I have never felt so conflicted in all my life. For me, it's even more difficult to understand than the inward battle between old nature and new nature. I want to write with all my heart, but when the time comes to pick up the pen and put it down, the passion dies and its ghost howls within, screaming for the will to be let out. Every time. It doesn't matter that everything else is in place. The motivation, the desire, the life – it fails.

I like to write. I really do. I just don't have a reason to. Wherever in the four corners of the earth that reason is supposed to come from, I have no idea.

It's ironic that I'm writing to release these feelings. I can't seem to write about anything else. Hm. Writing about the desire to write, but not to write. There's something paradoxical there.

What's real anyway? The me that is content to sit for hours binding volunteer guidebooks at the office? Or the me that lives in daydreams of writing music, singing for people, and being heard?

I wish I knew.

Is this even normal?

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Ergh. This isn't even normal for me to be all mopey. I like to be happy, dangit. I just don't understand myself. If I want to write, then why don't I? If I don't want to write, then why don't I want to do something else? The biggest problem is that when I think of what I want to do, there's nothing else I'd rather spend my time on. And when I find myself whiling away the time, I'm listening to music, studying music, analyzing chords and progressions, contemplating poetry. And then I imagine what I would like to say through it – and I draw a blank. Nothing. It's not like I don't have anything to say, or that I don't care to say anything. I can't even explain it. Fear is the closest thing that comes to mind. It's paralyzing, draining, and embittering all at once.

I think I'm missing something, but I don't know what. I'm walking with God closer than I ever have; and even though it's nowhere near where I should be, or where I ultimately want to be, I know I'm on the way there. If I do nothing else in this life, I will know Him. That will never change. Sometimes I think that maybe this is just another lesson in faith. I don't think God gives us wishes that can't or won't be fulfilled. He doesn't work like that. On the other hand – and this is what I'm afraid of – our own made-up desires, those are the ones that go unfulfilled (even though God is very polite and doesn't always insist on His way).

It's that hope and that fear that drive me simultaneously. Hope that this is of God and someday I'll be on a little stage somewhere playing music that makes people smile and think. Fear that this isn't of God and that I'm more wicked than I can even know and I will never be happy because I never really chose to follow Him.

 . . . If journal-writing were an art, I would already be an artist.