WRITER’S TESSERACT

Guilt. Massive guilt and shame. Yesterday’s posting was so pointless, such an exemplification of the worst of bloggerdom, that I am still shellshocked at my poor judgment. Tomorrow I will go to the hospital to get my palm removed from my forehead. The posting was the voice of a no one sniping at a Washington insider who will never hear the voice or be affected by it in any way over a glib comment reflecting a knee-jerk right-wing position no one actually cares about. Further, any of the four people reading the posting will probably agree with it, meaning I’m preaching to the choir. So what was the point of doing it?

You can probably guess: I needed to post, so I found something easy to write about. I’ve been erratic lately, not the paragon of consistency I was before the April hiatus, and yet sensitive to and resistant to the research showing that some huge number of blogs are quickly abandoned by their creators.

The spirit is gone, but the flesh is still here, typing. Going through the motions.

Where did the spirit go? Personal crises were a factor in its fleeing, but personal crises are almost always a copout, and certainly are in this case. Another factor is the process of deciding what to write about -- so as not to bore anyone -- producing self-consciousness, leading to fatal indecisiveness. Another: A warning was passed to me that my employers were aware of my blog and displeased with what I was writing about them and all our employer, the Boston Herald. Revealing just how low I’ve sunk into whoredom, I decided to, in exchange for a decent paycheck, abandon my First Amendment rights to moan, whine and complain. This led directly to the final factor in my lack of motivation, which can best be summed up as, well, lack of motivation.

Having more or less turned my life over to nonfiction, I suffer from being unable to write when there’s nothing to write about. Having paid too much attention to cybercynics, I all too often find myself asking “Who cares what I think?” and, fatally, “So why am I doing this?” My reasons, I’m afraid, don’t result in motivation, spirit or scintillating material. It’s not quite writer’s block, which people can’t get around. It’s more like writer’s tesseract, and I’m lost in it.

So I find myself compounding the horror. Not only am I writing about my inability to write, which is inevitably masturbatory and pathetic, but -- driven by a compulsion to post that is not quite obsessive enough to ensure high standards -- actually putting it online for all to cluck over as their hands creep, apologetically and awkwardly, to the touchpad in search of another, more entertaining, more meaningful link.