#77

Post seventy-seven. My preference would be to have something or do something special for the seventy-seventh post, but that's not really how life is. At least, not for me. Some people are "preparers", or "planners". Some people are "checklisters". I am neither. My driver's license expired a couple months ago. Haven't done a fucking thing. Probably I will continue to forget to do anything about this problem and however many other problems of mine I'm forgetting about for who knows how long. Do you seriously think I can be on point to do something special to celebrate a number I like?

Admittedly, it is more likely than my remembering to complete a federal census. 

Well, at least I vote.

*

There are no other writers in my life, anymore. Everybody from the old days quit, and it was the right move for them. Not only are they happier, but in plain factual talk, the tenth part of what I have written and thrown away is enough to match all their notebooks combined. All lacked what John Gardner referred to, best I can remember from his book On Becoming a Novelist, as the "driving demon." 

Writers I met later in life, people who write as much as I do or at any rate write well enough or place themselves well enough in communities of writers to be called writers, known as writers, still write, but I don't know them anymore. I have frequented such communities casually and professionally, have even made myself responsible for one such environment. I quit. One thousand times I have quit these things forever. That was a permission I had to give myself, over and over.

In many ways, not just in this matter, I am back to where I began. One day around nineteen years ago I started scribbling, alone. Now, I scribble alone.  

*

I'd like to write more, because of, y'know, the demon, but I gotta go to work.

Happy seventy-seven.


--JL