This puzzling piece
I’m looking again at this big, odd puzzle piece. It is frayed and discoloured, creased from being forced into the picture puzzle repeatedly in different ways.
Its shape no longer makes sense to me – I don’t see how it fits. The image runs continuously, like sidewalk chalk in a thunderstorm, and I can’t see how the whole picture develops because of where and how this piece is located.
I won an award for writing last week, and I’m not sure what to do with it. The award brings in its train this large, confusing puzzle piece: my self as writer. Process, motive, product, identity.
It’s not the Nobel I hoped for as a child, when I dreamt of becoming the next “great American writer.” A Hemingway or Fitzgerald for my generation. As that dream jostled shoulders with becoming an astronaut or perhaps a sports star, I aged a year or two and realized I was called to save the world (or at least America) through journalism. The award changed to a Pulitzer, as I dreamt of becoming the Woodward AND Bernstein of my generation.
Through a series of bumps and turns along the road, I became a writer. I even wrote for the Wall St. Journal, and something inside me rested. There, I thought, I’ve done it. I wrote a successful piece for a major gray lady, they asked me to write again at a nice price point, I’m that person I always wanted to be – a good newspaperman. (No gender implied) Not only had I received the recognition of my peers, my skill and experience had reached the point where I had peers, was accepted as one of them.
But that wasn’t the answer. If newspaperman was the look and shape of the piece, why do I live it part-time? Why do I rest in knowing what I can do, rather than living it out gloriously? I recognize that it isn’t fear – of failure, success, talent, lack of talent – it is something about the ill-fitting puzzle piece.
Writing is the lynchpin of my livelihood. I am employed for other things, too, have other talents and skills (num chuck skills, bow hunting skills). But writing is the Big Kahuna. More than that, writing is itself the continuing narrative in my life. I can’t recall a time in my life when I didn’t think something along the lines of “I’d like to write….” Whatever, a newspaper column, a mystery novel, a book of poems, a sermon.
This puzzle piece isn’t about a kind of writing, or even the drive to write. The ill-fitting piece is connected to identity. What does writing mean to me? Why do I do it and yet not do it? Why do I start novels and not finish them? Why do I write for other people yet not much for myself? And what about this blog?
If you could see the underbelly of my blog (I think they call it the “dashboard”) you would see more unpublished drafts than posted entries. It’s not that they’re hard to write, or not well-written, it’s that I didn’t choose to finish them. When I spend so much of my day writing for my living, the “me” writing of the blog falls by the wayside. Neither inclination nor time to sit at the computer – it’s time to see Richard, go to the gym, walk the dog, anything rather than another few minutes sitting at my desk.
So really, what about this blog? It is the closest I get to actually writing for myself. And the puzzle piece remains maddeningly obscure. There is something crucial here. If I can figure this out, I will solve something important about who and how I am, about what comes next and why.
Here is a clue to part of it, if only I can figure it out. The recent, second pet food recall is the exact food we feed Bryn. Alarm, dismay, vets, new food. A 76-year old Holocaust survivor gave his life to save his students during the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.
What will my next blog be about? My new big blue ball.
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