Writing Into The Void

Part of what has shocked me into invisibility on social media is the shear volume of writing out there. 

In the olden days of AOL Hometown, when there were only, I guess, a couple hundred thousand of us sharing bits and bites of our lives and philosophies with a relatively finite audience (and so many of us were enchanted to have any audience at all…), I was a slightly-larger-than-microscopic fish in a very small pond. A carnival fish bowl, really. 

I felt seen. And heard. And appreciated.

It was quite the drug, that recognition among that tiny group of peers. And, oh yeah…I became addicted.

Two decades have passed, and social media has become an omniscient, omnipresent behemoth. Something that bears little resemblance to the adorable, precocious infant of 25 years ago. Something that is not altogether benevolent, or even beneficial. Sadly, it has matured into more of a thorny, vicious monster. Leave it to the human race to turn something possibly wonderful into an odious, evil mess within the span of a generation.

Be that as it may, peeping out amid the slime and the shit, there is a lot of good writing out there. Tons of it. So much that I have been intimidated into silence.

I read something really good, and I immediately think, “How could I ever have possibly believed that inexperienced, uneducated little me could actually write?”

I go to my laptop or my tablet, call up Blogger, and…give up. 

I wish I could be a great writer. Or even contribute something—anything—decent to the pool of beautiful prose that is out there.

But I can’t.

Or maybe I can…

From time to time, I dive back into my 20+ years of “Coming to Terms…” and peruse a couple of old posts.

I came upon this one a couple of days ago, from 2015. More precisely, the eve of my 60th birthday.

On Reaching the End of Another Decade

In those days, I was already years beyond the last crumbs of an appreciative audience. And yet…

I read that post, and I thought, “God damn. THAT is some decent writing.”

REALLY beautiful. 

As well as being wise words to live by, now…a year into my EIGHTH decade on the planet.

I CAN write. When will that be enough for me?