Meditative Prose
Saturday, 18 October 2008
Photo by Scott Ingram
I never meant to abandon this site for two months. Granted, it was a busy two months, but that’s not the point: I should be able to contend with the busy parts of my life, and still have time and energy to devote to worthwhile creative pursuits like this journal (and all the other things I never do). But I let my life take me a for a ride again, and it all culminated this week when I got back from Chris and Jerilyn’s wedding and immediately got a horrible head cold. Now that I’ve recovered a little, I feel this acute sense of regret that I’m not able to live more gracefully. I am constantly playing catch-up, and the result is that friends go un-emailed, parents go un-called, websites go un-updated, and I am constantly apologizing. This, I think, is what Henry meant by a life of “quiet desperation.”
Every time I have ever had a website (and I have had many), this has happened. Every single time. I painstakingly design a site that suits me, build it to my exacting standards, then start off strong, posting regularly. Before long, and without fail, new entries become less and less frequent, until eventually I give up altogether. The funny thing is that I always try again — a new name, a new design, but the same story. But I keep trying because I know this creative outlet is something I crave — I just haven’t figured out how to do it right yet.
When I think about it, this website is one of the best things I do, and it could be so much better. Ideally, this space could be the epicenter of my creative life, a place to brainstorm and share ideas with friends and family, explore and fix my creative process, and post the photos, drawings, and essays that I’m particularly proud of. It could be a living portfolio and notebook. That is what I’ve always wanted in a website, but that’s not something you can do if you’re always trying to play catch-up. So let it be known that, as an extension of my general self-improvement effort, I will be trying to post here more often. Feel free to judge my success or failure by whether or not I have to apologize again.
