Update 16 - All the Devils You Don't Know

My writing process has continued to be consistent. Saturday I spent most of the morning writing, had all the time in the world. And then I hit this kind of wall.

I’ve found when I am doing well, that when there is nothing to write home about, I get nervous. It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop, but not quite that specific. It’s like waiting for a meteor to come out of the sky and mar the valley layout. It’s less like trying to remember if you left the stove on, and more like trying to see something outside of your visual spectrum and knowing it’s there.

I wonder if it is not a wall of doubt, of calcified limitation deposited by habit. It seems best to press on, but it also seems to slow me the more I push into it, like working through a wall of sucking mud. In the context of that mud, it is important to note that I have not drowned in it just yet.

I like pushing past what I’m capable of. I think about my cousin lifting weights, and telling me “time over tension”. It seemed like such an elegant equation to boil down building strength. Time, over tension.

There was a time when I didn’t leave the house without a concealed handgun. There was a time when I was too nervous to drive. It is not enough to stay tense over a prolonged amount of time. That strains and breaks a muscle after a point. We must allow ourselves to rest. I feel as though the forces that work on our lives push and pull, just as muscles do.

I don’t know what’s going to push and pull me going forward, only the direction in which I wish to go. I know I’m going to run into things I can’t understand, but mostly I am concerned about the things in me I’ve yet to identify. But I cannot be concerned, and that’s the pisser. I’ll keep on the same general crooked road, I just think too often of all the devils I don’t know.