Okay, pretend that we are at a sleepover. No, no pretend that I have invited you over to dinner at my place. We had just finished eating and we are now getting in to the meat of the conversation. There is a candle burning. Maybe soft jazz playing in the background, or no maybe it is quiet enough that it is only our voices bouncing on the walls, and every thirty minutes or so you can hear an airplane tear it’s way through the sky, and I tell you that the planes pass over here on the way to the airport and every time I land in this city I try to find my house. Now I am feeling brave. We are in that space of total neutrality and I know you will except my truth without judgment. In this moment I trust you with my whole heart.
I say:
I feel like I have been procrastinating. It is something that I feel more comfortable admitting. Before this fact felt super terrifying. It was loaded with so much shame and embarrassment. I felt like deep down I knew that I was avoiding my creative work, but would just make all of these excuses–like I was trying to be slow, like I was valuing rest as an anti-capitalist principle etc etc. All of these things might be valid impulses but it wasn’t what I was doing. I was avoiding and deep down I had this overwhelming anxiety about the whole thing. It is good to be honest without shame. It is good to catch yourself when you have drifted. Not berating or demeaning yourself, but bringing yourself back with the grand neutrality of love. I’m thinking about my thesis. How I wrote almost 70 pages or so. It was hard, but I did it, and most because I was being held accountable by my professor and classmates. I suppose that’s what MFA programs offer. A structure and an accountability. But that is the thing! I don’t need academic or institutional approval that I am a “good writer” and I deserve to keep writing. I can give myself that permission whenever I want to. And I know the truth of the fact is, it doesn’t matter whether or not that I’m “good,” this is what I love. Many times I have said: when I finish school, when I get a job, when I get into an MFA, when I have a nice room, and a studio, and I move into another apartment, and when I’m not obsessed with that one person, when I have noise canceling headphones, when I finally have some peace and quiet . BUT THE TRUTH IS, those are all false gods, they are all waves of resistance. The truth is in any now moment I can make that decision, because there will always be now. And even when I get all the things I will still feel like I’m not ready. The thing is–I can take my time, I can stumble often, but as long as I remain committed to my work I am on the right track.
Every time I fall of track, I want to say to myself, with the kindness of a thousand fucking suns, “it’s time to be brave, be brave, be brave and start again.”
You know what I mean?
Journal prompt: what is true right now?
Reminder:
-Thai xx