50/52 - I Don't, Because... (What Holds Ya Back?)

“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.” - Allegra Goodman

Dear Internauts, 

Hey! We've reached the 50th entry in this year of weekly blogs. It's hard to believe that we've come so far and are almost at the end of 2017. I want to thank you for sticking with me this far. Feel free to reward yourself. Go see a star wars. 

Anyways...

Negative self-characterization forces a disproportionate emphasis on inability, or, in less obnoxious terms, I suppooooooooooose I don’t do things because I think I can’t do those things. Rather, I don’t believe in my ability to be successful in the attempt. 

Success—that ever-nebulous fluidic frustrater—readily adapts to my insecurity. 

I don’t because it won’t be my best.

I don’t write a song, because it won’t be the best song I’ve ever written. 

I don’t write a novel, because it won’t be the best story I’ve ever told with the best words in the best order and structure. 

I don’t draw a comic because I can’t draw well enough to convey the images in my mind. 

Most inconveniently, this crushing doubt often waits to fall until I’ve walked partway into the booby-trapped house of trying and, like a bulbous amateur, stepped unknowingly through the trip-wire of comparison. 

I don’t because it won’t be the best.

I don’t write a song, because it won’t be a hit. 

I don’t write a novel, because it won’t be an instant classic/bestseller. 

I don’t draw a comic because it won’t be a staggering work of genius which both reflects the best of and elevates the medium, blending words and pictures with perfect clarity and style to a degree reminiscent of while also transcending all my favorite graphic novels from Fun Home to Maus to Sandman to Cable and Deadpool. 

This is certainly not helped by the nagging conflict arising from consuming some mediocre piece of media and simultaneously reflecting on how much better I could do and how I could not even come close to the very basics of how it got made. Sure, for movies, plays, comics, and even songs, there’s usually anywhere from a handful to a couple thousand people behind the project. That doesn’t stop me from fantasizing about popping into one aspect of the production and managing to destruct the whole circus from the inside out. With novels or my songwriting, though, there’s just me facing down the glare of greatness. No matter how many writing blogs, interviews, quotes, or lectures remind me that the first draft is always (and is supposed to be) awful, the fear of ultimate failure prevents me from even taking that little leap. 

I don’t because it won’t be the best right away.

Truth is, I have boxes of notebooks full to the point of illegibility with songs, poems, and story fragments I wrote as a kid. Like some kind of creative stomach bug, I couldn’t help but puke up ideas. And just like literal vomit, they stink, make my insides hurt, make my eyes water, and are full of half-digested chunks of stuff made by other people that used to look appealing. Still, they exist, and maybe that’s worth something. After all, instead of even trying to keep creating, am I now just paging through some five-star cookbook without even setting the pot to boil? 

From an enormous accumulation of junk, there might be a line worth saving here or there. From the unadulterated outpouring of thought run-off, maybe some semblance honest expression. From the mad dash for my phone or a pen and scrap paper, maybe enough obscure notations to begin a shaping. 

It’s optimistic, sure, and we both know that’s not my style. However, this shift from writing and drawing and playing and imagining in excess to this dry sense of listless wandering didn’t happen in a bubble. Adulthood isn’t some concrete robotic function of assimilation wherein we shed the youthful, foolish flesh of wonder and delusion. 

I don’t because it won’t be “perfect”.

For a heaping chunk of my life, I could measure success in letter form and/or percentages marked in red pen. For years, at regular intervals I would not only be told whether or not I was succeeding in my role as a person but to what extent. Not only that, but I was surrounded by a very distinct range of my peers, starting with the year we started breathing on our own. Breaking it down further into the location where our parents moved us then into (sometimes grades or interest based but most often) completely random class groups of fifteen to thirty-five, we were lined up in rows and tested on the consumption and regurgitation of information, all of it preached at us as if were the most important thing we would hear that day forever. Pretty soon, biases formed and vertical mobility became something of an illusion. Do well enough early on and the expectation of future perfection is implicit and harshly monitored. Do poorly enough early on and the expecation of even having a future is moderately considered at best. Also, sometimes they made us run laps. 

But now I’m supposed to be some kind of adult. Like, I’m supposed to have been some kind of adult for a little over nine years now. Sure, there’s college or whatever, but even nearing the end of my junior year in high school, I was already realizing the standards for excellence among my peer group had started to dematerialize. After decades of having to know what they wanted I had to suddenly know what I wanted. In my case, I didn’t wanted to try this higher education thing, but my settings were all still stuck in what my default authority figures wanted for me. I’d trusted them so far without an inordinate piling-up of life-threatening situations, but then it turns out that adulthood may literally be trying to kill me. 

I don’t because adulthood is literally trying to kill me.  

The life of a child and teen is designed to make you into something, while everything after that seems to be about being that something. Or maybe it’s about rejecting that something? Coming to terms with it? Deconstructing it? 

I don’t know. Do you know? Is anybody out there? HELLOOOO!?!!

Besides the fact that my peer group is more obscure, diverse, and several billion times larger, there is no longer an obvious score card for success. Okay, so we can draw a nice parallel between how grades “aren’t everything” with how now money “isn’t everything”. Of course, grades can determine a lot of your future and that future can determine a lot of your finances and finances can be the difference between both where you live and, well, if you live. 

Y’know, money isn’t the key to happiness, but since Donny’s parents could afford to send him to summer camp where he made a nice lanyard, whether or not he ever finds the key to happiness, at least he’ll have a place to put it. 

But hey, being happy isn’t everything either. Everything isn’t everything, so what does that matter? 

If the only mirror I have to look at is a photo of someone else, I’m gonna miss a few things.

I don’t because I don’t. 

If I look at a cup of flour or a single egg and can’t see a birthday cake, that’s rational. 

If I look at that flour or that egg and get upset it’s not a birthday cake, that’s stupid. 

If I look at the four or the egg and can both picture the birthday cake and recognize that they’re not the same thing, that’s perspective.

When I make pancakes instead and decide not to compare them to the birthday cake that could have been, that’s growth. 

And  “when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.”

I do because I must. 

If nothing else, there’s always compulsion. If I leave a little blood at the scene, it may not be the perfect crime, but it will still be mine. 

Thanks for reading, 

Odist