Maybe it’s been six weeks since I really accepted that my writing practice is no longer a practice, and more like a hindrance to accomplishing other things that now I tell myself are more important. I say this somewhat sarcastically because (I think) it isn’t really what I want, yet I’m aware of how I have consistently neglected it for the last year or so. Since then, in my own personal writing, I have done a lot of talking about what I should do, or how much I want to change the way I approach it, but now I’ve gone so long without daily writing that I can barely bring myself to sit here and write about whatever spontaneous topic comes out.

That might be due to the contents in my mind, the sort-of guilt I have for losing yet another good habit. For not following through. For being less of the person I want to be and more the old me who grew up aimlessly and felt guilty for that shit, too. All this fucking guilt about the way I am NOT approaching the things fully under my control — why do I always manage to put pressure on myself for not being the “good” person I always thought was possible? and have now realized is only a dream.

Like I always say, I doubt that my understanding for life is any different than anyone else’s, although perhaps I have my own approach based on the things I experienced before now — but I cannot believe my conclusions, where someone else might have applied the same amount of thought, would be any different. So, in a sense, at least I feel a certain level of confidence that my thinking is fairly common, and for all I know it might be the goddamn definition of human existence. Which means what I’m about to say could very well be the answer to all problems?

Anyway, the way I see it now has nothing to do with the direct actions I’m taking — or in this case not, since, at least superficially, I’m writing about the dissolution of this writing practice in which right this very fucking moment I partake. Ironic, isn’t it? Nevertheless, my words imply a stress about not meeting a totally imagined standard, a construction of my mind based on some assumptions about life that I made a long time ago, that probably weren’t true then and are probably (surely) incompatible with the way I see the world now.

Why am I still making decisions based on those values, why do I today still feel inadequacy borne from decisions I made more than twenty-five years ago? How is that even healthy?

What am I talking about? Well, at least in this instance it has to do with the grief (also known as self-loathing) that I develop from NOT following through with the writing goals I gave myself years ago. Yes, I still do have the value and the goals and constantly derive pleasure and wisdom from this writing, but writing every day was a decision I made six years ago. And I’m not saying that now I feel a certain way about that decision, or even different than I did then — my plan is to gradually rebuild this habit. Specifically, though, I am talking about the emotional attachment I have to failure, and the very definition of that word.

If I don’t truly believe that existence has a value, then how can I justify feeling anything, much less guilt over not meeting some arbitrary-ass goal. That says nothing about the instantaneous value of something like deep introspection because at the moment it is exercised it has meaning. But there is again a void immediately after the act of thinking. The instant after a thought is made and evaluated, it no longer exists and may as well never have.

This demonstrates a certain implication about the value of our life, that it is very much a two-dimensional creation. Because we cultivate values from every observation, the landscape of our existence is infinite (despite a total lack of our value to the next guy), but infinitely thin and without any depth.

You might wonder what the hell all this rambling has to do with the topic I started on. As usual, I’ve managed to expound upon a random loosely related existential point to demonstrate in the most complicated fucking way a concept I could have spoken about in far fewer and smaller words. Go figure. But the reality of this situation, if there is an actual reality, is that I made up all the reasons to both defeat and punish myself for not carrying on the practice. Then again, I could apply that statement to anything, couldn’t I? Because in the end, with some help from everything around me, I applied meaning to everything I see.

But today I realized something more, and ironically it is a question: why did I ever decide that letting go of anything was negative?