Exploring the Well

Wandering the savage garden...

The end of the streak

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I’d been riding a twenty-two day streak in my “five hundred words a day” challenge, including some days when I found it really hard to sit down to actually write. That streak is over, unfortunately, although it’s “sort of” and “not really” and “darn it, I was doing so well.”

It’s not really over, because I actually did write more than five hundred words yesterday, and published them, too; I just didn’t publish them here, and I didn’t record that I’d published them, either. I remembered too late; I record that I’ve written my five hundred words as part of the publishing process, and since I didn’t follow the publishing process here, I didn’t record that at least I’d written enough to fulfill the challenge.

So: the streak is dead, officially, even though I actually did fulfill my writing assignment for the day (and, at word one hundred and fifty or so in this post, I’ve actually exceeded my assignment by a lot for today, too.)

In a way, this is actually a good thing. I didn’t even think about having written at least five hundred words, because it’s been pretty normal for me over these last few weeks. Sure, I didn’t fulfill my own rules concerning the assignment (publish, publish here, no editing except for inline mistakes caused by poor/rapid typing, record the publication) but that’s okay.

I’m not a slave to the assignment, I hope.

And it’s nice to think that it’s become normal enough again that publishing isn’t much of an event. I used to publish three or four things a day – shorter things, I guess (averaging around two hundred words each), five days a week, fifty plus weeks a year (I occasionally took a week off or so), but over the last few years I’ve been in a sort of resting state.

I wish I could edit that last sentence! I’d rewrite it as “I’ve been in a resting state over the last few years, after publishing multiple pieces every workday for years, with only occasional breaks.” Wait, does this count as “editing?”

I guess I felt like I’d more or less done my bit for creating content for a while, and it wasn’t really important for me to be heard, or read, all that much. So publishing light content every few months was enough to satisfy any need I had to write for public consumption. (I still write a lot for my own enjoyment, but much of it’s for internal interest only.)

So the writing challenge – which continues, by the way, for at least another few days – has been very, very useful. It’s kickstarted me back into writing regularly, and even if the writing isn’t stellar or particularly topical, at least it’s writing – you don’t ride a horse like a master on day one, you have to ride every day.

And that’s what this has been, and what it remains. It’s a lot of fun.

Almost impossible to write today

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I feel like writing more about the nature of persistence, because “persistence” is a quality I feel like I’m badly missing right now. I struggled a few days ago with the idea of writing, writing, writing despite my desire to take a day off, but I think today is actually the day where it’s the hardest.

I don’t know why, either. I actually had more time today to write; I actually thought of a few ideas that could have served as sparks about which to write. Some were actually halfway decent.

Every time I thought of something – “Gee, I should write that” – I just couldn’t muster the energy to actually sit down and write. I guess “energy” is not the right word – I had the energy, I just didn’t have the will to sit down and commit the time to actually writing the idea, trying to flesh it out beyond a seed of an idea.

I’m still there. I’m just writing because I have a streak going, and I don’t want to lose the streak. I keep track of it with a community of fellow writers, you know, and I hate to let them down – even figuratively – by breaking my own streak and commitment.

I could always lie, of course. I could record that I had written something, and just not include a url – most of the writers don’t publish daily like I do. But I do publish daily, and I don’t lie. Part of my commitment to the challenge is to publish every day, and publish the url, so I have the accountability to myself and to my fellow writers.

But it’s very hard. I almost chose to break the streak through ennui, which would have been honest but … I value that streak. I value the idea that I’m making it through. I value the idea that I might actually make my streak – even if my recorded streak isn’t as long as my actual streak. (I signed up for the community after I’d started writing every day, and I missed recording a day, even though I’d published.)

So I’m not happy with what I’m writing right now – it seems paltry and weak, uninspired and uninspiring. I’m sorry, whoever is reading this. I’m trying to reach deep within to forge a sense of will, such that I’m forcing myself to write, and as a result, what I’m writing is crap.

Can’t be helped. I just don’t think I have anything better in me right now. What I want to do is sleep; what I’m doing is sitting at a keyboard, trying to spit out words the best I can.

And I have seventy words left to go. I’m tempted to use a pulp writer’s trick, and use a word over and over again (and over and over again) to build up word counts. Is that cheating?

Probably.

More Persistence

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I still feel like I’m on a plateau, writing-wise. I am feeling a little sorry for myself, and I keep thinking of Nehemya in the process.

But it struck me, in the midst of my mild self-pity, that Nehemya isn’t the only example of dogged persistence in the Bible. Instead, you find many, many, many people who stuck it out despite long odds and stretches of despair.

I was trying to think, “Who would have been the earliest?” but I think as soon as you hit any form of history you have the story of persistence in motion. Even in the bits of Bereshis that are pre-modern history (i.e., before Avraham) you have that same record of “I will persist.”

I think Avraham, though, is the start of persistence, someone standing in faith against everything around him. Ur was polytheistic; Avraham was a monotheist, and held his own as a champion of the One. Even though he failed (presenting Sarah as his sister, for example, which I don’t quite think I understand) he kept his faith – in stunning and frightening ways. (I don’t think I would have had the faith to sacrifice Yitzchak.)

Then you have Yaakov, waiting fourteen years to marry Rachael. Then he ran and reconciled with his brother Esau, whom he cheated.

Then Yosef, in Egypt, forced into slavery by his brothers and then rescuing his family from starvation.

Then Moshe. Then Y’shua bin Nun. Then the judges of the tribal league… even Yiptach, who sacrificed his daughter.

David, too, persisted. Shmuel.

In the end, I had a harder time figuring out the protagonists in the Bible who did not show that their lives were their worship of the One than finding examples of persistence. In other words, everyone showed that persistence was one of the core values – not just faith, but faith in this and every other moment.

In a way, that’s encouraging – it means that their faith isn’t being measured in the moment. Having faith when the chips are down, or up, isn’t the point, although it’s a point.

The key is realizing that faith is a picture, painted over a thousand days – from its birth in your soul to your last day on Earth. By trying, by living, you’re having faith, even if you may not feel like it.

Nehemya, for example… he probably had his down days. He probably looked around at the wall around Yerushalaim being slowly built, at the enemies around him who didn’t want the wall built, and had his moments of despair and ennui.

Then he might have remembered why he was there, and remembered the progress shown despite the obstacles, and decided that it didn’t matter how he felt – he could see the wall from his dreams, and see a world in which Yerushalaim was rebuilt and repopulated.

And he kept going – showing the faith and persistence he’s known for.

Sometimes persistence is measured by your belief

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As I’ve already written, I’m in a rut right now (originally wrote “trough,” and man does that sound pretentious). I’m struggling to do a lot of the things I’ve made a commitment to myself to do, including my daily writing.

I’m having to force myself to keep going, to cross over this valley I’m in.

The day before yesterday, for example, I didn’t shave; one of my commitments to myself was to shave every day. (I hate beards; I just also hate shaving.) That was the first day of the year on which I’d not shaved; even when I was on a business trip, I made sure to lug along my razor. But hey, let me just pick a regular old day of the week – no special circumstances, nothing really going on that’s unusual – and lapse then.

Yesterday, I got back on the wagon, so to speak; I’m clean-shaven again. Hopefully it was a one-day lapse and nothing more.

But then I was thinking about it: Why? Why is it a big deal to me? Why is something so trivial seeming to loom so large?

What if I have another day like that, like yesterday, where I struggle so much to write? Do I just shrug my shoulders and … not do it?

To me, I think it comes down to persistence and the reason for it.

I don’t think shaving is that big of a deal, really. It’s just a personal thing; it’s not even especially a hygiene thing. (I just dislike being scruffy.) Lapsing with shaving causes a focus on my ability to commit, not my willingness to shave my face. That’s what upset me about it (if “upset” is the right word) – it’s the failure of commitment, not the act itself. I don’t believe in the cult of the clean face.

Writing is a little different. With writing, I’m trying to form a habit and I’m trying to fulfill a commitment. I believe in what I’m trying to do here. A failure to write is, actually, a bigger failure than a failure to scrape off my nascent beard.

That’s not to say that the overall impact is necessarily greater – in the end, if I don’t write on a given day, all I’ve done is taken a day off. I’d be disappointed (just as I am with my shaving) but the world wouldn’t end.

But because I believe in the result I’m trying to create by writing, the shadow is larger.

Is that contradictory? “It matters, but it doesn’t really matter, even though it matters,” is what I feel like I’ve said. And I actually think it matters… even though it doesn’t really matter… but it kinda does matter, even so.

This is why, even though I’m trying to avoid editing myself, I have to edit myself; if I don’t, what I write tends to be a mess of contradictory gibberish that only I could read and understand and agree with. Be happy I’m not transcribing my actual word associations (yet)!