NEVER PERFECT

Waiting to get better

This has emerged as my problem--I wait to get better .

BETTER PHYSICALLY, BETTER MENTALLY AND  BETTTER SPIRITUALLY 

and promise myself that when I am better I will do the things I want to do. 

This seems to me to be a dangerous continuation of a self-undermining habit I have had all my life. I have often been waiting for more time or a better time to pay attention to my own work. I have not allowed myself to devote myself to creative work. 

MY job-- my teaching, my research, my editing, my scholarly writing all took priority. I think they did because they were not as scary--I knew that I could do them and not risk rejection. ALSO in the spirit that Bill Bellichek has made famous--I needed to do my job.

 I knew since childhood that teaching was my vocation, and I loved the time in the classroom. I also separated my intellectual life from my creative life--or I should say that I made my intellect primary, and I allowed my creative life to augment and enhance my scholarly writing and presenting.

I enjoyed being creative in the classroom and I encouraged  my students to be creative.

I wrote daily. I kept journals obsessively and I tried to  write down any good lines  as soon as they struck me. I was afraid that if I ignored them, they would stop coming. I figured that my inspirations were  like me:  they might visit  but would not come or stay where they were not wanted.

 I never put my writing of poetry and plays in first place--or not for very long. It was always something that I promised to myself. 

OH, I do recall a few times when I managed to give myself permission to just write creative  work.

  One wonderful semester in the Fall of 1981 our son Joe was off to his Freshman year at Duke University, my husband had a grant to do research on Canadian Theater history in the city of Winnipeg.  So I realized that I could  get an unpaid leave from Bryant College and  spend that time also in Winnipeg.

That I would follow Yashdip's daily agenda of all day reading and writing and  then come home and make a simple supper.

I walked from the 3 room furnished apartment that some friends of Yashdip's brother had  found for us near downtown Winnipeg to the University of Winnipeg in the city center.  Yash went out to the better research library of  the University of Manitoba. 

For the first time in my  adult life I put my writing at the top of my list of things to do. I wrote daily from 9 to 5 sitting either in the University Library or more often at a  table  in what they called the Buffeteria. So the supply of coffee and little snacks was always  present close at hand .

I was very productive, I was writing poems every day because I had no distractions of job, or research, or household or childcare for the first time since I was 20 years old. Now finally I was giving poetry 4 months --not much -- but more than I had dedicated before.  

LATER -- NOT NOW. Now I feel the pressure of time and the fact of disease and aging processes. These scare me and make me understand that in the immortal words of Elvis--IT'S NOW OR NEVER

SO perfect or not I will try to publish  my work and show it to people.

I will stop the false shyness and  recognize that I do the work for the joy of self-expression.  THIS BLOG has taught me that. Do I  like having readers?  and getting comments and feedback from them?  Of course I do.

Would I write if no one read the words or commented on them. YES, I WOULD --I DID for years.

Well the evidence is right before your eyes.  I have  kept this blog going for years with  no sign of readers of comments.

How nice it is to have three followers and some readers who leave comments.  And the  count of page views  tells me there are more out there.  I know because I  read blogs without always  leaving comments.

The creative  joy is in the experience of  writing and clarifying my ideas --I am a person that has  kept a  journal  since college.  The  joy is in the act of writing and expressing myself. I write to the future, I am leaving a record of my thoughts and of life  here and now.

I just received a great encouragement in this eye on the prize  of the future  when I read the most recent issue of ROOTS the journal of the RI Historical  Society.  In this issue they have published a precious testimony that calls across the years "The Journal of Anna Maria Angell Arnold, 1867-1869"  a journal of a young mother nursing her invalid husband returned from The Civil War until his death.
She wrote to the future and the journal was treasured by her grand child and published now. 

And I and many others are reading it and blogging about it in 2018--what greater testimony to the sanctity of remembrance.