It has been a while since I tried to post any sort of story or poem (the story I posted a few weeks ago was written a long time ago), and I think this will be the case for a while now. I wouldn't say that I have writer's block, but I think what I have is an acute awareness of the limitations of my current style of writing, and to some extent, mode of thinking. Just today I began on the same old mental trip, scurrying through disconnected ideas and thoughts, analysing each one briefly yet close enough to be able to mould them all into the big picture. As I sit here, it's all too easy to pick out one of these images, or even the "big picture" itself, and try to write about it, reflecting on the nature of it, and so on (I suppose I am doing that right now, but this is meta-prose!). Yet, like I said, I feel as though I can sense the boundaries of anything I write all too well, and can see painfully clearly how, in a quest to dig deep and expose some realities of my own life as some sort of broader comment, I am left with something far too primitive to have any long-lasting merit. Of course, writing's an iterative thing, and to get better at it one must keep at it and write more, hoping to get better each time. I don't argue with this, but I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't feel I can write anymore without essentially repeating myself.

Naturally, I don't mean to use this as an appropriate time to pack up and leave (although maybe some of you think I should!), but rather I feel the need to somehow try and expand the style I have developed so far, however unoriginal it may be. I think the best way to try to do this is to just read long into the night! Sometimes I catch myself looking at particularly beautiful pieces of prose and poetry, and trying to dissect them in some attempt to try to figure out its essence, and what makes it so beautiful. The "reasoning" being, I suppose, that by doing so I can improve my own style. But this seems to be no more than glorified plagiarism, if not in the literal sense then in some sort of spiritual sense.. When I sit down and think about it though, I feel that influence is at its purest when the message just hits you without you having to be aware of it. I yearn for the subtle beauties of the written word, the ones that can gently lift us up above the mundane and absurd in normal life. I don't believe I can ever achieve such power with writing; my destiny is far humbler. But if it can at least possess a semblance of these greater notions..