Day 138: Illusions.

Taken yesterday, when the sun was hitting a bottle in my house just so ...

Last night's post was hard for me to write, but not because of the emotional terrain it covered. Feeling pain is hard for
me - writing about it isn't.

No, the torturous part came with writing something in 20 minutes, abandoning the structure I cling to, allowing myself only one editing pass, and ending the whole thing without an ending.

I wanted to rewrite it all day. There were repeated words and clunky sentences and the all-one-paragraph-stream-of-consciousness format was absolutely killing me. Talk about a solid sheet of grey.

The whole point, though, was to take a break from my comfort zone. Teresa came over last night, and I was telling her how I'd been trying to write about this date I'd gone on but was getting nowhere. My thoughts were too messy - it was the date and it was Maggie and it was me and I couldn't figure out how to make sense of it all and write a coherent post with a clear point. She looked at me a moment and then said, "So let me ask you a question. Who are you writing this blog for?"

It's a good question. My first instinct was to say I was writing it for myself, but that's only partly true. If it were just for me, I wouldn't care if anyone else read it. On the other hand, I'm stubbornly loyal to what I consider the truths I want to write about, even when that means painting myself in a negative, shallow, heartsick, ethically challenged, dumbass, or otherwise unflattering light (recent example: I still can't believe I outed myself as a thumb-blowing nickel thief).

The more we talked, the more obvious it became that writing is my way of trying to shape, convert and control chaos. Teresa's point was not to imply that I suck or anything (my writer's ego would have roared at that one), but to wonder if my structured approach is always necessary. Her gentle suggestion was to break out of my mold a little bit.

Containment and control are just illusions, anyway. I can write a post that figures everything out - and end with some pithy comment that brings my thoughts full circle - but that doesn't mean I've actually solved anything. Illusions are beautiful, but they're not exactly reliable.


... and then 15 minutes ago.