dangerous.

I opened a new blank page on Sunday morning. I was going to start by writing, I never write early in the morning. But then I felt the need to make pancakes, and then coffee, and then I needed to shower and get ready for a wedding, and predictably, I never wrote.

It is so much about dulling the nerves, and I forget that. The nerves make me want more time, different time, later, after this and the other thing. They make me think instead of just doing.

On Saturday morning, when it was misty and rainy and cool, Jacob and I biked over to Jimmy T’s for breakfast, but the line was too long, so then we biked over to the library for the book sale, and Pound for coffee. We started talking about goals, and I told him that I’ve been thinking that I need to be better about setting goals for my personal life, or really my life as an artist. Because it’s very easy to fall in and then quickly back out of the writing habit when it feels like nothing is on the line.

I write at work on a calendar, with deadlines, with my paycheck figuratively hanging in the balance, because my job is to write things that make people want to give us money. At home I write from the gut, I most often write when I feel like it, and its rarely dangerous or urgent.

I petered out so quickly on this project. Why? What made it feel so terrible? What could I (should I) do differently? How do I fix it? How do I make it feel right for me? Is it supposed to feel right? This is a dark question hole that could go much deeper.

In the last three years, I have thought of myself more and more as a writer and an artist. But I have hesitated, even resisted, the idea of setting goals for myself as an artist. I’ve told Jacob that I’m not sure that I want writing to be a way to make money, that I’m not sure I really want an audience. I'm not sure I want artist to define me. But without that urgency, I worry that I’ll just while away the days and years and that will be it.

And the fact that this thing has such a grip on me, that it fills me with desperation and guilt and longing, in turns, must mean something.

I’m sure that I'm repeating things that I’ve said over and over. I’m writing about writing, and talking to myself, and going on and on, and being self-pitying and self-important and self-occupied. But this is my blog and I’ll do whatever I want. My purpose is to find the way. This is how I’ll do it. 

Meaning: it’s time to set goals that feel dangerous, ones that scare me. I think that’s what comes next.