I’ve Got No Advice

Work less, read more. Credit to ktylerconk on Flickr.

Lately it feels as though my blog and I have become that awkward couple whose relationship is growing dull, and where we were once close and chummy with inside jokes and shared adventures, now we are formal and stiff, asking each other bland things about work over a bland dinner, after which we’ll go home and fall asleep without touching each other. Every once in a while we try to reignite a spark by trying something new (Tumblr-like functionality!), but it lapses back into a state of monotonous blah. Why, blog, why? We used to have such good times.

Perhaps part of my reticence when it comes to blogging is that I feel as though I don’t have anything to say, not really. Nothing new, anyhow. Where I once blogged about silly and frivolous aspects of my life, now my blog seems to be a place where I stand on my soapbox and hand out advice about Publishing, Writing, Diversity, and Feminism from on high. Which is stupid, really. Who am I to say anything at all? I mean, I’m fairly resistant to taking anyone else’s advice, so why should anyone listen to mine?

Nobody seems to have personal blogs anymore. I certainly don’t. Where I used to vomit my FEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS into the internets, I now write in my journal. By hand, even! Funny how that happens. Technology evolves apace, but more and more I want to return to a state of pre-internet socialization. It makes me really exhausted for actual socialization and rather nostalgic for days when I had to call a friend on the phone and memorize her number. Because I am on all day at work (online, “on” socially), when I come home, I just want to unplug and shut down. I usually do. Internet, you used to be a refuge. Now you just make me tired. Standing on soapboxes all day can sure wear down a girl.

What have I been doing instead? Writing fiction, for the most part, and the occasional column here and there. The column-writing is hard, mostly because I don’t have a lot of things to say to my younger self. I was either really self-aware, or I was really oblivious, because I managed to survive a lot of tumultuous years with nary a mental or emotional scar at which I can pick for content. My tumultuous years were not so tumultuous, really. Right now, the only sort of advice I can think of STOP BUYING SO MANY BLACK CLOTHES, 18-YEAR-OLD JJ. I never wear black anymore; in fact, my solid dark colours of choice are brown and blue. My life is average. Incredibly so.

I don’t mean to get all Debbie Downer on the two people who read my blog. I’m not actually depressed or sad; it’s just that I think my lack of posting pretty much demonstrates why I’m not cut out to be a teacher. This shit’s exhausting, y’all. I applaud all my friends who work in education. I have opinions, but no insight to give, so thinking up some plausible “advice” is hard. Of course, as soon as I say this, you’ll probably see me post tomorrow about the meaning of privilege or something, but right now I’m tapped out. I write a whole helluva a lot, and if you include editorial letters, rejection letters, columns, blogging, and journaling, that adds up to something ridiculous like 10K words a week. (If only I could apply such prolific output to my novel!)

So lately I’ve been saving those words and applying it to my personal life, to remember why I started writing in the first place. I don’t mean fiction, necessarily, although it’s a part of it. I meant the big Why. Why I blog, why I journal, why I feel such a compulsive need to write, write, write. I was at the Diversity in YA panel at Books of Wonder a few weekends ago, and Neesha Meminger said something that resonated deep within me: “I write myself into existence”. She was speaking of why her protagonists are South Asian girls, but I also believe she was touching at a larger truth. I, like Neesha Meminger, like many other writers out there, write to validate myself. Because my head is a poor place to contain all my thoughts and opinions. Things get lost and muddled in there, and it’s only when I set pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, that I start to make sense. Make sense, as in make myself clear, but it’s also how I make sense of my existence, of my place in the world, of the world around me. I write to contextualize myself. And it doesn’t matter if other people read it. It shouldn’t matter if others do.

So consider this me stepping off my soapbox for good. I’ll continue blogging about publishing, diversity, and feminism, but I ain’t got no advice to give. I’m blogging for me.

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