Blank Sheet

I have not blogged for over two weeks. It started with Amanda’s and my trek through the woods of Cambodia, and has continued on through Thailand, and now through India. I think the reasons for this are many. One of them was that I was tired. Another is because I was afraid. Afraid of this story, and how big it was. It seemed like an insurmountable task at first, and I hesitated to start. Then, when I did start, some other things got in the way. But I was recently enlightened to the difference between excuses and reasons by a very good friend of mine, and it is clear to me now that I used these things as excuses not to write. Writing is tiring, and sometimes hard, and very, very scary. The blank page is in my top 5 scariest things ever list – dead serious. But I am driven to write, not like I am driven to do other things. Writing has for as long as I can remember been my release, my therapy, my skill, my love, and an intrinsic part of me. It is who I am; it is what my soul is. I grow nervous unless I have something to write with and on close at hand in case I need to get something out. To be a channel for the things inside me, I both fear and love writing, because when you write something really good, it is like breathing air for the first time. Even that is a poor simile, I cannot describe the feeling, though I once read a book where a character was in the presence of a God, he felt like he and everything else was just a shadow, as his mind worked its way around the edges that he might be in the presence of the only thing that is truly real.

That is what good writing is for me – a theological experience.

If you can imagine that there is something divine inside, a story, a beautiful thing that wants to get out and be exposed to the light, please now imagine the utter terror in the knowledge that you are human, and humans tend to screw things up on a regular basis.

My terror seems rightly justified, at least to me.

I have heard the saying that courage isn't the lack of fear, but doing something in spite of that fear. With that in mind, I summon my courage to write, as I seem to have misplaced it two weeks ago. I humbly apologize to you, the reader, because to not write when there is nothing to write is no crime, but to not write because you are afraid to screw it up is, and I have sinned against you greatly.

This all could seem very pretentious; placing great importance on what is, on the grand scheme of things, a very small failure. But as Carl once told me, "Anyone can get the big stuff right. It's the little things that matter."

And they do matter.

Okay. Back to that blank page.

-Doug