Smock Blogs

If I’m grateful for anything, it’s that Google doesn’t limit the number of edits to calendars. And that there isn’t a readily available log of the changes I’ve made to mine over the years. Or weeks. Or days.

I’m a planner. I make great plans. Glorious plans. The kinds of plans that overcome oceans and conquer continents. It’s the doing that gets to me.

Love to tell you that it’s a matter of not having enough time, but if I told you how much time I’ve available over the years to pursue The Muse, you’d give me the same look I’ve been giving myself.

Because it’s a few things, but mostly it’s fear. Fear that this thing, writing, is the last thing I haven’t really failed hard at, and while I’d love to believe it’s because The Universe wants it for me and that’s why I’ve struggled with other things, Fear wonders what happens if it’s not.

If I pour myself out into this One Thing, and even that goes nowhere. But then there’s that voice, the quiet one, that sits, often alone, and when I give it space, asks, “But what if it doesn’t?”

What if it goes somewhere, anywhere. What if instead of nothing, I end up with something. What if that happens?

That voice found the volume knob, and the calendar looks different as a result. Scarier, because there’s just one thing I’m working on creatively. Instead of 3. Or 6. Because when I see that I have One Thing to do, I always want to add One More Thing. As a backup, or a diversion.

I’ll still be here, blogging, but the other things will keep for now. Until this project, this book, this novel is out the door and either banished to the ash heap of history, or has found life on shelves, electronic and otherwise. I owe it that much, a chance at a life, however brief it may be.