I just finished watching the excellent documentary called Gonzo about troubled muppet Gonzo the Great infamous writer Hunter S. Thompson, and it has really got me thinking about this whole writer thing.

I have mentioned the power of the ariculator before. There is enormous power in putting into words the things that everyone is thinking but nobody can put into words. By saying what everyone is thinking, and saying it in a compact, direct, and evocative way, the articulator helps the people bridge the gap between thought and action.

All that is old new, philosophically thinking. But lately, it has been occurring to me that it is not just possible to articulate for the public, but that I am drawn to do it and that it is one of the things that can truly change the world.

It started when I was watching a biography of Doctor Martin Luther King, and people kept talking about the power of his words and how his words had changed America and been the focal point of the civil rights movement. And I just kept thinking, he did that with words. He did that with speech. He didn’t need any other skills, just deep and powerful communication skills.

And I have those.

Hunter had them too. He could, like any good articulator, turns his words into powerful and eloquent distillations of the anger and pain of an agonized world, and aim the flaming arrows of passionate truth directly at the heart of evil.

I could probably do that too.

Or take the Bible. The power of its words is such that whole nations have been held in its sway and, despite its many flaws and contradictions, continues to be a central text for billions of people.

And it’s just words. Ink on paper. But look at their power.

I have always instinctively resisted pondering my own potential power as an articulator. For a long time, I had no idea why. After all, being a powerful writer would be a good thing, right? Fame, money, talk show appearances, and so on.

But eventually, I figured out that I was terrified of having that kind of power, because for me power is always precisely proportionate to responsibility and honestly, I am scared of having that much responsibility.

It seems like a trap. In the Gonzo documentary, they even talk about how Hunter became trapped by his own image (helped greatly by Garry Trudeau) and didn’t know who the real Hunter S. Thompson was any more.

That prospect scared the bejesus out of me.

Plus, of course, there is my fear of having to choose. My talents could take me in so many different directions and it feels so hard to just choose one of them and stick with it. I just can’t image making that kind of commitment and sticking to it. I would, in a way, prefer to have that choice made for me.

But there’s nobody in my life to do that, so I am left, as always, in the mire of my own option paralysis. Who to become? What persona truly fits me? What if I choose the wrong one and then I am stuck with it with no way out?

Said out loud in black and white, it all sounds quite absurd, like I am a rich person wracked with indecision over what to buy. The most natural and obvious advice to give me would be to say “Just pick something and try it, and if it doesn’t work out, try something else!”.

Marvelous advice, but it is just plain not that simple. Like with all things, I am hemmed in by my anxieties. Just the thought of picking something makes my adrenaline jump.

And maybe that’s anxiety. But maybe it is something deeper : the fear of being real. As long as I am this semi-fictional version of myself only known by a few, I don’t really have to face reality and I can stay in my dark and cold palace and not ever have to leave.

But once I get involved with the real world, that is it. I will be stuck dealing with it for the rest of my life. Or at least that is how it feels. Part of me is still too scared of the world to leave that deadly inner comfort zone lest I get trapped outside its doors and can never return to its fatally soothing touch again.

This is the main reason why I never do any of the brilliant things I think up. Doing things invariably involves stepping outside the door of my cozy little cottage of doom and I am still too scared of the door closing behind me.

I know that it is way way way past time I got over myself, grew up, and went out to find my place in the world. Pick one way of being a writer and stick with it, or try them all and go with whatever succeeds. Either way, it is time to man up, stride confidently out of my comfort zone, and never look back.

Again, it’s not that simple. I still have so much unexpressed pain and anger. Leaving my comfort zone seems more possible now than it did a year ago, and day by day my confidence grows, but I am still not quite there.

Some day, I could be a hell of a writer. But it hurts so much to write powerful words and have nobody hear them. It is hard to devote too much of your precious internal resources to something that might never get read, or at least, not get read in a way that has much impact on your life or anyone else’s.

I guess if I knew there was enough people listening, I would say all kinds of amazing things. But that is not how it works in today’s media saturated world. You have to get people’s attention first and then convince them to listen.

And I just can’t do that yet.

Talk to you tomorrow, folks!