From the back of an old barely written in journal…
I failed at lent this year. I am no longer religious. I am no longer a practicing Catholic but I like lent. I like the concept. Lent requires that you do something difficult- that you give something up. I was supposed to decrapify my life by getting rid of a bag of stuff every day for forty days. Stuff I don’t need or use. Stuff that clogs my mental arteries and scatters my brain by taking up space that should be empty and free. My third floor is cluttered with crap. Stuff I was going to sell, stuff I don’t use. I have overflowing shelves and too many junk drawers. And yet I didn’t let go. I only got rid of about 10 bags. Why do we cling to things that hold us back and make our vision fuzzy?
Have you ever watched the uncut version of a move? Every single time I’ve made that mistake I thought- “this sucks. Thank god for editors.” Uncut versions of movies always feel clunky. I have never once watched one and thought- “oh- they should have left that part in.”
Ironically, perhaps, this post is my first assignment for my Writing 101 class offered by WordPress. We are supposed to free write for twenty minutes and not worry about editing. Just write. Don’t edit. That is hard. That is vulnerable. But it is also essential for my own personal resurrection. Sometimes we kill parts of ourselves before they have a chance to really live. Our quest for perfection becomes a stranglehold, a creator of paralysis.
I think of this quote by Ira Glass:
by Ira Glass
I wish I had heard Ira’s quote and really embraced it 20 years ago. I wish I had determined to write everyday regardless of the quality with the knowledge that- 1) I could edit later and 2) with time I would improve. Not writing for so long when the desire to do has been one of the few constants in my life was a mini-murder, a little suicide. But this post, this unedited effort (that most definitely could be done much better) is a new beginning- a resurrection. I am back. Hello.
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