(The following is transcribed from a pocket-sized notebook.)

I used to tell people, “That’s just my job to pay the bills, feed the kids and all that. That’s not who I am.” But that’s really just a line. I’ve probably said that more to convince myself than anyone else.

“No,” I’d tell them. “I’m actually a writer. I write fiction, lyrics, whatever.”

But it’s all bull.

I do, sometimes, compose such things but, as the saying famously declares, “A Writer Writes.” Wannabes,  like myself, who go a month at a time without so much as a journal entry, are not writers. We are our jobs first and the act of writing is *gasp* a hobby. It’s a hobby that I’ll not likely convert into a future or even so much as a past-time because I lack the discipline to put a pen to paper more than once in a while. It’s not as if I don’t have ideas or passions and the time is there if I am willing to take it; it’s just that the easy path is so damned appealing.

I can ride this train each night to the end of the line with my ipod screwed into my ears and eyes closed, copping a few extra minutes of sleep. That’s cake. Inspiration strikes when it’s ready and I’m not so lazy as to ignore it but I’m also not so motivated as to keep the ink flowing in hopes that additional wit might sneak onto the page.

I’ve written a few good songs in 2008. That’s my honest (if not modest) opinion. I wonder, however, if I couldn’t have written a few more had been I writing on the regular as I did many years ago. Always, when I have been more diligent as a writer, have I produced a greater volume of presentable material. The amount of dreck increases too but, to sit idly and wait for quality to fall out of the sky seems remarkably ego-maniacal.

And so, as I made a New Year’s resolution several years ago to make no further New Year’s resolutions, I am hoping and aspiring (but not resolving) to write more in 2009. This goes for all formats: this little book, my blog, song lyrics, love letters, and epic diatribes to politicians and old friends.

I won’t aspire to be a better or successful writer- just, simply, a writer. I will endeavor to undo the silence of my apathy and give textual voice to the thoughts, questions, and images in my mind. 

Plus, there’s that cycle of dirty song parodies that I’ve always wanted to write…

-jmh