The power of letting go
How holding on holds us back
These daily journals have been nice for me, but it’s time I start finding that Ikigai intersection.
Why would anyone ever pay to read my writing? What value do I have that I could share?
And what frame must I work through in order to convey this value?
I think, perhaps, I may just need to be more thorough with my work.
Or maybe I just need to invest a little more. I mean, how can I expect any sort of growth? I think I’ve only got about 25 posts up right now, and scattered within those 25 are probably 10 different formats.
Yes, it is true: I am a phony. How could I be mad I’m not growing when I’ve hardly got anything out there?
Let me first get to 100 posts before I wonder why I’m not growing. Let me set a date, actually . . .
Okay, it is May 22nd, and I have 28 posts published.
If I publish one per day from today until Labor Day, I will have accumulated 104+28, so 132 posts. I reckon I shall re-evaluate my strategy then . . . And I’m sure something will arise that will change things a bit. And even if it doesn’t, I’ll have written that many more words and gotten that much better.
I’ve had a really good week so far. Although, I haven’t totally kicked this sickness that’s plagued me since the week before graduation.
But my life has been relaxing recently, and I’ve sort of got everything, besides my van, together. I’ve been making some money, which is nice, and I’ve been relaxing with friends, and I sort of know my summer plan, and, most importantly, I’ve been working out. And that’s been invigorating.
There is not much more aggravating than doing a bunch of stuff that’s not done well, and then wanting to go back and sort through it, and then realizing it’s just better to move forward.
I don’t know; that’s how I feel about my writing. I’ve said this, or written this, before recently: that I’m aggravated by how much I’ve written because I’m not gonna use most of it, and though there have come a few gems, they’re scattered far and wide between the heaps of shit that have poured onto my pages with them, and so, while there are probably some good ones, it’s not really worth my time working through these heaps.
I have to be okay with just moving forward and trusting that whatever I’ve left behind in those piles I will be able to take forward with me.
I don’t think every writer, or everyone who writes, experiences this frustration because most people only ever write to publish or send, and so never, or probably not so often, leave words behind.
But I think writers, not just people who write, experience more of what I’m experiencing: that they write a lot of stuff that’s good but not great and probably has a few great things scattered within, and so feel like I do—that it’s not entirely worth working backward through the mediocre mounds, and feel that it’s best to trust we carry with us what we’ve said before, though I know this isn’t entirely true because we are not generators of ideas, but receptors of them.
This is frustrating, indeed. We really must leave some things behind. But I think finding a way to accept this is a superpower.
Because, quite interestingly, I’m now reminded of a quote I recently read . . . The first quote that struck me in The Alchemist . . . And I don’t have the book in front of me, so I can’t recall it perfectly. But the idea stopped me, for the first time in my reading of the book, in my tracks. And it went something like:
I held on to things more desperately because I had less and didn’t trust myself to get more in the future.
Here’s the quote:
“And I’m going to hold on to what little I have, because I’m too insignificant to conquer the world.”