I’m trying to analyze today what it is about a good getaway holiday – however brief – that really refreshes and accelerates the whole self-actualization process or the struggle to “do better” and slow down. I should just add, that as a real homebody, no matter how much I yearn to go on vacation, when the inevitable prep work presents itself with all its lists, last minute dashes to the drug store/pet food store/ drug store again I always get this panicky, desperate feeling that if someone whispered: “You know what? Don’t go – you don’t even have to go!” I would be hugely relieved to comply. I also feel the need to cram in time to ponder my imminent death from various means and whether or not I will ever return.
Yes, it’s a real laugh riot here during the holiday season!
I haven’t been here for a while (hola, you ten faithful readers in Brazil who keep on visiting!) and I have no excuse, save the fact that my blogging mojo has been seriously depleted of late and I have devoted more time than I care to admit to feeling badly about my writing and being completely intimidated by other more polished blogs and writers who look edgy and are all geometric-hipster-haircuts and matte lip colour.
I’ve been writing on and off my whole life and certainly I have been published regularly in that short blasts of non-fiction/fiction here and there kind of way but it’s not really satisfying to me. It’s like making do with cheese and crackers and pretending it’s enough when actually, you are still starving; in fact, it’s like you are pretending you even like cheese and crackers in the first place.
I don’t know why short fiction has an inferiority complex but to me it does. I want the depth of a novel behind me, something I can point at and say, there, see that? I wrote that and there is my name and photo even if the same book is now wedged in the remainder bin …