Looking at my office walls I can see that I’ve become a version of what I always thought a writer was as a kid. The walls are covered with pictures and cool framed passages of writing–some of it my own. There are magnetic strips in the places where I sit to collect my thoughts and there they are, collected in scribbled blacks and reds and blues on little yellow squares of paper or on the backs of things that weren’t meant for notes and suspended from the walls on colorful round magnets.
Here I sit, sipping on a sugary mess of coffee, wondering what if anything I have to say next. I came to this place last night. I was holding a beer (the remains of which I pushed aside to plant my coffee on the solitary coaster) and grading papers. There were tortilla chips and music in the background and the whole thing felt different. It lacked the reverence of the morning session and even that kindling of desire to be in the space producing something more. I don’t know what that means–if it means anything. Here is what I do know:
Louis Pasteur said (loosely translated), “Chance favors the prepared mind.” I believe he meant to express that inspiration and intuition are cultivated through practice and, ultimately, by creating the conditions that allow for such things to flourish. Lately I have been focused on learning what that preparation and those conditions look like for me. By that I mean the ‘me’ of the present. Often I feel like I am restricting myself by relying on–catering to even–the me of the past and the me that, then, I believed I would become. I can often fall into a set of idealized behaviors and beliefs based upon an outmoded value system. Or, to quote Doc Dre, ‘Trying to turn me back to the old me.”
But he’s dead. He’s a fixed part of history and the new me has new goals, patterns, beliefs, etc. The new me takes his coffee with less cream and drinks the occasional beer. The new me wants different things out of his writing and thinks in different ways. The new me loves differently.
So, if this is to have some warm ending message then I suppose it would be that the way you do things ought to be based on who you are. Not were.
Some Thoughts:
- Call. Coffee. Post. What comes next?