Tuesday, August 10, 2010

eat pray...nevermind

I am reading eat pray love and I have mixed emotions about it. Most honestly (and shamefully) I resent people like Elizabeth Gilbert and Julie from Julie and Julia and a thousand others who have turned their thoughts and drivel--that, while well written, is mostly unexceptional (as is mine)--into a published book.

I read their words and recognize something I could do. They are not really more talented or better at transforming their daily internal detritus into language than I am.

But I think I have come upon a defining difference: they have hit a crisis of identity and confidence that has demolished them. They have had to, for lack of a better word, fabricate an imperative--an impetus--a justification--for their incessant, self-indulgent inner monologue that they must spill out onto paper (or, in this digital age, a computer screen).

DISCLAIMER: This whole theory could just be an extravagant line of defense (and comfort) created by my seemingly over-developed sense of identity and confidence to distract myself from the fact that I just haven't wanted it enough to completely devote myself to one imperative that will result in a book deal.

I feel, most of time, quite content and engaged in my life. I enjoy living it--having a glass of wine on my patio by candlelight; taking myself out to dinner; reading, reading, reading; soaking in the tub; laughing with my friends; laughing with my daughters; watching my girlies become themselves quite spectacularly.

So, whether my underlying reason for not writing Julie and Julia or eat pray love is really a sort of contentment combined with an undeniable imperative to provide a certain life and presence for my children or an inflated and quite eloquently devised self-delusion barely masking a paralyzing fear and doubt, I somehow know that my self-indulgent memoirist tome will not be fully realized or penned until I have (for lack of a better word) nothing better to do.

I find it quite amazing that I truly feel that there is nothing better that I can do right now then exactly what I am doing. And, if Erma Bombeck could use little more than being a woman, wife and mother as fuel for her rapier wit and gift for storytelling, then that is all the reassurance I need.

1 comment:

Monica said...

nd I thought that I was the only one to be bored to tears trying to read them...I think that your writing is much more insightful and entertaining...confidence and contentment seem to be qualities that other women find intimidating, not stimulating.



I love you very much...you have always been my “perfect example” of a life well-lived.