reading & writing.

I read a lot of things. I read science blogs and get awe-struck over the weird minutiae of this world. I read blogs on writing and culture, book reviews, interviews with authors, glimpses into the literary world. I read about food and try to understand it's role in human life and it's role in my own life, how we get it, what we do with it. I read about religion and the place it has in our society. I read short stories, I read poems, I read novels, I read essays.

I do all of this in the name of personal and intellectual growth (and because I like it). I want to feed my own creativity and to participate in the great human conversation.

But sometimes I spend an hour or an afternoon reading and I tell myself that it's part of my writing time. It is certainly part of my writing life (an essential part) but the real, honest fact is that sometimes it's an excuse. It's just another thing, another way that I can put off writing. It makes me think of Natalie Goldberg in Wild Mind. At one point in her life, she found herself sitting down to write and instead gazing out the window, feeling very peaceful and zen. She thought that she was maybe reaching enlightenment. She asked her spiritual mentor about it and he told her, "No, that's just laziness. Get back to work."

the notebook, continued.

Here's the deal:
Two months ago, I said I was going to finish the notebook. I only had seven pages left. More or less the moment I said those words, it became impossible for me to do it. I still wrote, finished two pieces, blogged, wrote in other notebooks. But something in me resisted finishing this notebook. I don't understand it so I can't explain it. I kind of lied a little, mostly to myself, and said it was done. Well, it wasn't.

I know this might seem insignificant - maybe it is insignificant. But it matters to me.

So today, holed up in Starbucks on my lunch break with an Earl Gray tea, I wrote the last seven pages. There, it's done. I want to throw it away something fierce, but I will not.

The notebook ended on this:

And now I'm staring at these last pages gripped with fear, fear of the beautiful words and the ugly words and myself. Just another face in another Starbucks scribbling things that seem so important. Well what is it? I will not throw it away. Keep on keep on. Stand in the long line and creep forward with each moment and word, stare out the window, look back and blink. 

***

distractions.

Most days, I bring one or two pieces of fruit to work with me. Usually an apple or an orange. You know, I try to be healthy and fruit is good. Here’s the thing: I almost never eat the fruit. I like the idea of eating the fruit, but when it comes down to it, when it’s 3pm and the sun is beating through my window and the fluorescent lights are buzzing and I have the slightest headache just behind my eyes - well I’d rather run across the street and get a burrito filled with cheese and a cookie the size of my head. Just the thought of other face-sized food options turns me off to the lowly apple sitting in my bag on the floor.

Someone who loves me has kindly deemed this my purse fruit.

So I’ll just own up to it: it’s not uncommon for me to carry one sad apple back and forth to work all week and never eat it until one day, in the midst of hunger crisis, I’ll fish the bruised mushy thing out of my bag and eat it. It happens.

Today I discovered the trick to getting myself to eat the fruit.