empty mind (mini-📝 36/100)

I haven’t written too much in the past couple weeks with the chaos around my team switch at work and a dearth of motivation, and for the short things I have written, I’ve felt more self-conscious about publishing. I think part of it is the fact that I blast an email for each thing I’ve written, and it’s felt almost self-absorbed(?) to be posting something every day if it’s not up to a certain bar of quality. I’ve felt this more recently as I’ve seen a few people unsubscribe even though I know I shouldn’t take it personally. It’s interesting that I wouldn’t feel this pressure if I just posted without sending the email (which is a possibility, but I figure that some people do want to keep tabs on this experiment even if they don’t read everything). I’m reminding myself today that the whole reason I started this experiment is to force myself to create without the traditional barrier of quality filtering because creation is the best way to improve. I want to write consistently in order to get past the gap that usually stops people from developing a craft. With that, I’m committing to finishing these 100 artifacts by the end of the year. I want it to feel almost as lightweight as me posting my fit of the day, so if I’m not feeling the creative spirit, I’ll just push myself to send out a haiku or a short poem (thanks Alden for the tip!). Please do feel free to skip over these essays or skim them if they are starting to feel like a lot as I don’t want it to feel like spam!

With that, here’s a WIP poem that I wrote to reflect this feeling from a few weeks back.

Empty mind
Disturbed mind
On the surface a still lake
Mirages flowering on the surface.
Beneath a raging torrent
Emotions unleashing from their resting place
I crave the tranquility of peace
While I yearn for the fury of passion

To think is to be
To feel is to live
And to act, the greatest feat of all.

Focus, the muse of ignorance
Anxiety, the deity of paralysis
My heart a typhoon and my mind the eye
My emotions whipping, tangling, twisting
Half-spoken desires and half-enacted urges
Surge beyond the torrent’s maw.

I pray to Inspiration
That rare apparition
But what comes forth
Nothing but empty words and listless worlds.

I hear the jeers,
I feel my fear.
But I swallow my pride
and push towards that ever-fleeting light.

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This is the 36th installment in my experiment of publishing raw, lightly edited mini-essays every day towards achieving 100 public pieces. Check out the rationale and the full list here or view my evergreen, longer pieces on my website.