Winterborn 77

When was the last time I did this? Tuesday night? Is it possible that entire days have slipped by without my noticing? It would seem so.

And to think, you might have wondered why the tagline or the sub-title or whatever the fuck you call that line underneath the title was a poignant query: "What did I do yesterday?"

I can recall writing. And... other things.

It was entirely my intention to miss only a single day of the blog schedule. But I can't quite recall, now, which day that was supposed to be. Was it Wednesday? I think it was Wednesday, as, if memory serves, that was a night dominated first by a rousing game of Dungeons & Dragons, a game that ran well into the wee hours of the morning. I recall a certain feeling of trepidation as I said my immortal words, in the manner of who rightly calls himself The Master of Dungeons And All They Contain Therein: "And I think we'll call it there for the night. Good game, guys."

Long pause. Glance at clock. I think it was approaching 2 AM. Or maybe 3 AM. It was well past the midnight hour, I can assure you!

Then: "Oh, fuck me. I still have to do my writing for the night."

I did, indeed, do my writing for that night, as I have now done reliably for what is, by my count, a solid two weeks without missing a day. It's gotten to the point, as it did during NaNoWriMo that "doing my writing" is just this thing, this aspect of my life that I have to do, whether I want to or not. I'm proud of myself for that, even though I haven't wanted to write at all during this week. But I wrote anyway, and you know, it may not be all that good, it may be that when I go back and edit the work, I look back on this time with derision. "I really just should have stayed away from my keyboard that week," Future Me might say with a smirk.

But, Goddamnit, I wrote anyway. And I'm glad that I did. Because this is my life, bitches, this is a thing that I use to define myself as a person. It's not what I do, not the way I want to pay the bills. It's something that's a part of me, that's inseprable from the greater whole of my person. I cannot willingly diverge from the act, not now, not when I know that to do as such is to backslide into depression and a grim, joyless existence.

You may think I'm exaggerating. I challenge you to go browse the archives of my previous blog. Read a few entries. Note the tone and the subject. And then note the dates between entries.

I wrote two short stories in the past two years, prior to 2009.

I worked on my novel manuscript, the sequel to my very first novel, maybe twice in all of 2009. And prior to that, I don't think I'd even taken a crack at it since 2007. I wasn't a writer, then. I might have told myself, and others, that I was one, and very much wanted to be one. But I wasn't writing, and as such, you cannot be any certain title or thing unless you first engage in the behavior embodied by said title.

But now, here I am, writing every day even though I don't feel like it most days, blogging even though maybe ten people (at best) read this, and you know what? I feel fucking awesome as a result.

It's gotten to the point now where this novel of mine, this Write Every Day thing that I put to myself as a challenge has begun to matter more to me than being a university student? I'm not sure if that's a statement as to the level of immersion I have towards my studies, or an indication that my priorities are just that twisted.

I saw snow today at the mall on campus. It was fucking incredible.