I have my angel islands on today, my candle drifted, my morning tea. The long boat of the night is gone and we drift into this day, we peek or float or flail. We whisper or whimper.
I sit down at the page and know that I’m out-gunned, that I will never get it all down. I will always be chasing something I can never catch. I have to pick up the pen anyway. That’s the day’s first triumph. I will never capture every thought and image, I will never pierce every hole inside, I will never get it all out there. There’s just no way. We have too many stories.
What does it matter whether you write something today that didn’t exist in the world before, if that writing never sees anything but the inside of your notebook? What does it matter if you sit yourself down in front of the page every day, a resolute starfish obeying the tides? What does it matter if you wipe the sleep from your eyes fifteen minutes earlier than usual so that you know you’ll have those few moments when you feel the most whole, the most uncontained, the most possible?
Does it matter if the process shifts something inside you, defeats the anxieties, quiets the spinning places, opens the eyes of curiosity? Does it matter if it’s a place of meditation and play and sorrow and confusion and joy?
Give yourself ten minutes and write why it matters that every day you do it anyway: pick up this implement of humanity and try again.
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