This is my confession

I have a problem. I read so much that I am unable to write.

But such enthusiasm, you say, should bolster, not hinder, my writing. Instead, like a brewmaster who loves his concoction too much, I am left at the end of each day exhausted, confused, and passed out in bed.

My job already requires a great deal of reading from me, yet I never let a free moment escape without reaching for some text. Between obituaries, I sneak peeks at Talking Points Memo. I read Orwell while chatting on AIM. I take the Statesman opinion page with me to the crapper. I keep a book in my car — one I’m not particularly interested in reading — for the sole purpose of ensuring that I never arrive at a restaurant or get stuck in standstill traffic with nothing to look at.

Every day there are any number of things I want to write about: sparks flying inside my head only to be snuffed out by the next idea I shovel on top. I find, on average, three different events or quotes in my work notes every day that I meant to write about but never got around to. It’s interesting to me to look back at this space and see how I deal with this tension. Posts of great length and thought are followed up by sloppy intel dumps with almost no useful commentary added. And to fill the space in between I talk about girls or what I had for lunch.

For some reason, I’ve lately had a mind to change this — maybe because I’ve been reading too many essay collections again. Those always intensify the perception that my favorite authors were capable of inhuman levels of productivity, or that their stream of conscience was a perfectly undulating line, heading always in a true direction with just enough variation to find precisely the right way to say it.

Or maybe O’Brien is still sticking with me. Perhaps I’ll take the new mantra for this blog from one of his characters: Get out of the way and let the story tell itself.

Or maybe I'll just go grab a burrito and get back to you.