It was a little too much, wasn’t it? That’s what I’m thinking in retrospect, anyhow. My initial purpose in writing it was simply to vent about a situation that annoys the hell out of me every single year, i.e., the necessity to rope off the front of my property for an entire week because the small-time parades of my childhood have turned into a Big Damn Deal, and I’ve come to really dislike Big Damn Deals as I’ve gotten older. But once I got into the thick of it and tapped into my “Wonder Years voiceover voice” and started trying to spin out some deeper interpretation of what this event was all about, well, I think maybe I fell into my own bellybutton. Sorry about that, kids. I should’ve stuck more to the basic point.
I know I shouldn’t be feeling so abashed over this. It’s really not a bad entry, and it’s also not like I’ve never rambled on a little too much, or gotten a little grandiose in my unfounded claims, or published an entry that was only half-baked, before. Hell, I’ve been blogging almost a decade now; they can’t all be gems, can they? But lately, I’ve been been having so much trouble finding the time for this silly hobby — you may have noticed how infrequent my posts have become — that I guess I just want everything to be a home run to make up for the lack of production, you know? I read so many wonderful, insightful, sharp, powerful things out there on the ‘webs, and I want my own stuff to be like that. But very often, perhaps even most of the time, I know I fall short. And it bothers me. Deeply.
There are other frustrations as well. This used to be so easy, and so fun. I could dash off a thousand words on a moment’s notice about nothing at all, and feel satisfied that it was good. Or at least amusing. At least amusing to me. But now… now when I do manage to start writing something here, the words come so slowly and with such effort… it’s like I’ve run out of things to say, or worse, run out of whatever special thing I had inside that allowed me to say them. My mojo, for lack of a better word. And I fear that it might be a permanent loss. I fear it’s a sign I’m getting old, that a window is closing.
As pathetic as I’m afraid this is going to sound, I have to admit it: Simple Tricks and Nonsense is the last remaining vestige of the dreams I used to have of being a genuine creative writer, and to feel like I’m now losing even this… well, “frustrating” isn’t a big enough word to cover it. Neither is “shattering” or “terrifying.” What are you left with when the thing you’ve used to define yourself, the one idea that you’ve clung to in your deepest heart-of-hearts, ever since you were 15 years old finally slips away? I really don’t want to find out…
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Incidentally, I wasn’t exaggerating about the inconsiderate jackasses leaving behind their garbage after the parade. A broken plastic lawn chair has been lying on the property line between my front yard and the senior-citizens’ rec center next door for two weeks now. The groundskeeping crew for the senior center won’t dispose of it, because, apparently, that’s not in their job description. And obviously the owner of said chair just assumes somebody else will take care of it for them. God forbid they should take responsibility for their own crap. And you wonder why I get so pissed off when the placemarkers start going up for that simple little small-town Fourth of July parade?
