I'M TAKING A MONTH OFF
I’m taking a month off.
Beginning Monday, the column is going to run repeats for four weeks, maybe until the end of October.
I apologize for the inconvenience and disruption, and I hope you will stick with the column and the site. But I’ve got a project I need to finish, and I’m eliminating any excuses I have for not getting it done.
I may come back sooner, and I may throw in the occasional new column. That’s what I’ve done before. I’ve repeatedly come back early from vacation to write something I thought needed to be written.
In 25 years, I’ve never gone more than a week without writing something for publication, and I don’t know how I will handle this gap. I think my wife wants to write some stuff, which I will post here and, like I said, maybe I’ll drop in something new a time or two myself.
But for the most part, I’ve got to stop writing.
The reason is so that I can do some other writing. I have a book project which I have been delaying for a year and a half. My behavior surprises and puzzles me. I am one of the most ambitious and hard-working people I know. In countless situations over my entire working life I have always risen to the top by out working and out pushing everybody else. If it takes 14 or 16 or 24 hours, no problem, I do and do and do.
And all my life I’ve wanted to write a book. All my life I’ve wanted the opportunity to write a book. But since this opportunity arose, like a gift from above, I have been inexplicably impotent. I have completely lacked the volition to begin and complete this project. I have had several false starts – essentially every time I’ve taken vacation – but I’ve gotten essentially nowhere. I have an outline of the book in my head, I have notes for chapter topics, the material is a natural product of my philosophy and passion, and yet I can’t force myself to sit down and write.
Which is frightening and confusing to me. For a dozen years I supported myself as a newspaper writer. For 10 years I’ve written a daily Internet column. For the years in between I wrote weekly newspaper columns. I’ve done magazines and speeches and t-shirts. But this thing has me stymied. Like Hemingway at the end, I can’t do the one thing that I think I was born to do.
I tell myself that my problem is time. I do seven hours of live radio a day, I do a daily radio commentary, I am supposed to do a daily video commentary, I record radio shows for Saturday and Sunday, and I write a daily Internet column. Most newspaper columnists write two or three pieces a week, and that’s their job. I do five a week and that’s on top of my job. I also have a wife and kids, a daughter in sports, I try to run, and I’m a village trustee.
I think it might be more than time. I think I might just be empty. I figure that each day I have to come up with at least 30 separate local and national issues and provide commentary on them, hopefully in an entertaining or evocative way. The mental fatigue is most evident in my writing, which requires the most mental clarity to pull off. Right now, I’ve developed the ability to just pull off what I have to do. Slight disruptions – business meetings or even hallway conversations with coworkers – throw off my schedule and pace and can take a day or two to bounce back from.
But I suspect the same is true for most working people. You get as much milk out of the cow as you can. I’ve decided to blame my failure to do this project on my schedule and fatigue. I’ve shied away from all-nighters and weekend marathons, and vacation weeks I’ve taken to write I’ve instead allowed to be consumed by other things.
So it’s time to piss or get off the pot.
I’m going to take off the column for a month. It will give me time, and allow me to redirect the mental effort needed to write. It’s the only thing I can do. One-month vacations in talk radio are followed by permanent unemployment. My plan is to take the hour a day it takes to write the column – an hour I usually take as soon as I get off the air – and add to it another hour I will take out of family time in the evenings, and spend those two hours a day working on the book. It’s soccer season, so there will be games, but if I’m disciplined and force myself to use weekends just for writing, reason says I should be able to get it done.
Which means I have no excuse.
Which means I will discover over the next month if it’s a matter of time, or a matter of I just don’t have it in me. Am I good in practice, but not in the game? I am facing the possibility of discovering that what I’ve wanted all my life is something I lack the courage and grit to actually do. I may conceivably discover that the confidence which has propelled me is misplaced and fraudulent, that I am like the caterwauling fools on the first week of American Idol, a product of imbecilic arrogance and pretended talent.
That’s a daunting prospect.
So I am going to break the habit of a quarter century. I am going dark. And alone I’m going to have a gut check. Wish me luck. In a month I’ll know.
Until then, it’s repeats. I will update the comments, and throw in the occasional red-letter note, to keep that community alive. But no new stuff.
I appreciate your understanding, and maybe I’ll come back with the wind in my sails.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2009
