Ten minutes. 7:30 officially. Ten minutes of writing. Some days I go off on wild tangents and write far more than is required... but, sadly, most days I don't. Most days (today included) I write just enough to get by. How I ever think I will be a significant writer someday by doing this I do not know. But at least I have come this far. I am finally able to identify myself as a writer without a huge gulp of guilt. Because I do write. I write every day. Almost never anything of great consequence, but enough to keep me going through the motions so that if at any point inspiration decided that it wanted to find me it would not be a long interval before I was next at a screen of some sort. Perhaps even writing on paper from time to time. The thing is that I am just lazy enough to lack the trust in myself that I would heed the calling of inspiration much less hear it if I was in the midst of writing when it did come a calling... because most likely I would be seven minutes in to my self-required ten and I would be distracted, checking the clock between keystrokes willing the time to pass faster so I can get back to things of far less importance. Things that don't take so much of my drive and my spirit to accomplish. I wonder if Sylvia Plath wrote this way, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway. Was there a point in the lives of each great writer where they begrudged their gift? Forced themselves to do the work of it in spite of their complete ambivalence. I wonder if any had such a poor grasp on language, spelling and grammar that even while identifying themselves as a writer they misspelled the word "writer" itself. Two "T"s seems much more important, right? Distinguished.
In writing all that is above I began to succeed in falling into rhythm, and subsequently a sense of not caring for the time but for the words needing to get out... then from of the corner of my eye saw that it was 7:29 and could not coerce myself to keep from checking again and again until the minute rolled over in it's non-corporal grave. It is now 7:32. I do at this moment desire to keep going. But feel as though I was merely rambling anyways. What if I stopped at 13 minutes in due to a combination of a lack in substance and a fulfillment of my time allotment that I committed myself to... but, had I held out one, two, ten minutes longer, would have received divine inspiration. That proverbial "second wind" that in this scenario would technically only be the first... but the point is that, I have this overwhelming anxiety that I will miss it. Or pass it up intentionally. Potentially more than once. Hell it's likely I would do it over and over and over again. I am truly scared of my own propensity to put off my own destiny. Squander all that has been, and will be given to me... and this fear is often the cause of my nonsensical typing about typing. Writing about writing. Because at any moment that can be easily changed... but knowing myself, if I commit to ten minutes of writing on a decidedly unworthy topic, I may be unable to stray from it as a result of my own stubbornness, should the right moment, mood or message come along.
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