The Echo Grows
2025-11-10
I had a ton of resistance to write yesterday. The same thing has happened today as well, but here I am anyway. More than likely, this resistance is coming from too much distraction. Whether it be responding to messages or compulsively checking my RSS feed or just wanting to listen to music and let the theater of my mind play its usual shows, there's a lot keeping me from just locking the fuck in and getting to work.
This stems from a fear of doing it wrong, I think. I've always been a compulsive sort of perfectionist and have despised mediocrity in myself and others. Unfortunately though, this perfectionism is the main engine to my resistance. A big piece of advice I find myself giving to others that I fail to follow myself is this: give yourself permission to suck. Especially with writing, there's a difficulty in saying things and orchestrating text in a way that feels like how it seems in my head. It's a tough thing to let the words flow out and balance that with a desire to plan things out and make each part of a piece feel earned.
At the same time, though, especially in this project, there's a certain advantage in just letting it out and not worrying about coherence as much. But even then, the blocks that come to me are hard to dispel because of a stutter even in my thought itself. I'm sure that every writer deals with this kind of thing. It's an unfortunate thing because there's a certain academic nature to writing that throws a lot of people off of it. It makes sense, though, because it's important to have a clear understanding of grammar and spelling and other fundamentals so that a piece of writing can be lucid and simple enough to understand.
To get that understanding takes work and practice, so it's understandable that many would get thrown off by it. Some people have enough talent to get by, but the best writing is always written by someone who has seen enough of their imperfections to work past them. Unfortunately, writing as a craft has become too deconstructed. Lazy prose isn't just accepted, but has become a new standard of sorts. But it takes real work to say something real and beautiful; most people would rather have it fast and easy, though.
I constantly reflect on the nature of this practice and doubt the principles I have conjured from it. Web diaries like these seem like such a passe thing, but I think that there's value in seeing my progression of thought over time. I unfortunately enjoy and relish in deep and self-referential reflection. I enjoy being skeptical of myself and wrestling with ideas despite the fact that I might essentially be saying the same thing but just in different ways. I'm perceptive enough as well to understand that for my readers, there's a big mirror that I put in your faces when I write to you. When I write about my experiences, they feel entirely whole to me, but to you they are remixes of things that you have experienced.
In an odd way, there's a great sense of power I hold in having this space. I present myself to you so that I can persuade you to look inward. Even though this writing is ephemeral, its substance evolves over time. Past pieces echo in this one, just in between the words.
For me, I feel implored to keep exploring that space. There's not many who do it like me, so I have to relish in that.
Somehow, anyway.