But At Least It's Something

I’ve been waiting to write because there’s this story I REALLY need to tell about my day on Friday – and it's a funny story, one about which I sigh and laugh and proudly think to myself “only in New York” (although I’m certain it’s the type of day nearly everyone has had, but there’s a prevailing attitude in New York City that these things do happen “only in New York.” I actually wonder if that phrase is becoming like an adjective that precedes types of days, or encounters, or stories, yet ones that do happen, to everyone, everywhere: "I had an 'only in New York' experience, today, honey" (says someone in Kansas).

In any case, my not being able to accurately relay my day in words – to my standards – has precluded me from writing anything at all. I have a good story to tell, and I am absolutely incapable of telling it. I want to tell it right. I want to convey the proper amount of humor and light-heartedness and irony that the story warrants. Perhaps in even building it up this much I’ll never be able to tell it. Or, perhaps, I’ll work on it at strange hours, and I’ll peck away at the details, pulling out entire scenes and changing tenses and persons and tones until one day it blooms into an entirely different form, maybe as a dialogue-only entry or as a series of vignettes, and I will then post it as “One Day in New York...”

What I have just realized is that I need to stop feeling like this. Period. Contrary to what it may seem I've just said, primarily it's not my lack of writing ability that bothers me. At all. What does strike that proverbial chord is that this is what I’ve done to people I’ve cared about very deeply in the past: if I don’t feel that I have anything great to say, anything that is of monumental significance or that is particularly impressive (in either the positive or horrifying sense), then I just won’t say anything at all. And I’ll drop off all types of communication, because why would s/he want to hear about the nothing that I’ve been doing, the non-interesting person that I am right now? Yet isn’t this what I thought I had conquered at the beginning of this year? Hadn’t I gotten over my issues with not communicating with people because of thinking I’m not good enough, wise enough, funny or insightful or empathetic or clever enough? Isn’t this how I’ve let friendships slide away, leading me down the ugly brick road that shuts doors that I don’t want to be shut at all? I am not fucking perfect, and sometimes, my writing or my life or my stories will just plain suck. But it does NOT make people – at least the type of people I want in my life – any less willing to hear from me. In fact, I think all of the people that I want in my life actually do think they suck sometimes. Of course, they’re wrong, and so also am I wrong, right now.

So I’m calling my own bullshit here. I’m saying, fuck you, LM, just speak, girl. Okay, so I had a chaotic and insanely amusing day on Friday. And some day I’ll recapture that day again and it will flow out of me naturally. Or maybe it won’t. But to my few readers now (readers whom I have admittedly cajoled into reading this), I won’t stop writing merely because I judge myself as not being able to tell that one story well enough for them to read. Since Friday, a lot has happened; I have had my usual share of adventures and misadventures, both inside of my head and in the outside world. And I’ve refused to write about them, because I have gotten stuck on perfecting that one fucking story first. If all this entry turns out to be is nothing but a) a confirmation of the fact that yes, I do want to keep writing, because I have something to say and b) mediocre clichés about the process of writing (bore, bore, bore) – then at least I have written SOMETHING.

Which is more than I would have done in the past. So I'll slap myself five and move it on along to the next entry.