I’ve become afraid to write from my own heart.
I have self-diagnosed this recent writer’s block. But I wasn’t blocked; I was empty. It’s been a terrible impedance on addressing what my heart has been crying over. Just hoping some pen will at least bullet point in one of my six free-floating journals. But, out of some momentary and not-so-momentary circumstances from past weeks, I’ve decided to publicize these tears and let my heart speak the questions it has been trying to ask my soul.
Now, out of a fear in picking up my pen, there is a bit of scribbling that needs to come out. It seems my fingers have let up on the callous marks they were once proud to display. Writing sessions used to be air to me; now they are homework assignments from my head. I delight in writing, but it’s that fear of not doing something after having done it so easily for so long. Like kissing someone new.
The question always haunts you… “Do I still have it?”
I blame all rustiness on this wannabe-adult philosophy, where “big boys don’t complain, then run to their room and blog about it.” Lame. There’s no humility in that. There isn’t ever creativity. It’s simply an exercise in existence. It’s time I start apologizing to the part of myself that sparks the true creativity—the rest is just this pretentious show I fool myself into.
I’ve been looking to buy some better jeans. Why this is relevant, is because I’ve forgotten that I don’t have them yet, and I still need to treat the few pairs I have now as my only pairs—because they are. It’s like, I’m into looking at houses to buy before I know whether the rent on my apartment can be paid this month.
I digress.
The point is I’m no bigger than I’ve been before. Creatively anyway. I’m the same self-conscious boy who peddled his way into Nashville years ago with a dream and a melted fake ID. The only difference is now I’ve lost some of my fire and definitely some of my dream. It’s in repair, but could you imagine if I realized this too late?
I’d be the guy living out a dream I didn’t love anymore. I’d just be doing it out of routine.
I think briefly of the people who live in this bleak reality everyday. Not me, though. No longer. I refuse to let reality push me around anymore. I am Jason, the dreamer. I clench on to the people and purpose that rests in me. The things souls are made to do.
Somewhere along the line of these few months; where everything is beginning to come together for me; I stopped listening to what my heart had to say. I felt I was better than it, and it was time to move on. As if creativity ever grows up!
Creativity only gets better, never older.
I love the heart I was built into, and I wear it proudly from now on without feeling the need to disguise it in meetings and dinner dates. Just writing on love. Pure love.
-Jason O’Toole
(Source: memoir.jasonotoole.com)
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