Flaws and Chaos

I guess it doesn’t matter how you get there, but—that you get there. And I am there…again. Back to realizing that no matter how imperfect my days, how chaotic the struggle to write…I write. I write on. My quote: “Save yourself. Write anyway” has its roots in the fabric of my days since I began writing.

Two reality checks: Bill Shannon dances on crutches. (Story featured in Standard Examiner Go! Section March 12, 2010) He has a degenerative disease in his hip joints, but he dances—and skateboards. He took what he loves and what life’s handed him and he—dances. He calls it building his own pathways.

An article in the April 17, 2010, Woman’s Day titled Life’s Not Perfect, about wabi sabi—embracing imperfection. Our lives are changing all the time and chaos sometimes happen…and mistakes. Things just don’t go according to plan. As I read this article, I remembered reading what the author said, that Japanese artists often left mistakes or flaws in pottery or art to remind them, even nature isn’t perfect.

These two things found me after the appointment-making fiasco last week. Perfect timing, too, as two mistakes (small mistakes and some would say insignificant, but I tend to obsess) I made this weekend haunt me. My frustration with life interrupting my writing haunts and nag and shame me.

I mean, really, sometimes life just happens and if it didn’t what would I write about? I’ve come to the conclusion it’s more about me than the interruptions. Maybe it is easier to blame that kind of stuff than saying I’m not working hard enough, or I’m trying, not doing, or any number of problems more likely than just the time issue.

Life just spins along and stuff happens. I forget. I get caught up in producing words and forget that to have something worthwhile to write about, to find the kind of stories I most want to write—simple, homespun, life-affirming stories— I must be out in the world living.

I need to learn to accept that life is not without flaws and chaos. My life might not always be conducive to a writing life, but it’s my life—and I am a writer. That’s who and what I am. I can’t lie to myself about that fact. I just have to find a way to be me in what life dishes out. And maybe, that’s another story.