and perhaps about the world that I have not asked of either before.  There is, I think, nothing wrong in the asking; what is interesting to me now is that the writing feels more "honest" even as it feels more challenging.

The flak, as they say, is most pervasive when one is directly over the target.

Your Obedient Servant, Toirdhealbheach Beucail