a work in progress – my life and my art

Hi.
It’s been a while, hasn’t it?
It’s felt like a long while, for me, since I’ve last spilled my thoughts on this virtual paper.

The longer I put off writing on this here blog, then the more I’m likely to think I need to write something even longer, something even better, with my next blog post.

And I’m trying to not enable that sort of rationale, so this right here is an active effort to keep things short and sweet.

But this “paying high-interest fees” logic, where the length of time equals the quality of output, is something that carries across my life. The longer I defer doing exercise means the harder I need to push myself during my next gym visit. The longer I delay cleaning some dishes means the more I need to get done cleaning up after myself. The longer I neglect reconnecting with someone means the next conversation needs to be epic and intimate and refreshing. The longer I put-off reading some of my books means I need to start-and-finish the next novel I pick up.

And funny enough, I’m pretty sure this is the worst way to approach anything: expecting the best when you’re struggling just to show up. Not only is that totally unreasonable, but it just ends up intimidating you to flake-out again.

So how about quitting that whole logic of paying-interest-fees, and absolve ALL your debts on the shit you had been meaning to do since forever…?

Try imagining yourself giving yourself (and everyone else, if you want to earn extra credit) a hall pass, a get-out-of-jail-free, a saved by the bell, an I-don’t-need-to-keep-carrying-this-baggage freebie. You’ve tried feeling ashamed and guilty for how long over that to-do list and it’s gotten you where exactly?

Why not try to see if letting yourself off the hook today and see what happens?

For me, that looks like realizing that we humans are works in progress (also known as ‘wips’).
That’s also the term writers use often to refer to which stories they are currently crafting.
And it sort of captures the point I am making with my erratic blog posting, and with my secret stories that I’ve told people about in only vague detail for years, and also with me, archie, trying to do my best each day even when that “progress” can look very different week by week. Myself as a work in progress means I get to fuck-up, back-track, retry and still be okay with the ups and downs.

I’m not perfect at accepting myself as not perfect, but I’m working on it…

 

As always, thanks for reading.
archie.