… more than a month had passed and I actually did forget that I had set myself this habit. Which is what happens with me all the time, so many plans set up, then I get distracted and then they fall away. But look at me not getting grumpy at myself, and not just throwing it all in. Look at me saying, ‘Okay, well, you’ve missed a lot of days but that’s no excuse to miss a whole lot more.’
I’m on the deck at Clare at the moment, and it’s one of my favourite weather situations, where it’s been hot–so hot–but now the clouds are closing in and there are storms around but they never quite reach here. I’ve done some old-fashioned blogging and taken an untidy picture with my phone and uploaded. Not quite old-fashioned blogging because I had to airdrop it from my phone to my laptop and I never used to that in the noughties. I rarely do it now.
What I love about this weather is the sense of both promise and expectation. This is a feeling that I live with in my chest so often. It’s a wonderful feeling, but equally it is a false friend. Because it gives me the dopamine rush of success, but without putting in the work that’s going to lead to the success. Writing this it has only just made sense to me the impact of what it means, because I have long misinterpreted the sense of anticipation to be a sense of anticipation about the work. But of course the sense of anticipation is about the result. It’s led me to believe that I am looking forward to the work, and then, when the work is hard that makes no sense to me and I stop doing the work. But what it really means is that I’m looking forward to the result.
This probably doesn’t sound like anything to you, but it is actually vaguely profound for me, because it means I immediately see the work in a different light. Something to be endured rather than enjoyed. And if I know it’s to be endured, then I can just remind myself of that while I’m going. The ‘having written’.
One of my favourite Winnie the Pooh things used to be when he was asked what his favourite thing was and he answered, ‘Honey.’ And then he added, but there’s a moment before I eat the honey and that’s possibly just as good. And I think that’s why I’ve always been confused about what my sense of anticipation is focused on. It’s not that hard for Winnie the Pooh to lift the honey to eat it. But it is hard to do the writing that results in the having written.
This is awkwardly written, and to make it a decent piece of writing I would need to go back over it and smooth out the clunkiness, but this is already yesterday’s post posted late, and I’ve got a lot of writing in my heart and my mind waiting to be done.
The End.
