do it now
January 30th, 2007 -- Posted in career | No Comments »Do it now, clean up later.
That’s my new mantra. I know, it can sound a tad self-serving: yah, that guy you’re flirting with? Go ahead and just sleep with him. Deal with the fact that you’re married later.
That’s not what I mean.
Here’s the story. I recently started journaling again – something I haven’t done on a regular basis pretty much since I got married. Until then, it had been an almost religious thing for me, since my dad bought me my first journal when I was like, 8? Or was it 10? Either way, for a very, very long time.
My entries kind of morphed as I grew up. First they were the childish – here’s what happened today, down to the very conversation I had with my best friend. I could afford to be detailed as I wrote almost every single day. Then I wrote a lot (a lot, lot, lot) about boys – a litany of my crushes, my friends crushes, who said what to whom.
When I got into high school I got more philosophical. I started to examine my life more. I looked at my friendships and relationships and asked questions. I tried to figure out why I did what I did, why I interacted with people a certain way, why I was friends with the people I was friends with. Of course I documented occurrences, too. My three serious guy relationships – and a bunch that weren’t so serious … - are there in detail (sorry guys). Drama with my best friend is spelled out.
From these different ways of writing and interacting with myself, I learned a lot about, well, myself. So I made a pact with myself to start writing again on a regular basis. Hey, it’s cheaper than therapy. Although let’s face it, I still need therapy too. Well, my therapist will have something to read anyway.
So today, I was writing about writing. Yes, you read that right. Writing ABOUT writing. See, also back when I journaled more, I wrote in other types of medium, too. Wrote a lot of poetry, even made some decent headway into some “novels” (short stories?) I started working on. This kind of tapered off, and by college it completely stopped. I attribute that to a lot of things – busy-ness for one. Also, a lot of my writing was to work out those crazy feelings I had bottled up inside when I was a teenager and life was WAY more dramatic. Things got a little less (a LITTLE, I say) confusing as I got older, and maybe I didn’t need a way to work things out as much. (Although that’s not entirely true. Just ask my husband – or me – about the first two years of our marriage. Maybe I still NEEDED a way, I just didn’t take it).
So for whatever reason, I haven’t really written anything non-journal related in years and years. I haven’t really had a desire to. And today, as I was pouring this out to my journal, I came to the realization that I think fear is holding me back from being passionate. Maybe. Although I would automatically say the opposite: Psh – I’m way to mature to let my insecurities keep me from going after something I might love. How juvenile.
So the thought process started. As I was getting to know myself through writing this all out, it dawned on me that every time I think about getting back into non-journal writing, I automatically think of how much work it’ll be – all the research I’ll have to do (depending on the subject), the organizing (kind of like writing a REALLY long term paper – ick), the agonizing. And god forbid I try to find a publisher. Work, work, WORK!!! It’s like I’d somehow subconsciously associated something that was once my complete passion (I’d write a chapter of my “book” before I’d do my homework!) with doing a lot of work.
Then I thought about people I know who have complete passion – my friends who are documentary filmmakers, my husband who loves (and has tied up hundreds of thousands of dollars in) real estate, my dad who is in the air force and is consumed (in a good way) with space and secret spy-type stuff (how glam). All those passions require lots of work. So it shouldn’t be a deterrent that a passion would require work.
(of course I’m not saying you should force it – if it’s a lot of work and you don’t absolutely love it, it doesn’t matter. You won’t stick with it. I should know. I have a problem with this, but that’s really another subject.)
so maybe, I thought, it’s not the work requirement so much as I don’t really know how I’ll handle all the work, I don’t know that it’s worth all those things I’ve mentioned, which I associated with my passion (still with me?). maybe, I’m afraid of the work. Not in the way a lazy person is “afraid” of work, but in a way that I’ve translated the work to fear, then associated THAT with writing. Fear in some form is kind of a theme in my life, so it really makes perfect sense.
I enjoy writing, and I think I have a talent for it. I don’t want it to be something that just falls by the wayside in my life. I always thought your passion should just be something you did by default. But maybe sometimes it’s work. Maybe, when you know deep down you love something, but have fallen out of love with it for a season, maybe you have to make a conscious effort to resurrect that love into your life. And be committed to just see what happens.
So that’s my mantra. Do it now. I’m just going to start writing. Maybe little (and by little, I mean epic) blogs like this. maybe I’ll revisit a story I started in high school. And I’ll answer the questions about “how” as they come – I’ll re-learn how to put my words down on paper. I’ll do the research I need if it comes to that point. That’s the “clean up later” part.
Bottom line – I’m going to give it a try. Maybe it’ll end up a casualty of my short attention span, like PR, or social work. I think I’m ok with that though.