Madness

This is madness. The idea that I’m going to keep a blog.  Who am I kidding?

It’s happening to me again. I get this surge of ambition and hope and resolution and then trip over myself and land face down. And it always happens when I declare my intentions out loud. I automatically doom them that way.

Time. Time is my enemy and always has been. I don’t manage it well. Deadlines wage holy terror in my head and slay me in my tracks. I know that no one has put any deadlines upon me here, except maybe myself. I know that there isn’t any impatient, pointer wielding, red-marker carrying, instructor around to shame me about lack of productivity or poor phrasing or grammatical errors or “lack of originality” or “lack of a thesis statement”. I don’t really have any particular goals or ambitions with this thing I’m learning how to navigate. I’m not doing this for a grade. 

I should insert a short, general, disclosure here: I am seeing a psychologist and have been for a few years now. We discuss lots of things. I had a moment about a month ago in which she enabled me to see that what I choose to do doesn’t necessarily have to have any purpose other than making me happy. If I’ve always wanted to write – well, then – write! That was such a freeing revelation for me. The thought of writing – just for me. Not for a certificate, not for an assignment, not for money, not for a profession, and now that I’m remembering that, I’m starting to feel better….

This morning I was starting to feel remorse about telling a few people, with tipsy camaraderie, that I’d started this blog. Why? Well, because now I feel the obligation to keep it updated. 

(Okay. It just struck me between the eyes that I’m not being entirely truthful. I’m feeling remorse because I feel the obligation to myself to keep it updated.) 

And here is where I circle back to my idea that it’s madness. 

I want to write well. And, maybe, okay, I’d like someone else in the world to say “well done!” (again, I realize I wasn’t being entirely truthful before). But to write well, to do anything creative, really well, you have to devote the time to it. A LOT of time. You have to dedicate yourself to it. Commit TIME to it. Every day.

There’s more:  I also love to paint, to knit, to sew, to craft, to just make stuff! Be it with words or colors or cardboard or metal or marker or you name it.  I could spend every waking hour happily doing those things, every day, all day, and into the night. As long as there isn’t a deadline. Or someone looking over my shoulder. 

Then, of course, there are people and animals who depend on me to clean up after them, and feed them, and play with them, and chauffeur them, and supervise them, and teach them, and exercise them, and just BE with them….and the guilt comes back and stares me down.  

“What do you think you are doing spending hours in front of the computer? What do you think you are doing getting lost in knitting that project?  What do you think you are doing, sitting at that table playing with beads and wire for so long?”

And I’m back to madness. Mad at Time, mad at my past, mad at my surroundings, mostly mad at myself. Just generally mad.