Sunday, April 29, 2018

Writers Block

Here I am staring at the overwhelming whiteness of a blank page.
Staring, dreaming dreamless dreams while awake.
There is nothing more cleansing to the mind.

But I don't want a clean mind, or a clean page. I want something to shout about, something to complain and rant about. My anger and dissatisfaction put in words might inspire and make people laugh. it works therapeutically on my own mind.

I want to write. People here want me to write.
But now, when I come here I can't help but think about the article that got deleted.
I am angry and frustrated, but also it feels like I lost.

"The Best way to kill yourself" has been erased on blogger.
It was a controversial topic, equally controversially written and I knew the moment I posted it that it might not be around for long.
Still,. it has been around for far longer then I ever expected.
This article changed what I wanted to do with this blog, it was in my way. It was also the reason to come back to my blog so many times. It was the most popular of any article I had written. It was hated and loved. But the most sad part is that there were so many beautiful and heart tearing comments there. People pouring their souls out. Farewell letters.

There is no way to fight back.
This is a free platform beyond my control. They have the power to erase whatever history we have together, or whatever article I will write in the future.

I thought it would be governed by a fair process. But it's not.
So here I am feeling useless, pointless. Anything I write here could be gone tomorrow, so what is the point of writing anything here? Do I pack up everything and move to a more safe place for stuff I want to keep? A place where free speech is still ungoverned by AI, where fairness is not compromised by a lack of (human) resources?

I mean, I get it. YouTube and Google, ABC or whatever, they can't be expected to treat every complaint about articles or videos in a fair way. It just takes too many man hours.
Or can they? I think they can. They just don't want to.

And what did I expect really?
I'm using a free service to write stuff out into the world and I expect them to keep it for ever?
Yeah I do.
And now I think that's weird. And it reminds me of something I wrote on this blog. Something about free apples, was it not?
I have come to expect them free apples from Google, even think I have the right to have them and I'm angry when I don't get them. I'm just like the rest of ya'll.

So am I going to let this Block me from writing?
It nearly did there, didn't it?

The point is, to make a difference.
If it is lasting or not doesn't matter, everything is fleeting anyway. Our lives will end, new lives will be created and everything always changes.
A white page suddenly turned into a blog post once I started poring my unfiltered thoughts and feelings onto it. But what is the point?

All I know is that I wanted to write again. And I felt blocked.

I remember the first time I experienced writers block.
I wasn't actually going to write anything, I was in class and I was supposed to make a drawing. It was free drawing, you could draw anything you wanted.
Sounds amazing right?
But it's way too much freedom, there was so much I could draw that I was totally overwhelmed by it and I froze. All idea's just were not there, my mind was as blank as the page before me.
I think I sat there staring at the page for at least ten minutes while my mind raced in circles; "what can I draw? Everything, I can't draw everything, it doesn't fit on this tiny piece of paper, besides it would take forever. So I have to make a choice. But what do I choose, and why? What is the best choice? that depends on the goal? What is the goal? To draw something? But why? Do I have to impress someone? Or do I do it for me? And do I need to impress myself? Yes,.. but how? What am I even doing here?"
Finally the teacher noticed I wasn't drawing and she came up to me to ask what the problem was. Obviously I said; "I don't know what to draw" And she just said the simplest thing and I don't think she ever knew what huge implications this sentence had on my life. "Just draw what you see"

I took what she said, thought about it really carefully and started drawing my desk, my hands and the blank piece of paper.
But the blank piece of paper was now no longer blank, So I had to change the blank piece of paper to a drawing of a desk with a blank piece of paper.......

I have always loved recursion but that was the first time I realized that it is a great way to get unblocked.

Here I was staring at the overwhelming whiteness of a blank page, but now I'm thinking, "is it okay to end it here?"