Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

I don’t recall thinking far enough ahead when I started writing Perpetual Hell to wonder about how long I would keep it up. But here I am at blob blog post #100, and I must say I’m pleasantly astounded by that number.

Now and then over the course of my life, I have tried to keep journals but those attempts have never lasted long. While writing has been my favourite mode of communication ever since I was a child, for some reason it has never been particularly interesting to me unless I was sharing it with someone else. “Dear Diary” doesn’t cut it. I suppose it’s simply an narcissistic thang. A need to tell you (O Great Unwashed You, lawdy, yes!) what I think, how I feel, just what the world looks like through these two myopic—(‘how appropriate,’ you mutter under your breath)—blue eyes. I mean, if a tree falls in the forest, apparently I am under the impression that it doesn’t make a sound unless I hear it. And then I will tell you what I think about it. God knows there is prolly medication out there for this sorta problem but I don’t have a prescription.

While I was growing up, I figured I would become a writer and stop the world in its tracks with The Great Canadian Novel. However, for whatever reason (a self-defeating fear of failure, no doubt—something stupidly obvious like that), I never really tried. From time to time, I’ll come up with a damned good turn of phrase or, sometimes, a well-crafted sentence or, once in a while, some nicely-constructed paragraph. But a novel? No. Not even close. Haven’t even tried. In fact, I have hardly ever turned my eye to writing fiction… Lots of little stories populated with monsters or dinosaurs (or both!) when I was a kid, I suppose. The only fiction of more recent vintage, though, was some porn I wrote for a would-be-but-ultimately-not-to-be lover last year. (Incidentally, I’m told I do that pretty effectively—I guess we all have to have a Special Gift and perhaps writing personalized porn for would-be lovers is my own little creative niche. Yay, me.)

Last year, shortly after I’d settled in after the move back to Canada, I wrote what I hoped was a somewhat entertaining account of my roadtrip and emailed it to a bunch of friends. From the response I got, folks seemed to enjoy it. Two of the people who responded positively to it are professional writers and they both told me that they thought I should be writing a blog. You can imagine how flattering it was for me to have professional writers encouraging me to write, ye gods! So I re-tooled my roadtrip email a little bit and then used it not only to start this blog but to name it as well. And, more than a year later, it remains one of my favourite entries here. I have a few posts that I regard with fondness as if they were my children who’ve brought home an “A” from school. I mean, my pleasure with this little one is practically unseemly. Hell, I would buy it a puppy if it were my kid.

I realize that there have been some fallow periods when I have been remiss in updating this thing regularly. Ever since Hot Docs, though, I have been making a conscious effort to update it regularly—even if it is something as simple as just posting a song recommendation. As a reader of blogs, I know how frustrating it can be to check on a site like this and find that it hasn’t been updated since my previous visit.

But there have been times over the past 14 months when real life intruded and something was going on that was just too fucking painful to write about. It’s never been simple embarrassment that has stopped me in my blogging tracks. I don’t have a problem with letting you see what an idiot I can be. Obviously. I do have trouble, however, letting you see how vulnerable I can be. And one of the hardest things about a painful experience (and, yes, of course it almost always revolves around that everfuckinglasting boy problem of mine) is that, for me, while it is going on, it is the one thing I feel like I need to write about here but it is the one thing I won’t let myself write about here. Because you never know who is reading. I think the hardest stuff to write about is the most rewarding stuff to write about and those things that strike closest to my heart are the things that most need expressing. I am beginning to think that I almost certainly should have a second blog–a s e c r e t blog–where I can write about that stuff. Someplace where nobody knows who the hell I am. Some site that I can set up without ever using my real name… Very “Secret Squirrel”, as my would-be-but-ultimately-not-to-be lover would call it.

Or I suppose I could just seek some serious psychotherapy. And perhaps a prescription or two.

(with apologies to Alan for riffing on his film’s title)