You know, I hope that next month will see some changes in the way I write these blog posts.
At the moment, there is no audience. I’m still publishing posts into the void, treating my website like a journal, sharing snippets only with one or two select people. I have yet to announce what I’m doing, to link people to my page, or even to finish up my website from a functionality standpoint. I paid dearly for my domain and hosting service subscription; years ago, I did the same for a travel blog that never made it past a meager handful of entries. My time for retribution has come, and yet I still hesitate to promote myself to the world.
Why is that? Well, for one thing, I want my blog to be perfect. A high expectation indeed for somebody who is currently writing on their laptop from bed, once again fighting off the onset of desperately-needed sleep in an effort to fulfill a goal. At the moment, I should be reeling with gratitude and commending myself for my ability to have even made it 16 days into the challenge without giving up entirely. Some days, mind you, have not come in the form of published posts. Some days, I write privately in files stored on my computer. Other days, I write in my notebook. It’s not quite what I pictured when I set out on this quest, but it’s real. It’s achievable.
That, in it of itself, ought to be the most important part of this entire equation. The fact that I am doing it, and that I’m setting my goals in such a way that I can achieve them. For me, that’s huge.
I have lived my entire life in the shadow of my own expectation, staggering beneath the weight of carrying all the things I meant to do. The wise thing to do is to put those things down and leave them behind. I never really picked them up in the first place, just tacked them onto the behemoth pile of “what ifs” that shackle me and rattle with every step. The irony is how acutely aware I am of my inability to move forward with all this weight in tow. I expect myself to be flying when I can barely inch along on the ground most of the time. I look at myself in the mirror and say, “what a pity. You have functioning wings and you know how to fly- why choose day in and day out to use your feet and walk instead?”
I love to ignore the baggage that weighs me down, and in the off-chance that I do turn to face it, I like to blame it on someone else. Oh, it can’t be helped, I say so often. That’s just the way it is.
I resent and actively fight back against discourse that suggests I might be able to escape from this trap, perhaps in part because it’s too uncomfortable for me to really, truly sit with the understanding that some of my problems were my own creation.
I find backwards ways to pretend I’m sitting through it, of course. Intellectual analysis and psychological self-evaluation is, in the end, just a coping mechanism for an intelligent mind like my own that wants to problem solve. Leaning in to let the emotions move their way through often yields access to a well of self-hatred that still has a way of popping up and reminding me that it still lives. Something so simple as breaking a glass becomes an attack on my character, both from myself and from the imagined interactions with people who aren’t even present.
What’s strange is how, through all of this, I still manage to maintain these dreams that someday it will all be gone. I fantasize about my writing improving and being picked up by somebody who wants to see it published. I fantasize about becoming a best selling author overnight and all of my problems being solved. Book tours, paid travel, the works.
Being delusional, I’ve been told, is the number one key to success. The moments are few and far between, but I’ll take them. And I’ll try to make them grow.
