Seventeen years, give or take, whether or not you count MySpace. Seventeen years, depending on if you count those years where I couldn’t—didn’t. Seventeen years.
I have been writing words and pushing publish for seventeen years. Depending on how you calculate these kinds of things, a person could call it an asinine waste of time or the greatest journey ever. I would have to insist on the latter as there is no way I can conceive of the former. In either case, it isn’t an argument I would have because it is missing the whole point.
“Everyone believes the world’s greatest lie…” says the mysterious old man.
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“What is the world’s greatest lie?” the little boy asks.
The old man replies, “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
Writing has always been my way of reminding myself that I am in control, that I am the narrator, creator, owner, and shaper of my story. I can tell (more or less) what stage of the cycle I am in by whether or not I am writing—little writing, little control—you get the picture.
That I have not pushed publish does not necessarily mean I am not writing. In fact, over the last month, I have put together somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 words. These are mostly academic words, ideas that I am still working on.
However, the fact that I am writing doesn’t necessarily mean that I recognize my control.
I am not really sure where I am going with all this. I know where I intended to go. I intend to explain some of the writing that will be making its way onto this page. I have come back to the idea of one place to house all of me in whatever form that happens to be on any given day. But I am not sure how I meant to get there. There is a lot going on in my world right now. I hate how vague that sounds, but that is the way this type of endeavor goes sometimes. However, I don’t think it needs to be much more specific. Seriously, don’t most of us have “a lot going on in my world right now”? The particulars are different, the thresholds are different, and the relevance is different – but individually, it is ours, and it is life, and it is what we move through that reminds us every day that, as cliché as it sounds, life is not a spectator sport.
My brain is moving a million miles a minute with all the things I want and don’t want to say. This bit of writing this morning seems amazingly indulgent, and that’s okay. Or at least I am going to sit here and say that this is okay.
The thing is, that I sit here banging out these words that are amazingly disjointed and damn near incomprehensible and part of me is saying just stop, this is embarrassing, and nobody is going to read this, and then the other part of me is saying no, keep going, don’t you know that somebody out there has a brain that looks just this way and they think they are crazy. You are not crazy, I am not crazy. We are all just moving our feet through shit we can’t control trying to focus on the things we can.
My God self understands that I surrender all things to Him. That is not what I am talking about here. I have done that. I believe that God is in control. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to move through it. It has never meant that. It didn’t mean it for Abraham, Moses, Tamar, David, Mary, Joseph, Peter, or Paul. Jesus surrendered himself completely, and he still went through. So, that’s not what I am talking about. I know God’s got me…reconciling that with how I feel is the hard part. But that’s okay. I’d like it to be easier, but I don’t require it. I would like it, it is not required.
Sometimes I repeat things to make myself feel better. You know, say it often enough, and it will be true.
So, good morning, I guess. I wish I could give you/me more guidance. I can’t. But I am here, and you are here, and that means we still got a shot.
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