The Artistic Temperament

I used to write, often and well (in my own humble opinion). I wrote short stories in middle school, poetry through my teens, and journaled my way through the first half decade or so of marriage. In school I managed to sail through AP English and ultimately test out of Freshman English at UT and enjoy the fun of heading straight into sophomore level fun. In my twenties, I took several wonderful writing classes, the most memorable of which was with Wilma Dykeman. After discovering Xanga in approximately 2003, I blogged my way through several years of child rearing and work, never really minding that no one was reading it.

I'm still not sure what happened, nor why I've essentially stopped. I know one of the reasons is emotion - I had a hellava lot of angst to air, and a lot of that is gone. Apparently negative emotions was what produced a lot of my work, although some of my greatest Xanga blogs were not angst-ridden but rather on the humorous side. Perhaps I have lost my Artistic Temperament.

Some of it has to do with a certain amount of restraint given my updated circumstances. It's kind of hard to write really freely in a blog when someone might read something and slap you with a libel suit. I fantasize about writing something like "Heartburn" or "Riding in Cars with Boys" but then am honestly just too happy right now to make the effort. I keep waiting till the spirit moves me, though I know quite well that's not the way writing works.

At any rate, when the guilt over not writing strikes, I just try to tell it to shut up. I'm getting pretty good at it, actually. The Artistic Temperament has given way to the Peaceful Temperament. Not productive, but a heck of a lot easier to live with.