My girl casually remarked today that I write only sad and insecure stuff. Not a very hard observation to make. Something that reminded me of another little pattern: every time I’ve decided to write something funny, I’ve ended up with a really nice short story. But it is really hard for me to go against myself, even to write an innocuous little story. Every time I stare at the blank screen when I’ve decided to fill it up with myself, my heart churns out copious amounts of sadness. I’ve gotten too much of it. I feel like a phony when I’m not writing. I am forced to wonder how much of my constitution is melancholia. The answer, I feel, only adds to the existing melancholia.

There are definitely moments when I am happy, when I am a man of the moment, but sometimes the moments get so hot, so unreal, that I have no recourse other than to go searching for some cushions in my past. It occurs with such a degree of inevitability that I feel like I’ll soon become a resigned fatalist. Or worse, a believer. Reality is a hard bargain, and I often find myself making costly purchases, which makes it really tough to avoid hanging out in the past for relief.

I sometimes feel I write only because I am sick, in the head, and writing is my medicine. I then feel sick at the thought of writing only to cure myself, contrary to my held assumptions of writing because I love writing. I am tired of climbing this mountain just to look at myself, then falling back again to being myself. I want to lie on the ground and enjoy the sun. I don’t want to be Sisyphus any more, I don’t want wisdom so immense that I cannot handle it. I want a mosquito to bite me so I can chase and kill it, be engaged in anything but myself. There, I start again. And again. I want to end this infinite recursion, but I want to be sane as well. In short, I am just scared.

I think this much should be enough. I’m getting more tired of all of this by the minute, by the word.