Best of Intentions
July 11th, 2007
I hate admitting it, but the produce drawer in my refrigerator is the measure of the gap between the way I mean to live my life, and the way my life actually goes — I am standing in the grocery store and think that I am finally going to convince the people in my household that kale is good food, and, um, time passes, and there’s this wilted green leaf at the bottom of the drawer until I feel so guilty opening the drawer that I start bypassing it altogether.
Ecto, a program for composing blogs, had become the produce drawer of my computer. I’d think of clever titles, and maybe jot a sentence or two, run out of time, and the next time I sat down thinking I had a few spare minutes to write, I’d end up starting with a fresh idea, only I am hobbled with completely unrealistic notions of time and what I can do in a day — and this causes me so much anguish, because it’s those expectations — not perfectionism, just, the little voice in my head tells me, what a reasonable person should be able to do — that leave me feeling just inadequate and delusional. So I wasn’t finishing anything, wasn’t publishing.
New rules, then, I told myself, sit down, compose using the Wordpress interface, publish, don’t get hung up on perfectionism. More shorter posts, sticking to one subject (I keep thinking I am going to write about X and ending up with a much better digression about Y, only I stop to explain Z). Don’t go back and re-read my posts because I’ll be so tempted, like now, to explain how I plan my days like an amateur tile layer, who plans for all these big tiles and forgets about the grout, the filler, the fact that 80% of my day ends up being interruptions, spills and bottoms needing wiping, objects needing locating, and so on. See, not necessary, right? Let’s put in the paragraph break and get back to the rules for writing
Anyway, you’ll notice this is my second posting and I already have three categories? That wasn’t premature enthusiasm, I promise. I composed something that I will just assure you was brilliant and fascinating last week, speculating on the marital life of a dentist, who spends all day having fascinating one-sided conversations with his hands in your mouth so all you can do is grunt appreciatively, right? And I wandered into how a filling changes the contours of your mouth and how odd it is that your tongue has a sense of geography, of place not corresponding to your visual-spatial sense of place. Yep, like an adolescent experiment with various illegal substances, I was, all, like, dude, your mouth is like the universe to your tongue. Ok, but at least I had written something. Following my new rules. Not censoring myself into total paralysis, which is a big deal to me. But I hit the little “publish” button without having hit the little “save” button, and my brilliant post disappeared into the ether. SO I started a second post that I am still thinking about and… no, I am composing this on the web browser, hitting save frequently, but I am breaking the rule about finishing that one before starting a new one. Rules are made to be questioned, right?
