Slow Going

Some days it feels like I’m going in the right direction…but still I’m waiting for the train to actually leave the station. It’s not really a sense of impatience, more like a deliberate slow start to get up to speed. I know I’ll get there eventually, I just want to do it right and with minimal failure or distraction.

I’m pretty sure that part of this comes in response to how I lived for most of the 90s: no idea where I was going, jumping on any bandwagon that sounded cool, throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks. I made a lot of mistakes. Some easily fixable, but a lot of remorse and embarrassment as well. I knew I was doing it wrong but had no other way, no other frame of reference to learn from. By the end of the decade I’d learned some, but there was still a long way to go.

Here at the end of 2020, I’m starting off what I’d like to think is a new wave of writing. The way I look at my own works has changed considerably; there’s a bit more clarity and a lot more patience and control. I’m deliberately not running headlong into these new projects without a plan or even a solid plot. If this means I take a day not writing, so be it. I know that I’m not avoiding the project, I’m merely not clearcutting my way into a destructive mess. I can pick it up in the next day or so. Five hundred words, even two hundred, is better than trying to force a thousand when they’re not there in the first place.

Lately I’ve been feeling as though I’m at a crucial point in my creative and personal lives; that point where the next steps are going to be a whole new world. Am I afraid of that? Maybe so. I kinda sorta know what I’m doing? I think? But that’s okay; the more important thing here is that I trust myself. I trust myself to move forward, knowing what I’m doing and where I’m going. That helps me overcome those fears. And soon those fears will lessen and not be so overwhelming.

It’s slow going, but it’s going.