I haven't been so good about writing either on here or in my journal. When I don't write, I don't feel human. All my inside stuff gets all backed up and yucky. And then I get here, to this place of stuckness. It's really quite frustrating. I know the only good way to become a writer is to write. And not just write sometimes, or when you feel like it, or when you're mad, or when you're happy about something. You're supposed to write through all of that bullshit and just get straight to writing. And yet I have a hard time doing it.

I want to write, and I want to be published. I was so excited about moving to New Orleans because I thought it would be a great place for me to be creative in. But I got way out of the habit of writing, and I quit doing it, and now here I am in this stuck place. It's not writer's block; it's writer's purgatory. I'm not even dead yet, and I'm in purgatory.

Is it juvenile to say that I don't know what to write about? I suppose it is. SOmetimes when I feel really ambitious, or even not so ambitious, but like I should be doing something, I try to push something out. It usually doesn't go so well and then I end up getting mad at myself for spiraling out control and landing straight into purgatory. Then I displace my anger by blaming it on the fact that I am no longer in college and don't have the dead lines or prompts that were required in creative writing. I miss those things, it's true. But I set deadlines for myself and gave myself prompts, and yet I failed to follow through. It seems the truest writing that I have is that that has come from self-deprecating my writing skills.

There are writing groups around. There are millions of publications: journals, e-zines, blogs, magazines, all kinds of things. I am too scared to try publish anything, too scared to show anything that I have worked on, and terrified about what that means about writing. I don't know what type of writing I want to do, or what the point of writing is. The fact that there is someone who is better than me out there kind of stops me from wanting to do it. And that doesn't just hold true for writing. It's why I hate sports, quit singing, and rarely cook. It isn't the fear of failure, although that is daunting, so much as playing second fiddle or being overlooked.

Maybe it is the youngest child coming out in me. I don't think that is it. I can feel myself holding back, but I can't stop myself from doing it. I feel like the only thing that could really liberate me is traveling. Leaving and being completely terrified until I have to earn that confidence back for survival. Logical? No. Increasingly appealing? Yes.

When I don't write, I am cranky. My life feels like it fills up with gunk. I was doing really good about it. Then I stopped picking up my room, stopped writing, and my life turned really blah. Or maybe that order is skewed. It's a theme I have noticed before. My bedroom reflects my general state of sanity - the more clothes on the floor, the more stressed out I am. They are in a giant pile right now. And have been that way for weeks. Weeks. The thing is, I don't have anything to really stress about, other than paying my bills and what I am going to do on the weekends. I just feel like something major is missing from my life, and I don't know what it is.