I’ve had an internal struggle today. I missed my blogpost again yesterday. I wish it could say that this was caused by some noble cause, feeding children, curing cancer, getting cats down from trees, but it has really been nothing so lofty. I’ve been having a hard time fitting writing into the new organization of my life, and frankly, I feel somewhat tapped out. I scan the Internet for interesting discussions and facts surrounding the holidays, and I find item after item that I’ve talked about before. I joked to a friend that maybe it is time to write about what a great song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ is. For goodness sake, a wrote about cats dancing around a Christmas tree on Wednesday!
As I worked through my tasks today, I thought about throwing in the towel and writing a “See you next year…maybe,” message today. It is very unlikely that I will complete 24 entries this year, so I felt that the project was “broken,” and I wanted to run away from it. I made all sorts of “self-care” arguments that have been so popular in the past year. What does it really matter, anyway?
But, as I thought further, I had a, “I can tell you what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” moment. I started this project to try and increase my awareness of my life during these few weeks of the year. If I come up dry some days, then that is the product of that day. If I don’t make the time one day, then these are the choices I make.
In short, it’s going too be an incomplete Christmas, an imperfect Christmas. But when has it ever been anything else? As much as I envision writing 24 Emersonian essays, I know this never is the reality. If I write three high quality posts in a season, that is an accomplishment. Abandoning the project because of this imperfection is to pretend that some sort of perfection is possible…and at least with me, that’s never going to be.
So I will keep slogging. Let’s see what happens. I can’t guarantee that what I write will be great, or that I will write at all, but the project continues, and I can guarantee that it will be imperfect.