I don’t want to write: I just want to read books and drink tea and sit in front of the fire.
I don’t want to write: I get home so late these days.
I don’t want to write: everything I want to say someone else has already said.
I don’t want to write: everything I want to write about, I don’t want to write about.
I don’t want to write: I’d rather be chatting online.
I don’t want to write: Dear Diary, Hey! Woo! I moved to New Zealand! Where they drive on the other side of the road and employ picturesque neologisms! I used to do things like swim with dolphins and climb glaciers and have all sorts of epiphanies about the world we live in and life in general, but now I mostly spend my time commuting to my job and going out to dinner with friends!
I don’t want to write: I’m never going to write a book so it doesn’t matter anyway.
I don’t want to write: I basically have not liked much I’ve written since about 2005.
I don’t want to write: everything can be said in 140 characters, right?
I don’t want to write: does the world really need to hear about my solipcistic narcissism (e.g., my weekend?)
I don’t want to write: I’m shy.
I don’t want to write: I can’t be as emo online as in my paper journal or as in emails to friends, and all I am lately is eeeeeeemmmmmmmoooooooooooooo.
I don’t want to write: I sound so sad sometimes, and I don’t mean to be, and I don’t want to be, and what if writing is actually the thing making me sad?
I don’t want to write: I want to say something amazing—or rather, I want to have said something amazing—and then I think I shouldn’t write unless I have something, well, amazing to say, so I don’t write anything, and then I think it’s been so long since I wrote something that I better have something amazing to say, but of course that amazing something hasn’t arrived yet, or I haven’t caught it, and so now not only have I not written, and not written anything amazing, now I feel really dumb about the whole thing and it doesn’t seem worth it.
I don’t want to write: I want to write.
Comments
7 responses to “Excuses”
I just want you to know how much your musings on your world and wonderful Wellington mean to me – like just how much I wait each week to learn what is happening or not happening and all against the backdrop of a city that seeps into one’s soul. There, See. What you say does really matter.
Graeme
Dearie me.
Do us a nice book review then. That’s always good. Or compare and contrast US and NZ cuisine/clothes/men or something. List cute NZ neologisms. Interesting biscuits of New Zealand. How things have changed since the days of Janet Frame. See how easily your avid readership can be satisfied?
Write about what the heck a neologism is for those of us too lazy to look it up. Post pictures, if it’s something that can be photographed. (i’m totally clueless on this one!) How about writing about the music you’re listening to?
Even when you write that you don’t want to write it’s still beautiful.
Those semicolons…that colon… Man.
See you for dinner tonight!
Chiara, what are you talking about?
Time after time I’ve read your entries, and the ending is so beautiful and insightful and so well put that it gives me a squeeze around the heart.
You’re sharing the details of you because you can make them come alive, and because we all recognize the bits of ourselves that are similar, and marvel at the bits of ourselves that are different.
Write! You’re good!
And what’s this about you won’t write a book. Why not? (If you want to, I mean.) Sneak into it, looking sideways, so you don’t get scared. You’re already doing the work it would take!
Chiara, your writing makes me want to write even though I could never do it as well as you do, even though I feel that you’ve already said everything that I’d want to say. Please don’t stop!
I’m so thankful that even when you don’t want to write you usually do anyway.