51.

I'm struggling with this project the last several days. When I started it, I meant it to kickstart my thinking and self-examination and I hoped that it would start to generate some creative writing impulses for me. And it did, in the very beginning. It had been so long since I'd blogged that I think I had a backlog of inclination to write, as it were. But the last several days, it's felt like a struggle and a chore to sit down and write something. It's been more about choosing a single thought I've had during the day and honing it into the nicest shape possible than it has about pushing into new territory. That's ok, I guess; there's nothing wrong with craft and it does me good to think about the best possible way to say something.

What I really want, though, is to do some new writing that's bigger and riskier and sloppier. So far, I can't find my way into that. I don't think it's a matter of daring, although I might be blocking myself without knowing it. It's that nothing has occurred to me except my usual small thoughts. I want to find a way out of that and into something messy and unknown. As I type this, I'm picturing Joseph Gordon-Levitt coming to on the floor of a dark basement in Brick, and saying to his shadowy assailant, "Hell with you. Which wall's the door in?" I can't find the door. If any of you people who do the writering have suggestions for finding the door, I'm listening.