Doing Something

"FASHION IS A THING I CARE mighty little about, except when it happens to run just exactly according to my own notion, and I was mighty nigh sending out my book without any preface at all, until a notion struck me, that perhaps it was necessary to explain a litle why and wherefore I had written it. Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice."... When writer's block, which is a very real affliction, afflicts one, one recourse is to quote the first sentence in the autobiography of David Crockett, American hero. The historian who wrote the introduction to this quaint classic American treasure pointed out that heroes are made, they are not born. Quite correct. At the Unitarian church I attend, the pre service disussion group, which always chooses something interesting to discuss, centered around "heroes"; what one is, what characterizes one, etc. When the topic turned to female heroes, I nominated Abagail Adams, a personal hero of mine, who among other acts of heroism wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson after he in effect stole the presidency from her husband, in which she said: "I still love you, but once upon a time I respected you."...You go, girl. I left the discussion exhilarated, proud of myself for having, for the fist time, contributed something. I try to write and publish at least one page of nonfiction prose on this website daily. Sometimes I fail. When that happens I feel useless, idiotically guilty (guilt, I believe, like jealousy, is bullshit). I write and publish an essay, (a good essay I hope) nearly every day for more than fourteen years,six thousand essays, I miss one day in a blue moon, and I feel guilty?! As we say: "gimme a break!"...Forgiving one's self can be the most difficult and is the most important form of forgiving of all. So stop with the emotioal garbage nonsense, I exhort myself. There comse a time when you simply have to get your ass up off the couch, and go get some exercise. Just do it, as Nike tells us. Blame nobody, expect nothing, do something. Get up, get out, get better. Goethe, my main man as anybody who knows me knows, said: "There is no better way to blunt a resolution than to keep talking about it." Thus this essay becomes an exercise in stream of consciousness, guilt free. The page is filling up with words, and I am, I was the one who put them there. Well, and then, so be it. If nothing else,I will have done something, will have broken the chains of my self inflicted paralysis of mind and soul, and can at least say: "I did something, I produced something" In my favorite televsion ad, Michael Jordan is walking sullenly into the locker room, all black leather, carrying a gym bag. He is talking to himself. He says: "During my lifetime I have lost three hundred basketball games. I have missed more than nine thousand shots. Seventy five times my teammates have relied on me to make the game winning shot, and twenty five times I missed the shot. During my lifetime, I have failed, over, and over, and over again. And that is why I succeed....And so this page is filling up with words. Only a few minutes ago I thought I had "writer's block",and indeed I did, but only because I thought I did. I have no idea whether these words will benefit anyone, other thanas a sort of mental laxative for myself. I'm gald I contributed something, however meager, to the discussion group at church. And I am gladder that I wrote this essay, inadequate though it likely is. Verbal garbage though it may be, a lost game, a missed shot, I took the shot, and can do nothing more than that.