Followup to Earlier Post

I'm very glad to have perused Mr. Uchitelle's book. I didn't read all of it--there are sections about the history of labor post-WWII, and while that might be useful anecdotally, as far as policy goes I'm rather uninterested. I also lightly skimmed the end chapter which is about solutions to the issue. If it doesn't address peak-oil and how our whole structure is collapsing around us and tries to address "things the federal government can/should do" (as well as state governments for that matter), then I think it's mostly a waste of time. The stories about the individuals and what they went through opened my eyes however to my writer's blocks in a new way.

I've often mused about these blocks as they come up, and they've come up a lot more frequently as I age. I've wondered at times if, as I stay abstinent with sugar, flour and other substances, if I wasn't also using the pen and the paper addictively. I would say that in one way I was--I really am an approval addict as well, I want for people to say "Dang, I wish I'd have written that!" or "That really was a good play. You had me in stitches" (if I did intend to make it humorous, or moving if I meant to be moving or thought-provoking/enraging if I meant for a work to have an eyeopening function).

Receiving some sort of recognition is a part of the ecology of the writer's work, and I've gone so long without that I've wondered if I didn't just dry up. But really it's the skittishness of getting back in the saddle again. I had an incident that happened in the B&N Cafe on 22nd and 6th when I was a member of a writer's group, where a self-absorbed customer basically told me to shut up. I was reading my piece aloud quietly at the table, and I was shocked and deeply wounded by this K.Nttack. I tried to read my piece a little quieter, but K.nttacker was so self-absorbed and selfish and thoughtless and EVIL about it, I didn't know what to do. It was studying for some vampire test, I'm sure on its path to its K.Nt needless to say, and it did shut me down, probably in more ways than I even know about.

I'm thinking as I write these words, that I probably need to do some soul-retrieval to ferret out some lost parts of my soul that the K.Nttacker severed from my awareness and palimpsested with my seemingly endless hatred echoing out and reverberating off of other surfaces.

Really, it all comes down to "How dare Vampira disrespect my work?" How dare Vampira indeed.