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Sometimes the Change in Weather Comes When You Least Expect It - De File
Does Collecting Make You Feel Dirty?
01:54 pm July 13th, 2013
cbertsch
cbertsch
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Sometimes the Change in Weather Comes When You Least Expect It
A strange thing has happened to me recently. Several of the projects I set aside years ago because of my self-pitying, disorganization or general ADHD-ness have suddenly, unexpectedly reactivated in my mind without me making a concerted effort to start them up again. Whatever mental and material blocks were impeding me are no longer as imposing. I can still sense them, like furniture in a dark room, but have found a way, perhaps because of prolonged accustoming to the lack of light, to navigate around without banging my shin all the time.

Whether this change will persist long enough for me to make meaningful headway in trying to complete one of these projects -- the problem, as always, is that I can't seem to concentrate on one to the exclusion of the others -- is unclear. But I am at least not giving this graciously donated horse a dental inspection. For once, I'm trying to enjoy the moments when I am excited to read, take notes or write in detail as they come, without worrying about their place in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps it was sufficient just to take a long enough break from this work, bound up as it was with so much stress and strain, for me to be able to remember that it does make me happy to do it. I've had similar thoughts every time I set out to revive this blog, mind you, and have found out the hard way on each occasion that the negativity that I associate with being here on Live Journal is not so easily vanquished. Still, I am hopeful.

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Comments
Thread started by Steven Rubio
masoo From: masoo Date: July 13th, 2013 10:33 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Don't pay attention to the negativity. Just write when it feels right.
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: July 17th, 2013 05:25 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
I'm making progress in that endeavor. Most of the negativity has been internally generated, so it's mostly a question of reorienting myself. I kept trying and trying, only to bang my head against the wall in the end. That's why this latest development feels so special. It snuck up on me and seems to be sticking around a while.
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
Thread started by susangalique
susangalique From: susangalique Date: July 13th, 2013 11:11 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Hello, it's been a really long time since I made a new live journal friend, I understand about creative projects reactiviating. I also have a few I have been thinking about as well. Just sitting down and starting is half the battle.

How did you stumble through my little door?
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: July 17th, 2013 05:26 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Nice to meet you!

It's a good feeling to have something unexpectedly in the tank and the will to burn it, for once.

I was looking at some entries about The Great Gatsby and really liked what you had to say about the film.
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
Thread started by Bill
quuf From: quuf Date: July 13th, 2013 11:20 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
We're hopeful too!
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: July 17th, 2013 05:29 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Thanks! It always cheers me up to hear from you. I suppose I should clarify a bit. With the exception of the past couple months of extreme family stress on several different fronts -- hospitalizations, depression, drama -- I have been relatively productive in the period since I was posting here regularly. But finishing anything over 100 words has usually felt like pulling teeth. The difference I was trying to pin down in this entry had to do with a sudden feeling of ease where writing is concerned.
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Thread started by Every Day Above Ground
mallorys_camera From: mallorys_camera Date: July 14th, 2013 02:24 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Writing is not particularly difficult. You just sit down and do it. :-)

Writing here may be difficult because of yr domestic situation. (I'm friends w/Miz K so I know a little about yr domestic situation.) You no doubt justifiably feel that you have to censor yrself. Options? Write a blog/journal some place else, maybe online, maybe in a secret, scribbled notebook. Or filter the flist that has access to some of yr more potentially problematic musings.

Of course, you don't have to write here either. Although I find that pounding out entires is a good way to clear the pipes for other types of writing.
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cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: July 17th, 2013 05:36 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
That's really good advice. Strangely, though, when I tried it last -- back at the end of 2010 -- I failed miserably at getting results that improved either my situation or the way I felt about it at the time. I mean, where LJ is concerned. I did start maintaining a much denser presence on Facebook, for better or worse, and had a lot of my longer-form energies absorbed by Souciant, which debuted in March, 2011.

I think part of the reason I'm feeling so much less pent up of late has to do with the fact that I've achieved enough critical distance with regard to that unhappy phase of my life -- the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011, more or less -- that I no longer feel uncomfortable revisiting the sites of my unhappiness, of which LJ was certainly one of the most significant.

What I've been most surprised by -- and what I was trying to articulate in this entry, though perhaps too murkily -- is that the academic and para-academic projects that I'd set aside before that period, somewhere between 2006 and 2010, so rapidly shifted from dormant-and-possibly-extinct to active. Even more unexpected was that I'd be able to return to them without having to start over, yet with the benefit of a fresh outlook.

Anyway, thanks for your input here. I really appreciate it. It makes me feel better just to know that there are people out there who realize just how frickin' complicated my life has been.
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Thread started by Every Day Above Ground
mallorys_camera From: mallorys_camera Date: July 14th, 2013 02:25 pm (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Er -- pounding out entries... :-)
(Reply) (Thread)
cbertsch From: cbertsch Date: July 17th, 2013 05:36 am (UTC) (LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
Right!
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
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PROFILE
Charlie Bertsch
User: cbertsch
Name: Charlie Bertsch
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ABOUT DE FILE
You're looking at content from my Live Journal, which I have been keeping since 2003. I consider it a personal blog, though it lacks stream-of-consciousness revelations that typify that genre.

That said, if you manage to discern the confessional mode within entries that are superficially tight-lipped, I will reward you handsomely. Or at least pretend to do so.

In addition to reflections, however mediated, on my daily activities, De File features periodic excavations of material from my "files," a revelation sure to disturb anyone who has seen my garage. It's an experiment in integrating past and present, perhaps with a little redemption along the way.

Politics is always on my mind, but rarely explicit here. I’m working on a theory about what personal writing like this does to literary identification and why some people resist its pull so powerfully. But my goal is to make that theory dissolve in my practice, a density in liquid.

You'll note that I have links to blogs not on LiveJournal directly above, as well as assorted websites of note. The blogs I read regularly on LiveJournal itself fall under "FRIENDS" at the top, for those of you unfamiliar with LJ’s workings.

You can write me. I'm "cbertsch" before the circle-a and "comcast.net" after it.
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