"Don't Tell Anybody Anything..."

I am re-discovering the joys of personal writing.

Ever since I started blogging about four years ago, my personal writing has been neglected. I haven't kept a notebook solely for the purpose of creative writing in all that time. The majority of them are filled with work notes, lyrics to songs, ridiculous raps and the occasional poem here and there.

In a recent post (which I will not link-- you'll just have to find it yourself) I wondered about my newfound inability to be alone. I couldn't figure out why I was constantly craving attention from other people. I threw out a few possibilities but nothing was conclusive until this week.

Now I know why, thanks to the short but sweet moments I stole this week, where I scribbled out some words onto a pad while waiting for my bosses to meet with me concerning some of my duties.

Blogging is great but it is exhausting emotionally because I am putting a lot out on the line by writing about my personal life. The insularity of writing in a notebook is warm and welcoming. No one sees my words, my thoughts, and therefore I can be 100% honest.

In my notebooks, I don't have to change names, invent composite characters, omit events or blur the line between reality and fantasy. My notebooks are raw, uncompromising, private... They are the real me. This blog? It's a PR stunt, a meaningful facade, a truthful diversion that falls short of the goal.

If I were blogging fictional stories or random trivial bullshit, I think I'd be OK. But the fact is, I am spilling my guts for the Web, and when the Web doesn't appreciate it I get upset.

I don't have that relationship with my notebooks. I dictate my hopes and fears, and the notebook takes it all in, and never reveals my secrets.


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That song by Morrissey, "Suedehead", reminds me of a girl in high school who had a crush on me. This was during my long-haired phase, when I just didn't care and nothing mattered to me.

She invited me over to her place to watch the Driver's Ed TV show that all first-time adolescent drivers had to watch in order to pass the written exam. After doing our assignments, I went to the bathroom.

When I came out, she was reading my notebook.

"What the fuck are you doing?" I screamed. "Leave it alone!"

"I'm sorry. I just wanted to read your words," she said, apologetic.

"If I want you to read them, I'll open it up to you," I said. And with that, I took the notebook away.

I guess it was mean to do that to her, especially since she liked me and thought I was smart and cool and funny. But I didn't care. I didn't give her permission to do that, and as a result it was a number of years before I ever showed that girl one single poem from my notebooks.

I didn't want her, or anyone, to know me. My notebooks were my business.

Then, I started giving them away, when I felt like I was trapped by the words and patterns in each of them. I used to burn them, but after a while an old friend convinced me that I should just give them away. And so I chose people to give them to, hoping that they would be the kind of people I could trust with some of my private thoughts.

It was easy to give them away once I moved past them. By the time these people read my thoughts on paper, my mind was onto something else.

Now that my mind is turning inward again, I think it's time to keep a notebook. I don't want anyone to know me anymore. They don't know what to do with the information I give them.

I am also reminded of Holden Caulfield's immortal words at the end of The Catcher In The Rye:

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

I've been telling everybody everything, and that's why I can't stand to be alone anymore. I can't enjoy my loneliness if everybody is in on it. That's why Holden Caulfield's words are echoing in my ears. And if anybody in the world knew about enjoying being alone, it was J.D. Salinger, legendary recluse and the creator of the infamous Caulfield.


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I sometimes still do enjoy being alone, but I used to revel in it.

Quiet walks along the freeway, listening to my Walkman and watching the sun setting in the distance... a dimly-lit bedroom and series of papers and notes scattered about... I was always in the middle, sorting the piles and deciding what stays and what goes, what lives and what dies... maybe I'd sneak a smoke behind my father's house before he came home from work... There was always music playing, syncopated to the infrequent impact of ripe apricots falling against the tin awning on the roof... No telephone, no transportation, no money, no hopes and expectations, and yet I was content, if not happy... I could stay that way for days upon days, and then maybe a friend would realize that they hadn't heard from me in a while and call me up, and it was as if I'd never been away, it was as if a few hours had passed when in reality weeks had gone by...

I didn't miss anybody or want to be with anyone. Even the girls who used to make me tear my hair out faded into the background when I was alone. The minute they hung up on me or told me to go to hell, I was back in the world of words I had created. Then, they'd call me after a while and tell me they loved me, and it was all the same to me-- love, hate, just words to be written and misspelled and defined and rewritten countless times...

The small amount of words I've written this week (for me and only me) have triggered a reaction in me that I haven't felt in so long.

I will still blog. I can't stop blogging. But...

I see now that the anticipation of waiting to read a comment, or wanting to talk to someone about something I wrote-- all that stuff is destructive to me.

It's no surprise that the novel I am working on still revolves around a lonely wannabe fiction writer who makes friends out of his imaginary characters. I really am not interested in knowing people. Instead, I am more interested in writing about them, or perhaps sketching them out.

I am OK with that. Really, I am. It works for me.

What doesn't work for me is craving approval from people who don't know how to give proper feedback. That, in my mind, includes everyone in the free world.

I apologize for my contempt. But then again, not really.

Have a nice weekend, everybody.