Friday, 4/9/21
Good day, good human!
This is an essay for an on-line writing class I took several years ago. Once again, I took on a writing endeavor with a specific theme designated by someone else and went in a direction they never intended. The topic of this paper was about looking for an item in a junk drawer we forgot was in there and then writing about it.
I hope you get a grin from the irony in the essay.
I’ve been grappling with this assignment since the first day, trying to create something reasonable enough to support the belief I’m espousing. When you learn what the topic is you’ll understand why this is ridiculously ironic.
Here’s one of the introductions that was concocted;
“Countless times I’ve noticed bumper stickers that proclaim “I’d rather be _______” with the last word being something like ‘scrapbooking’ or ‘fishing’, etc. Well, in spending way too much time and effort trying to create this essay I re-experienced an epiphany. Let me tell you what I’d rather be.
“Many years ago (eons?) I shoved something into the deepest darkest recess of the junk drawer of life, and I’ve spent all the years since trying to ignore its vacancy in my spirit. I believed if it was not gone for good then it was far enough out of reach that I could never get a firm enough grip on it to maintain it as my own. But I’m finally reaching it, tenuously grasping while bobbling it, and am wallowing in the intermittent joy of trying to claim my new found treasure: Self-acceptance.”
And then I’d end the piece by proclaiming, “I’d rather be . . . (flawed but real) me”.
Yep. I’ve spent copious amounts of time trying to write something good enough to prove I’ve decided to accept my lacking, YET still worthy, self.
There are two other themes and three other versions of this essay wasting memory on this computer because I cannot get it ‘just right’. I’ve gotten up at three in the morning hoping my brain would be too sleepy to stop me from creating the ideal imperfect work, aNd then spent hours rewriting and telling myself what was done was just not satisfactory enough.
Look, I’m really glad I no longer have to strive to be a saint in order to prove myself (I’m rather averse to being martyred, anyway) but ego has not caught up with spirit and so now I’m stymied trying to write a piece that has no run on sentences nor verbiage with pretentious, copious syllables.
Apparently, accepting my humble limitations cannot be expertly executed within a reasonable amount of time, and by that I mean IMMEDIATELY!
So, in an effort to get this written and uploaded before tears of my ineptitude turn into hysteria, I’m turning in this too short, too unedited, and too over thought piece ‘as is’ so as to JUST GET IT DONE! And because I have to get my cats to the vets and make it a library to use their internet before they close, I can’t even spend the next six hours trying to make this good enough.
Golly, it’s such a relief to just ‘BE ME!’
(When did my deep cleansing breaths turn into hyperventilation?)
I’ll be taking next week off, so I’ll meet you back here on April 20. I hope you have some beautiful moments until then!
