It takes a while for me to come up with a theme that interests me for these posts, and as you can well imagine, I found myself a little bit drained by last week’s post. And before I continue, I want to thank everyone who reached out to me with their kind words last week. I couldn’t reply in the moment, but please be sure that I found a good sense of comfort from everyone who offered support. And its because of you that I’m working on this post. I wanted to spend this week following up on some observations that have drifted my way from my readers.
First, I really am lucky to have the friends and readers that I do. I think that living far away from my closest friends makes it a little harder to reach out to some people whenever I’m feeling down, but I have a few people I can reach out to in these times. I guess I should make friends down here in Dallas, which... I mean I’m trying, but that takes time. Anyways, I am exceedingly grateful to the people who took the time to respond (both in the comments and through DMs) and I do value your contributions.
Second, not to highlight a specific response that has given me some extremely positive food for thought, but... well that’s exactly what I’m doing. One of my friends is doing me the courtesy of teaching me literary criticism (really all art criticism) and at our meeting this past week our conversation turned to my most recent post. This friend observed, not to diminish anything I felt, but that he remembered similar feelings of the world being suicidal in the wake of 9/11 first being raised in 2006. I’m not surprised that I’m not the first to feel that way, and I could honestly see those sentiments being raised even earlier. But here, my friend suggested that I’m already doing the right thing to allay these fears: Writing. Or, as he said: doing the damn work.
You see, we had just read an essay by the Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold, whose major contribution to the field of criticism was the astonishingly simple suggestion that criticism itself exists not simply to examine, engage with life and art, but also to keep new, fresh ideas flowing in the world, fueling new creations. If you believe that Art or other acts of creation are essential to humanity’s survival and constant evolution, as I do, then this cycle of criticism and creation is integral to us thriving.
Now, with all of this, I wouldn’t be so bold to call myself an artist, just a writer. But it must be said that I believe that I’m doing something related to creative expression and the exchange of new ideas. A few weeks back I mentioned that I would keep writing in the face of adversity. It’s difficult, but I’ll keep doing the work.
So to that end, keep checking back every Sunday. I have a few ideas for the upcoming week’s posts; I’m currently watching Star Trek The Next Generation for the first time (well, the complete series; I've seen random episodes before) and I’d like to write a season by season review / retrospective. I’d also like to write about the books I finish as I get back into reading. I just finished Fire and Blood, the basis of HBO's House of the Dragon.
Speaking of reading, last week I’ve gotten out of my reading slump a bit by adding a time limit to my phone’s YouTube, Instagram and a few other apps. Happily, I’ve already reduced screen time on my phone that way. I had to order a new desk chair because my old one broke, and I’m looking into seeing if I can find an inexpensive adjustable height desk so I can stand more during the day. I’m doing this all in the hopes that I can find more time to write, because if I didn’t make it clear in my post on writing, I really love it.
PS; I also have a job interview this coming Tuesday; wish me luck!
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