no need to complicate our time

These past few days I haven't found it in me to have the right words to describe my life. I wrote last week and it came so easily, effortless creativity that made me stop and think: I love this. I love to write. I do it well. I'm not the best, god no (how I could ever think I was even close with all the friends I have whose talent continue to amaze me), and of course I need a lot of work and improvement, but this writing thing...I couldn't exist without it.

I don't mean blogging. I mean writing. There are days, weeks, when I miss it so much it's like a physical ache. It discomfits me not having put feelings and ideas and style onto the page, with the right words strung together in the right way, saying the right thing for once, when so often I feel tongue-tied and the very opposite of eloquent.

I love writing and I'm afraid law school stifles that. I'm afraid my own fears stifle that.

Have you ever read something you've written and cried over it? It made me feel incredibly pretentious, as if I thought I was such a good writer that I could stir even myself, as if my writing had such raw, powerful emotion.

(I like to think my writing makes people feel, but who has really read my writing?)

I don't think I'm a very good blogger, however. I don't think I am very good at chronicling my life and making it entertaining, witty, poignant. I am too busy trying to live my life and not let it pass me by to translate it into words for other people. I am too busy making the memory to reflect on the memory, at least until long afterwards, in hindsight.

I am better at translating other people's lives into something readable, however. I wonder why my own is such a challenge. Perhaps that is something I should try this year, to chronicle my life in an interesting way.

They tell me what I write about China is strongest, in vivid color and emotion, that it reflects my love for it. I wonder if I could do this for anything (a form of lying, because it is China I love, not just anything, not just anywhere), and it makes me want to try. Orchestrated lies, and all that.

Sometimes I wonder where I might be if I were braver.