Oh, dear me. I have complicated my life in ways that are not the least bit necessary. That realization started with my website experiment. I tried to make it cheaper because it seems silly to have one in the first place. WhY? I am not selling my writing there, just parking it somewhere that folks can access and bypass Facebook. Y’see, Facebook has some wicked fine print on ownership of your posts…I haven’t got a lawyer and haven’t been able to figure the legalese out. I am not satisfied that what I post on Facebook remains my intellectual property. So…I decided to keep the website, change it to a free one and then carry on as before. Turns out that it is more convoluted to change things up than I thought. I re-decided to keep the website as a personal website and pay the lower rate. Now, my domain name points to the wrong page? See what I mean? I have complicated things unnecessarily. All of this has happened because I am bored at home in lockdown? Sorta.
I discover that a lot of what else I am doing in my living is complicating the process of born-live-die in frustrating ways. Writing and music are other examples that further complicate the personal website debacle. As to writing. I did do it. I did write that full length novel. I did finish an entire book of poetry. I also spend every day whipping out at least a thousand words that fly up into my blog or get parked in my journal. Well and good. That works ok, no expectations of coherence or depth from the journal or blog. I can just write and leave it. The trouble comes when I start looking at my other writing, the poetry, the novel and realize how much work I have to do making it ring true, tell a meaningful story, entertain, edify…Shiza.
The music? Well now, it is almost comically bad. I sit at the piano and disgust myself, I sing and that damned E4 eludes me every time. I hit it high, I hit it low. Sigh. I am certainly a regular Mrs. Miller or a Florence Foster Jenkins. Lots of work needs to be done in the Bright Tunes department if I am to produce a recording or a performance of any value beyond, “Hey, Aunt Liz is going to play a little something she has been working on for the last ten years.” These things are complications because I want music, writing and creative things to have value as more than a personal exercise in keeping myself busy. This here Velveteen rabbit wants to be real and real is way hard work. I don’t have the time left for the work, I procrastinated and spent a heck of a lifetime trying to be someone other than the person I am.
Sigh. Here I am, now… A potential novel ahead of me yet, as some 70,000 words sit there and await redrafting. A potential album of music is sitting there, uncompleted, unrehearsed. From while to while, I pick the things up and thrash away at them again, energized to complete something useful but each renewed vigour day is a day to realize how sad the work is, yet. It is difficult to accept, what with believing that I don’t have value if I don’t succeed in the endeavors I chose. At seventy, I still labour to accept myself just as he is. I am a man of ambition but I am also, a common man. I have built a series of lop-sided birdhouses that are the kinds of things simply overlooked. When staring at my reflection and asking ‘who is fairest’, I still see that bloody Snow White! She is showing me how little I have accomplished, how much remains to do, how I still put the hard work of changing into what I would wish to be away to the side.
Actually, it may not be possible to ‘be anything you want to be, go anywhere you want to go, do anything you want to do — if you try hard enough.’ There are limits. Was Sonny Bono a good songwriter? No, not really. Did he try hard enough? um…Yeah, yeah he did. Did he achieve something? Well, yes. He became Aunt Liz at the piano and a lucky Aunt Liz. What he did not become was greater than he was. We have ourselves in our own way. Ourselves are formidable obstacles. Ourselves are our limits.
I am not suggesting that we should not bother to try, to make attempts at something we consider more than, better than. No. We need to get up off the couch. The thing is this: Expecting ourselves to be more, to be better — criticizing ourselves when we don’t succeed… Those aren’t useful motivators. All they do is measure you downward and take the joy of doing away from you. I think I understand now that dropping a negative objective view is the best way to get your job done. Don’t listen to the little coach voice screaming at you, “You can do better! You must do better!” You can still be realistic but the thing is to drop the self-consciousness and just do what you want, be who you like without expectations. I don’t guess that a thing is pure if doing it to perfection is the only focus. Expectation of perfection is what complicates your life. Remembering that you have weaknesses is not a bad thing but allowing the weaknesses to take away your joy of living is the foolish part. Funny thing is, I have the feeling that those who just accept themselves as they are — also accept others more readily as being who and what they are. “Mmm-hmmm”, I can hear somebody’s mama say.
Robert On The Air 