This Could Have Been A Journal Entry

8/3/10
I need to write something. Even if it just this ten minute free-write. I’m in a difficult place these past few days, because I’m scattered in my focus in all kinds of ways. Part of it is that I’m neve quite sure now who I’m writing for. Even as I write this, I’m undecided. Is it an entry in my journal—just for me. Or will it end up on my blog. At one time everything I wrote stayed in notebooks, lined up now on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. I didn’t worry about structure, or meandering, or whether what I was writing was too lengthy or just boring. And of course, because of this, I was honest. And that’s the one thing I hope my blog can be. Honest. There is something in that I haven’t quite figured out yet—but it's part of the overarching theme that I haven’t yet (but hope to someday) placed on the header, and in the “About Me” statement. It’s a thinner connective thread than what holds together most of the blogs that I read, but I know, in the end, I don’t want to just write about of making it in the film business or living in a certain place or even being a writer, although I read and enjoy those things, and I can see how knowing what you are as a blogger (this has definitely turned into a blog post) could help focus you and garner a wider audience.

But I know I want to capture the in-between spaces, the life that happens between the blog posts, the words I was composing in my head last night, late, before I fell asleep, that I knew would were better than anything I would come up with this morning, but that I was just too tiered to get up and write down.

I’m a little lost lately. That’s something I can say, if I'm being honest. I have so many writing projects and life projects that are half-finished, half started, and I don’t know where to take them next, because I don’t know who will be “my audience.” In terms of life, I don’t know if I am preparing to be a student for another four months, or eight months, or if I should be shopping for clothes to wear to job interviews. I don’t know whether I might be in Indiana, or New York. I don’t know whether to work on a screenplay, (or which screenplay), or a novel, or an article…because honestly, all these ventures seem audience-less. So much output is met with silence, even more unsettling than rejection, which at least provided some certainty, some ability to move on. My query letters for my last essay have received no response. There was a letter to John August’s blog not long ago, where the person noted that when he released a video, he received no response. And the assumption was that his friends did not like it, or were unimpressed. But his assumption was also that they watched in the first place. I wonder. iAt all times, I have 300+ new status updates on my Facebook page. Of the ones that randomly, chosen by Facebook, land on my homepage, five to ten will have video content attached. I watch maybe twenty percent. My inbox is crowded with requests to go and vote and comment…and watch. Be there. Give my attention. Hours and days of someone’s labor for a five minutes of my attention. But now it’s a numbers game. All those people vying for my five minutes. Each of those people aware that my five minutes is not enough reward for what they have invested; they need my five minutes multiplied exponentially.

And so I wonder, what am I writing for? For the payment of my five minutes, multiplied by X? Or just for me, because I feel some need to write? Which might be good enough. Except of course, for the issue of money. And identity. And respect. It’s complicated. Or maybe, as I say it, I realize that it's not complicated, because it's not exactly true. My inability to decide what words to write, I believe, exists completely separate from this as well--something more internal that I can't quite get at. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, I know. It’s rambling. But it’s close to something I would have written if this had ended up being a journal entry. It’s close to being honest.