Write. Cry. Wait. Repeat.

One of the things that gave me scribomania this month was reading a lot, a lot. I’m never going to stop bragging about it so here are the numbers: I read about 70 books between January until June. In early July, writing 1500-2000 words in one-half hour sprints happened regularly.

Hence, how I started writing a lot, a lot.

The bulk of those thousands and thousands of words were garbage. Just plain, disgustingly plain mind dumping. But, since I got to writing a lot, a lot, patterns started emerging. Thank the predictability of integrity in personality and cognitive structures for that.

THEN. After a while of mind dumping, I grew to actually like the voices in my head. Yeah they’re vehement and with a flamboyant flair for propaganda. But they’re not immune to reasoning. Nor are they too above the beatings of an ego bash.

Liking develops trust. Learning to trust the intentions of the meanest voices in my head, on the holiest month of the year, at the worst week of the girly cycle, from the bottom of this auditory hell of a village, develops the faintest shades of c-o-n-f-i-d-e-n-c-e. I have to be careful here. There’s no telling what’s waiting to jinx something as magical and fleeting as that particular C element in writing.

Although, considering all the trouble that it took to bring in that C element, it took a while to shake off too. I mean, when I wasn't writing, I didn't think I was doomed. Again. This year. It just felt that I needed some time off. I needed to cool my embers and simmer and cook slower. It felt okay to write or not to write that very minute of that very day. Quota? It can wait.

THEN IT HAPPENED.

Between reading a lot, a lot, writing a lot, a lot, and hanging out with just the right people, a story emerged. IT HAPPENED. It came from a deep and desperate place, drenched in writabilitiness. I held it and wrote it while constantly on the verge of crying for two days.

And I kinda died.

It was just that kind of story. It was a story that forced me to stop writing to breathe. To stop, stoop, spot and justify the fallen tear drops on the pages that will always, always remember every excruciating minute spent on bringing them forth to the world.

And this is where I kinda sucked: That it’s been nearly two weeks and I’m still recuperating.

Okay, so in those two weeks, Eid also happened, and no God-fearing Asian would dare to skip on the elaborate ritual of repetitive and meaningless small-talk if they still want to have a fighting chance of getting buried in the family lot.

But it's been two weeks and I still haven't grown the ovaries to touch that story that crushed me and everything writer about me.  If any of you happen to know someone, get a certain something that would help an idiot to recuperate faster between creative cycles and explosions. YOU'RE A PAL.

Nevertheless, write we must, for writing we like. Bruises and blues regardless. Along with all the bric-a-stuffy-bracs that makes a writing HAPPEN. Along with the hours of reading, the risks of hemorrhoids, and social estrangement. If anything, writing hints that I am well. That I'm in no shortage of awesome brainfood to read. That my bottom is fairly comfortable and my heart is beating in its place. That the electricity and internet are running. And that my family and loved ones are fine. That we have plenty to be grateful for.

Hamdillah for everything that made THAT sentence happen.

A Sense of Control

"At least you feel time."

Been writing this story for two days now.

It started as a plaything, something to tease the friend who inspired it. But then it grew into this colossal 4000-word thing. And it's still growing because I haven't really gotten my heart into writing the third act.

I haven't gotten my heart into writing the third act because I'm crying my way through the second act, the "all is lost" part. I cried when I was outlining the story. I cried when I realized how the ending was going to come. I'm crying through the first draft, detailing the losses in the second act.

It feels like auditing a year's worth of sadnesses.

It feels like how it felt the first time, except now, this time, it's voluntary. It's mine. Arriving and leaving upon my behest. And that illusion of control, albeit brief and limited only to these pages, heals.

Malam Jumat Kliwon, Moon in ♉️

All the while writing on paper, I kept wondering why the spellcheck wasn't working. 

The Closing

I had been struggling with “What’s the point?” dilemma ever since I wrote up the Cliodynamics of Literature. Struggling as in literally sweating for a way to loosen the paralysis. Struggling as in making up excuses to leave town and take the five-hour train ride to attend a writing festival in Jakarta.

I.

The Cliodynamics of Literature opened up vistas for my head. While writing it, I thought I was going to reach a conclusion that is as final and abrasive as “The society is in peril if it doesn’t read literary fiction.”

Even though my conclusion did not exactly fizzle like a snubbed cigarette butt, it still fizzled. I couldn’t be abrasive in my closing. Heck, I didn’t even bother with a closing.

Not everybody should read literary fiction. In fact, in some cases, it isn’t wise to thrust too much education too quickly upon a society without the grounding support of habit and routines.

For instance, if all the farmers in Java were to read literary fiction, develop socialist ideas, and put lives in peril by not tending the fields, then to hell with the books. If all the women in Saudi suddenly decided to start a suffragette movement, house and hearth be damned, then hell hath indeed no fury like a Saudi woman scorned.

All of which meant that, as good and nourishing as literary fiction may be to the souls of those who are accustomed to its effects, it’s still better to stock the rest of the society with genre fiction that soothe and entertain and ascertain their step in the world.

Which meant that I held one less conviction, one less reason to bother writing that kind of fiction.
Which meant that, while I am not good enough to write for the Western market, I still couldn’t go as low as writing formulaic* genre fiction.

Which meant that me and my writing motivations were screwed.

II.

Months passed in unwritten silence. I figured that, to break the block, I needed to be amongst writers. I needed to see how real writers do it. Writers who must have gone through the same depressing thoughts, and managed to forge on writing without losing their souls in the process. Writers who managed not to succumb to genre fiction, even though it is never a fanfare in the Indonesian literary fiction market.

He was still productive in his seventies. He gave his lecture on Freedom Writing, of all irony, under the effect of a rebellious hip. And his voice was softened with self-deprecating awareness of his age.
The lecture was about daring to write scathing truths that could lead to incarceration and other scary things. He talked about the time he spent in jail for something he wrote. And lamented this generation’s lack of sensitivity to their surroundings, to themselves and the hard sacrifices the past has made to bring them here.

While the lecture was very encouraging, my head was screaming. “Dude, people need to eat first before they could give a fart about sensi-fucking-tivity.”

I raised my hand when he closed up, “Any questions?”

“Do you know about the hierarchy of needs?”

I gave everyone in that auditorium a mini presentation on the Maslovian Hierarchy of Needs, closing it with the question that has been bogging me down. “Where do you think the need to be sensitive fit in the hierarchy?”

“At the very top,” he said, “Along with the need to self-actualize.”

“Then how could we expect the self-entitled, the poor, the jobless, the majority of the society to be sensitive enough to bother reading and writing sensitive literature?”

He paused.

(I held my breath watching him pausing. Mesmerized. There. See? That moment of pause is the thing that brought me all the way to that festival. Only his generation could have that reel of history and experience within their mind’s reach. Only writers could have that confidence to take a thoughtful pause in front of an audience. That, mate, that is wisdom. And it came to me like an affectionate echo from the past. From a place where worse things than a writer’s block or a generational amnesia have taken place. Things that have murdered half a million Indonesians and cleansed the souls of those who remembered it with the humility of long survival.)

“I sold my first story to Kompas when I was in relative poverty and had just had baby.”

(It felt that a key just lodged itself in my heart,)

He raised his gaze to meet mine. “I was hard up. But there were worse things happening around me. Things that needed retelling. Things that only by writing about them I cloud alleviate the survivor’s guilt. People were going through much worse situations than I was. I couldn’t….”

(I felt a click.)

“…not write.”

(And felt the swoosh of relief filling me up.)

"How could we not write with this blessed curse of awareness?"

---

* This article was written by loosely following the “Perfect Scene” formula. #sheepish

But is it enough?

I get it. There is only so much that we can do. But I'd been afraid that none of it, none of this could matter much.

I could try to blog, practice writing and maintain a daily reading quota. But then I would have to cut back on yoga and daydreaming.  I could try to spend less time on each task and try to multitask. But the brain has its own ideas of working, and it doesn't like multitasking.

I'd love to figure out how much is enough. How many tasks must I check off my list to feel adequate? How much change in the world in order to feel that I have paid the cost of my earth? Do I need to start a weight-loss diary too?

____

I had an enlightening moment today.

I was mulling over the worries when I gave up thinking and decided to spread the Tarot cards. And the cards said something like, "Wait. A visitor is going to shed some light on the very things you're worried about."

So I stopped trying to create and kept watch. I watched the Timelines and phone lines. I watched the sunrise and pages turning.

Then he posted on his Timeline. To which I responded. To which a possibility turned into inevitability: "Skype?" "Great idea."

I saw the spread of hints that amalgamated into a Sign. That we both had the time to attend. And the flow of words effortlessly filled hearts with wonders. Until a De Javu sealed the hush with certainty.  

That's when we knew we're exactly where we’re supposed to be.

 ___

First things first: The questions that I can’t answer immediately don't belong on my task list.

That is one thing that this habit of writing has convinced me in its wake. No matter how much I analyze it, fussing about things that are beyond my control won’t lead anybody anywhere.

And today, my Truth came in the form of an effortless conversation. I had waited until the right time to ask the right person the right questions. How he came to be there when I needed him was beyond my scope of understanding. How I came to be there waiting for a Sign was within my habits of relinquishing hold over the things that are beyond my control.

I didn’t even need proof that my work is worthwhile. I just needed the assurance that I am going the right way.

And maybe it’s vain to think that we matter. Maybe the best way to live with the Big Questions is to learn existing with their Unanswerableness.

Just exist? How could you?

Well, I’m happy, aren’t I? What could be more important than that?

HOW DARE YOU?!

By balancing between effort and result.

In all honesty, do you not think that it takes a colossal effort to refrain from packing my bag and leave this auditory hell of a village every prayer call? Like hell it does. And instead of packing, I unsheathe a bagful of envelopes. And turn up the music. Then go and lie down on my belly and rest my back. And then I get to break my fast with Wawung. And we'll have Papaya juice that'll go down very quickly and happily.

And that’s something. That’s work. That’s progress. From winning the little battles with Self, to figuring out the best possible ways of alleviating the callouses of daily labors. (It’s also a sign of progress to compare the state of my mind between now and the beginning of this writing session. I’ve practically talked myself into reasserting my delusions about happiness.)

 How else could we recognize the Signs of probable greatness, if we miss their momentous progress in everyday ordinariness?

Time: Keeping - Daily Practice

Philosophy can only do so much in alleviating anxieties. In the long run, nothing beats the jitters like a relative sense of control over self and time.

And if we can’t stop time, then we might at least keep a watch*.

Big Clocks: Age Cycles

From longest timespan to smallest: 7000 years of human civilization. The Aquarian Age. Human life cycle. 10’000 hours of practice. Being stuck at a boring meeting.

Point is: If you see the big picture, the small stuff will stop sweating and stinking.

Medium Clocks: Annum Lex

• Imagine no more than five major objectives to achieve every quarter.
• The simpler the goals, the easier done.
• Imagine the year broken down into three-acts: 
1. First Act: Planning
2. Second Act: Application
3. Third Act: Revelations!
4. That extra act that nobody wants to talk about: For backup. And second-chances. And vacations.

Small Clocks: Monthly Calendars 

(The smaller the clock, the more obsessive I seem to be with timekeeping.)

I made a 2015 calendar that shows the Jawi, Gregorian, Hijri and Lunar calendars on a single page. Printed out all the months in A5 papers. Stuck it in my daily grimoire. Happiest Muslim Witch alive. 

Gregorian, Hijri, Day, Jawi Pasaran and Moon Calendar

What’s with the Lunar Calendar?

• Some habit cues are spread throughout the month.
• Writing is creative work.
• Creativity is in the domain of the Moon.
• Women follow a monthly cycle.
• Farmers, the Javanese, Wiccan and Muslims observe the Lunar Calendar.
• There is just too much lateral culture and tradition to disregard lunar energy effects.

As far as witching goes: 

• From the New Moon until Full-moon (waxing moon), I tend to produce fast and energetic writings.
• This blogging daily thing was started around the full-moon, when the creative energies were at their peak.
• From the Full-moon until the New Moon (waning moon period), my writings adopt a psychotic calmer tone.

Very Small Clocks: Timers

Once, I heard Tony Schwartz talk about the ultradian energy management, and then my brain broke forever.

I apply Schwartz’s Ultradian thingy in combo with the 30/30 Timer App.

Schwartz's method on 30/30

Notes on Timers:

• To differentiate the cues between Tick and Tock, don't use the same productivity timer for your down time. Use, for example, Ensō instead. 
• Or, if you're really good, don't use a timer at all.
• There’s only so much that a timer can do. It’s a timer. Its job is to ding and ring. Not motivate or compliment or punish you emotionally, intellectually or sarcastically.
• If you happen to still want to do this after three months of trial, you probably don’t need that much external help. 
• Likewise, if after a couple of weeks, the voices in your head are still dissatisfied, you probably need more help than a timer and productivity techniques. Hire a new choir. 
• Thou shall not overdo it. The productivity gurus and meditation teachers have talked about it, only your bosses will love you for it, when see your body screams it: Slow down, you overachieving fiend.
• Try the clocks from the biggest to the littlest. Try the quarter annum calendar. If, after a week, it still makes sense, break it down to monthly tasks. Then, if you’re brave, you might try the daily calendar, fill it in retrospect. Divide 24-hours into sleeps and naps and Schwartzes.

Off Topic:

• What a funny twist of language: Time is passing. Can’t save it, can’t multiply it. It’s going, going, gone. Except for those who believe, who can reclaim the time they spent in goodness. Except for those who remind and encourage each other to persevere in spending time on the true, worthwhile things.

Off Off-Topic:

• [I nicknamed my master the Timekeeper because he is the authority who keeps watch of the local azan times. Maybe the name bears more than one meaning, more than one side of his story.]
  
  • [Is that why they’re called the Watchers on the Wall? "The snowy stillness marks the near-absence of time, or the ultra-awareness of every minute passing in the monotonous white."]

Time: Big Ideas

That another way to deal with worries is to get to know them better.

The Writer's Altar

Worries, in order to cause actual harm, must have a physical form. Physical forms are controllable. Which means that our worries can be broken down into measurable dimensions: Time, space, other kinds of resources (money, food, books to read, community support, etc.). 

Time: Big Ideas

We know where we’re going with our time by knowing where we’ve been. 

• Long Term.

I’m almost forty. Considering my genetic build, my smoking and exercise habits, and the fact that I’m basically trying to be a generally happy person, I should have another quarter of a century to degenerate naturally into senility.

Twenty-five years are just three-hundred months, or seventy-five annual quarters to divide between the short- and midterm plans.

 It may seem like not much time. Or it can be just enough time if I do it right. Or it can be too much time if all I do is squander it. But if I do it right, if I watch the clock and try to adhere to the general flow of the Universe, it can be plenty. 

• Mid-Term.

This is hard to write up. To be able to think what the next five years is going to be like, I need to understand what the last five years haven been spent.

 We’re not short on basic sustenance, that’s one thing to be grateful for. We have shelter and clothing and infrastructural support. We’re not under immediate impact of war or disease or famine, and that is a lot, a huge lot to be grateful for. For, it’s the security of our basic sustenance that has allowed us to think creatively and thrive. It’s only by having a reserve of psychic energy that allows us to enter the flow, the closest state of happiness.

If there is anything more paralytic than being an illiterate woman living in a slum, then it would be being an educated affluent woman with too many choices to pick from.

Too much freedom of choice, then, became a burden. The abundance stability and routine gave little incentive to stay put. Having too much psychic reserve made me too easily bored. Getting too easily bored meant that I tend to start projects and drop them again. To come and go as I please.

What’s wonderful/terrible about the reliability of karmic law is its timely effectiveness. Privilege, when it’s not carefully minded, backfires. I broke my heart and bank a lot by mistreating myself and privileges. It’s only natural, and I wouldn’t have learned otherwise.

 Likewise, the karmic laws are very generous at giving rewards in the event of good behaviors. This isn't a philosophical as much as it's a direct result of watching the clock. The Universe has this way of SHOWING UP AND FILLING ME UP WITH BLINDING LIGHT when I least expect it and most need it.

It's easier to bring on the Universe's more meaningful presents by sticking to its laws, than not.

 So I picked up yoga and meditation to keep me physically grounded. I picked up the idea that staying in this auditory hell of a village can keep my heart from drying up, as long that my master is comfortable. Then I picked up seventy books to read in the last six months. Which led me to writing and blogging again.

 Isn’t karmic predictability a nice thing?

• Short-Term.

How I got to break down a year into hours came in the course of six months of practice, at least. Not to mention the frustrating years of trial-and-errs between overreaching and underachieving.

 I can't emphasize enough how important it is to take things slow. Took me years to understand HOW I'm physically bound to the supremacy of seasons. Took me months of watching my mood swings to understand that, Hey, maybe "bipolar" isn't a mere diagnosis, but a symptom of something meaningful and useful.

At the end of every experiment, one idea kept glaring at me: That I only needed one person to believe in me at a time. One person to keep me afloat. And that person can come in the form of a conversation, a character in a story, a Like on one of the social media applications, or an awesome wordcount in my journals.

This is why I can do this daily writing thing. I am connected and loved and anchored in my society and habits and beliefs. In return, my people and beliefs and practices keep me afloat and hopeful on a daily, monthly and yearly basis.

And when I run out of steam again, and see that I need a break again, I know now that I can do that. And nobody is going to sue me for it. In fact, I don't see how anybody could wish me anything else today but the best of luck.

Jumping Worry Hoops

The longer I wait for the muse, the harder it gets. So jump the writing engines. If I’m doing this for the long run, if I believe in this thing that I am doing, if I trust the process of read, write, vent, repeat, I might as well just go ahead and put my bets. 

What are the risks? What could go wrong? Could you ever run out of words to write. Could the stream of thoughts cease to flow? So maybe there are theories to test and experiment.

• Does writing really beget more?

My favorite productive writing advice came from Seth Godin: “The Talker’s Block”. I want to believe him. He’s such a nice guy. But in my stinginess for my words, I wondered: Does writing really beget more?

• Won’t our words lose strength the more we talk? Don’t magical spells need consecration of words and charging of energy? How could writing more make us better writers?

Ah. But energy is fluid. We are mere vessels of words and thoughts and energies. Dozens, if not hundreds of ideas pass through us daily. Either catch and test them or let them pass on. 

 

It’s pompous to think that our ideas need us to hold them. Ideas need to be exercised and applied (into practice, writing, spreading) to prove themselves worth keeping and following. Ideas need to get hammered and beaten against stony facts and oppositions to break, strengthen then improve.

• That seems like so much work! I’m not so athletic to go beating my ideas on stone walls of facts and risk losing my very-hard-earned inner equilibrium.

That’s okay. You don’t have to. You don’t have to endure the rigorous cycle of self development so often. Maybe you’d enjoy botany or kickboxing more. Maybe you’ve just gone through a  period of hard intellectual bursts and need to give yourself a break to digest and assimilate. 

 

Nobody’s holding a timer and chasing you with an “Annual Intellectual Growth Plan”. Nobody’s going to hold it against you for not volunteering to be unhappy.

 

And if you’re doing things you don’t like for someone else’s sake, I hope that there is a lot love (expressed and nurtured and restated daily) between you people.

• Fermenting works for wine and bread. Aging works for steaks and tobacco. Why can’t we just be reservoirs of ideas?

Because, you stingy stocktaker, you’re not a building! You aren’t made of mold and mortar. You can do that, of course, be a tomb where ideas come to die, be forgotten. But we assumed that you wanted write because you like writing. And you like ideas. So much liking you have for ideas that…well, look at what you’ve done to yourself.

 

See here, you’re worried about stock. So it's a simple economic question, not about method of processing and maturing and aging, thank God. 

 

The easiest answer for the idea stock question, we need to check with your suppliers: How’s your reading? 

 

Idea generation is an intellectual process. Intellectual processes need intellectual fuel. Intellectual fuel come in many forms and colors. What kind of fuel have you been feeding into your intellectual engines? In plain language, how much have you been reading, you dork?

 

If you want new ideas, you read.

• What kind of reading? 

Well, what kind of writing do you want to do?

 

If you read tweets and blogs, then you write tweets and blogs. If you read fiction, your moral flexibility improves along with your empathic abilities. If you read nonfiction, you…dammit. Take a hint already. 

• But...

Knock it off. You’re doing a great job at degenerating ideas by worrying.

 

In tests of endurance, it’s not about strength or agility, tools or gadgetry. It’s usually a mental game. You’re not stupid or naïve. And nobody is keeping count of your faults unless you owe them money or an apology. 

• Replace worry with workshops or wayward free-writings or READ about writing and writers. 
• Keep writing until worrying ceases. Keep writing until self-confidence increases. 
• Since blogging for a long time is a test of endurance, think of it as a sport instead of vintage winery. As the case with sports, biological engines are made of cells and vessels and fluidity.
• The better we take care of our physical engines, the better the intellectual engine will endure sitting through long bouts of  intellectual work.
  • That last point is, by the way, another way of explaining Godin’s theory of a talker’s block: The more you work that intellect, the more intellectual you get.

 

Ego

How did the word "ego" get such a bad rep? Isn't Ego a part of identity and work and culture? 

Ego is the first layer of our self-awareness. It's how we see ourselves in the mirrors of introspect  and how we see our place among others. It's the easiest part of our minds to measure and cultivate. The easiest to confuse and abuse.

The thing is, if we can make it a practice of taking care of the Ego with healthy stuff, feed it with a balance of vegetables and sweets and sodiums, a balance between cultivating and detaching from it, between rewarding and reprimanding it, Ego will make a great anchor and companion in the face of Id's temptations and Superego's impossible demands.

And that's another thing. You can't just take your theories in parts: Ego isn't the only part* of the psyche in the Fruedian** school*** of Psychology****.

*(And everyone has all the parts: Id, Ego and Superego.)

**(And Fruedian isn't the only way to understand Psychology.)

***(And the schools of psychology interconnect with a broader world inside every person: The world of actions and thoughts and dreams that makes up all of you.)

****(And studying Psychology is not the practice that will make a goddamn good person out of you. It's how you use yourself and knowledge in serving others that matters as far as humanity cares.)

____

So if you want to know how to control your ego, learn about it. Understand how your Ego works. Figure out the most effective diet to keep it happy but healthy. Get used to the ridges and feels and flaws in your Ego.

In the beginning, depending on how long you've been away from its true size and color and flow, your Ego might bellow, burn or bite. Stay calm. How your ego behaves in your presence reflects the kind of nutrition you've been feeding it. Don't run. Fix it. If failed, try again tomorrow.

It's like sex and food, Ego can be a useful word and idea and tool. You can use your ego to do/make/cause good things, to serve God and fellows. Or you can let it run around spreading dirt and disease.

But the point remains. It's not the size or color or structure of the Ego. It's how you want to use all the variations of your Ego that matters.

Daring Mediocrity

Transforming the definition for "effort and difficulty" into "that time when neurons are making new connections, when their brains are getting smarter." ~ Paraphrase from Carol Dweck’s TED Talks presentation. 

Once, Sahrish said that reading my blog feels like listening to an old friend talking.

Once, after chatting with Qusai about our creative progress so far in the last few years, I realized two things:

1. That I have been writing more and publicly since I read Rettig’s book on prolific writers, specifically that chapter on perfectionism.
2. That it’s easier to be brave when you have company

Those two things made me want to be braver and own up the mediocrity in my writings.

Owning up to my flawed writings sounds like: Yea, I probably can never make money out my writings. But it isn’t because I lack the education or training. It isn’t that my writings aren’t good enough. It isn’t because I’m worthless.

It also sounds like, Okay, my writing is not going to lead me to any recognition, prestigious prizes or publishing. Nothing beyond the scope of an amateur’s indulgent hobby. But that doesn’t make my writings unimportant.

By all means, if I had to choose between the security of marriage and social esteem, I would have chosen writing over again.

Because writing, to me, is true and reliable. It’s as close as I can get to reaching God by intellectual means. The whole process of reading-thinking-writing-repeat is as consummate an investment as taking care of a child.

I haven’t even begun dabbling in publishing.

To the people who matter, the people whose readership and company and opinion truly matter to me at the end of the day, they’d rather find me happy than not. Even if that happiness comes in the form of amateur indulgence.

And there is true, irreplaceable joy in going for broke to figure out what really matters. There are true returns of investment when we take care of ourselves, when we make the effort to stay true to ourselves. There is serious value in finding self-validation by doing the things that make us happy. And the most valued returns cannot be appraised with countable units.

Happiness cannot be measured with conditional rewards.

In a world where conditional rewards are heavily based on results and products instead of process, the work of finding joy in labor takes the heaviest toll. We are expected to be achieve awesome things at the cost of our day-to-day happiness. We are expected to outperform each other in everything we do. We would rather have more likes and followers than to find that fleeting moments of flow in doing the things we love.

Now, one of the ways to feel that we are better than others is by finding those who are performing worse than ourselves. And I think that’s a game I can afford losing for your sake. I think I have to dare showing you my flaws, my shames and my process of getting out of the cycle of my misery.

Not because I need you. No, I’ve passed that. I wouldn’t be writing publicly if I have not secured that "Writer’s Secondary Need for Security and Intimacy" elsewhere. I would not dare to even think aloud if I’m not writing this from a comfortable place where I am sure that I will be loved and wanted even if my writings suck.

It’s just that I’m trying to meet you and the demons of your doubts halfway. Inno, see here, mate, I have been accumulating some love and self-assurance, and thought I could share some of it with you. You’ve already made the effort to read this far, I think I can make it worth your time:

• That, it would be easier for you to think that you can outdo me, that you can write and create and forwardbend better if I showed you my flaws. 
• It would be easier for you to see the qualities in your work if you saw someone else (“me”) do worse.
• I hope that by reading this, you’ll see how you can outperform my mediocrity, or find some sense of community, and that your work is not the worst in the world ever.
• If I can do any of that, then I would have done my privileges some justice. And if you can do that, then you have a fair chance at being better than good enough. 

And that even good enough is a lot.