Dailies

Not that anyone cares but I haven’t kept up with my dailies. I’m an inconsistent worker as a teacher, resorting to easy lessons I find online when I can’t be bothered to connect with students that don’t want to be there regardless of how I try, and as a writer, canceling projects with friends due to personal problems that they probably won’t ever blame me for but that I will because it’s just another ripple I have to recover from, and even as a person, refusing to stream because I don’t want attention on me or to be the only voice in the room. Just thinking about that last one has me antsy lately.

So when doing my daily writings and posting them, I feel pressure to write well. Or even complete writings. No one watches the daily workouts of Olympians, instead opting for games with maybe a montage of their training to see how they’re so great at the sport. I haven’t had that greatness moment for most people so my practice isn’t going to be interesting. It was an experiment.

I’m also a nervous person by nature, which maybe no one really realizes. It hasn’t been bad since 2013 because I was with someone who told me whenever I was nervous that it’d be okay. My first month teaching, I was meeting all these new people from Korea and Australia and Canada and I kept hearing my hellos and thinking those are awful. I go up a few octaves. It doesn’t even sound like me. Not just the recording of it played back, but when I heard it as I said it, I’d wonder where that came from. And it really bothered me one night. What an absurd thing to get anxious over, right? No one ever cares about a hello or how it sounds. No one cares about half the shit I used to worry about or that I worry about now. If I run, people assume I’m out there everyday or if they’re local to the area and see that I’m not there everyday, they’re thinking “Good for him. I should really start running,” but while I’m running and passing pedestrians, I think they’re thinking “Look at that jiggle. Look at how red his face is. He’s probably only been going for a block and he’s out of breath,” and it’s easy to get discouraged. The same with typing in chat or getting in voice chat with new people or just too many people. I’ll be a little quieter. I’ll type something out so I can say it just right and I’ll start typing and erase it. A lot. And these are popcorn personality moments that people consume, laugh at, then move on, never thinking of again unless I really screw up. Or really delight someone.

So I’m already nervous about those, and writing is supposed to be more considered, and it’s actually judgment worthy. When a story fails, or seems to fail based on analytics, it’s more pressure than I’m already feeling and my well of storytelling gets emptied—I’ve used “mess” too much; what’s a different word? Or I’ve already told a sad story; let’s try a happy one?--so I’m just filling that bucket with dirt. Or what I think is dirt. I only have so many life experiences and to tell a story is to use that up. I can’t write a weekly story about the first time I lost a dog so unless I make it a regular series that goes on for too long, then I have to get it right that first time I publish it. Which then cordons off a lot of my life that is worth telling a story about and I go for little moments that come out trivial.

You should have known me back 2012. I wrote so much. A lot shook me up after that. Now I have so many ideas that you’d see if I only had the courage.