I have lots of excuses. I’m too busy (lie…but I’m busy enough). I don’t have large chunks of time to sit down and write out, work out in fine detail, in one fell swoop, the issues I’m puzzling around in my head (truth…but I don’t HAVE to operate like this, it’s just my preferred method). I already spend a lot of time at my laptop for my paying gig, and then additional time frittered away “doom scrolling” (a friend used that term lately and it’s JUST SO APPROPRIATE) and playing Scrabble and Rummikub and just filling my time (not all wasted…some critical connections for my sanity are part of that). Also, recently my brother-in-law Joel (shout out!) introduced the magic of a Chromecast device into our lives, so now our large screen TV-without-service (free, given to us by a neighbor, because we are the people who will receive your TV if you are giving one away, until we have too many, limit is 2) is a smart TV and I can view my favorite programming in real style, right in my face, enveloping all my senses instead of just a 10-inch span of my vision. So I’m not so anxious to sit down and spend more time in front of a computer. Except I don’t do much else, so why should I object? Ah. Now I know why.
I have wanted my words to do too much. So I don’t let them come out at all. I don’t let them do what they are meant to do, are born to do. I can’t control what happens to them once they are published, I can’t make them make anybody think anything, feel anything. I want that, but I can’t control it. I have let this simple truth become a barrier to my blogging. So I should probably learn to live with it and release the words I need to write into the universe and allow them do what they will.
In fact, I am not going to go back and read this before publishing it. I’m just not going to. There are mistakes in it. I don’t care. I’m going to own my distractedness, the way my brain works that takes me away from things I should be doing to things I probably shouldn’t but that also allows me to noodle and noodle on whatever it needs to work out.
I lied. I read it. It’s good enough.
These are not my hands. This is not my typewriter. But do you remember when it took so much effort to correct a typed mistake that it was better to not make one? That process is just so amplified now, everything about it, with the editing and over-thinking and getting it just so and some sort of weird expectation (self-imposed, perhaps) that perfection is the end result. Silly.
And how, pray tell, did people like Jane Austen write whole gigantic novels with just a pen, a goose feather dipped in ink?? Ridiculous.
I’m testing the comment section. Jeepers, maybe it will work. Maybe it magically did what I told it to do?
Well done schmoopie! I love it!
I have arrived. Keep going Jill.
Jill, you are one of the most honest people I know (with others and with yourself).
It is refreshing to read pure honesty online. Keep going (or not, whatever).
The fears you listed about what keeps you from writing really resonate with me. You give me courage!
You’ve illuminated for me one of the exuses I make about my own writing. Thank you! Your excitement and energy leaps off the page. Keep it coming!