I recently fell into a reflective state cleaning up the files on my laptop. Amongst the files I migrated from my old laptop to my new one were articles and blog posts that I’d written eons ago. So I re-read them. Laughed at a couple even, which is like the literary equivalent of sucking your own cock.

What happened to me? I used to write real good and stuff.

Facetiousness aside, it does feel like I’ve fallen off the horse. When people ask me what I do these days, I earnestly say, failed writer. And being endlessly self-critical while simultaneously magically blame-y, I have a few reasons.

I’m not writing much lately

I had a run with posting daily on my blog to see if any magic would come from cyclically spewing words on to the page, but all that did was make my own voice echo in my own head with the sameness of each blog post.

This excuse wears thin though, because aside from the produced blog posts, I wrote few articles this year: several for CitySearch Australia, which is edited by a “friend” who was doing me a “favour” by letting me write for free in the name of getting me 'back on the horse'; and I’ve wrote an article for Xtra!, a gay paper here in Toronto. That article, which I’ve just re-read, was written on spec - and pretty damn good if you ask me. Good enough to be accepted by the publisher, so spec won – however it’s been ‘scheduling pending’ since August. Which is fucking ridiculous, and killed my confidence in getting paid work for the time being.

My head is busted

A dear friend told me that one of their concerns when I was in my traumatic brain injury-induced coma is that I would wake up and not be able to write – because “we know you like to think of yourself as a writer,” was the gentle way it was put. And honestly, this is the one that freaks me out the most – maybe I lost a bit of myself after the accident, and that was the bit that wrote well?

I only write about myself

This one was pointed out by my travel buddy Bree, who has been urging me to write because I moan about it so much. When I told her I was writing this very blog post, she said, “Do you ever not write about yourself?”

Another monkey on my back, my sister Bec, has my blog bookmarked, which is awfully sweet and sisterly. When I noticed it recently, she asked why I wasn’t posting much. I told her I was bored of it; bored with my voice on it, talking about myself incessantly. “Isn’t that what a blog is?” she asked. “Kind of like your own personal reality TV show?”

Her idea of a blog’s purpose is contentious, but she was right about why I’m bored of it. I’m tired of talking about me. With the accident and moving to Canada, there’s been nothing but self-centric posting going on. I moved to Canada to escape the selfishness of overcoming trauma, except I only left the trauma behind and not the selfishness.

If there’s one thing working holidays are good for, it’s trying on new and different faces. So I’m starting a new tone for the blog for 2010. I plan on mixing it up with actual publishable work (addressing central questions and everything); maybe even some short stories, if I can develop my fiction-writing skills enough to produce something I want to share. And I promise: no poetry.