Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Abandoned

I used to judge abandoned blogs. Why start something and just leave it hanging? Why publicly reveal you are a quitter? Why leave up something that is dead? These questions betray the immaturity of my thinking. Is something not worth doing if you cannot do it forever? No, that's absurd. Life has many phases that flow from one to the next, and very few are chapters that have a definitive end. 99.9% of blogs are probably currently inactive. So what? A blog is just one form of self expression and communication. Perhaps those authors have kept writing elsewhere, or perhaps they have stopped writing and pursued other efforts. Wish them well, wish them satisfying and life-giving endeavors.

How many more things will I write (or think) that I will change my mind on? If I have grown, and learned, should I not be kind to my past self and appreciate that I can change? I have always worried that if I spoke my mind I would regret that I had because one day I may change my outlook. As if I were afraid of growth. But that would actually be a bad thing, to never change or never admit you were wrong, and there is power in doing that publicly. Popular opinion can be too unforgiving and we would benefit from encouraging and forgiving those willing to admit when they are wrong. Why would I stifle my own free practice of this belief yet want it desperately for others?

And yet I have not grown much because I have stopped myself from saying anything lest I should be called out on it. I need to find the courage to say if I am wrong, I can grow, and if I am not then I need to speak truth. I need to stop being ashamed of truth. And also, stop worrying about a fictional hypothetical theoretical unlikely time when I may be highly criticized because I am highly visible. I should be so lucky! Life has certainly shown that in all but the rarest of cases, fame is hard to come by. An audience must be won, and I am not the type to do it by any means I find ignoble. If I have earned it, I will have succeeded in speaking truth.

In hindsight, it is all the Resistance* doing its job so well, keeping me in the "safe" zone, protecting me from myself and others. I have not been being brave. I have not been acting clever. To call it what it is, I have been timid, I have given myself over to lethargy, and I have been too quick to chase easier thrills and leave the hard work behind. It doesn't kill me to journal. It is merely discipline about bedtime and discipline during times of upheaval, whether that be injury, pandemic, or malaise. I am enabling an amateur when I'm long past due to go pro.

(*See The War of Art by Steven Pressfield)