Time for a Tune Up

I’ve been thinking a lot about what to write for this month.

Would a monkey annoy a cat? I think so.

Usually, I just wing it.

Someone walks by me wearing a yellow hat, and I think of all the different adventures I’d have with Curious George. Someone sneezes, and I make a list of things humans do that annoy my cats.

That sort of meandering mindset is one that’s been with me since childhood, so blogging has been a perfect fit. I’ve enjoyed having a place to put all the nonsense that normally fills the silences in long car rides.

My husband has been happy to have the occasional silence returned to him.

“Why don’t you write a blog about it?” he’ll say, and I know that means he isn’t really all that interested in my adventures with a fictional monkey companion.

Lately, though, there’s been a crimp in my mojo. I’ve started and stopped 100 different posts, and that’s not anything close to an exaggeration.

After I just spent all that time last month whittling it down to 5.

Doubt has seeped into my meanderings, and colored everything an odd shade of orange.

My writing is rattling, like a humming bit of loose machinery hitting against the engine of an already old car.

It smells like a wet dish rag that’s been molding onto the floor for a week.

It feels like biting into an eggshell, hidden in the fluff of a morning omelet.

It’s broken, but I’m not sure why.

I admit to being a little shaken by the doubts of others, and a little afraid of the wrath of dissenters– but that’s not all it is. Those things hit hard, yes– but negative things hit me like a flash of fire on a stricken match. They burn, they flare– and then they ash out and are entirely forgotten. Other than the brief moment where my attention is violently enraptured by their spark, they barely halt my stride.

I’ve mentioned my abundant confidence before.

It’s hard to explain because it’s just a sense I’ve always been able to tap into– a feeling that whatever I’m doing is the best I can offer.

George and I would do jazz hands all over town.

I am good at what I do.

It’s a vanity, sure– one of my many– but it’s also a truth forged from omissions. The same idea can be said: I don’t spend a lot of time doing things I’m not good at.

I don’t avoid things I’m bad at because I’m a sore loser. I’ve really never seen the world in terms of winners and losers. It isn’t because of ego, because– included in my many flaws is my inability to see myself as a distinct entity outside of others. My brothers lovingly call it a mental disorder. I prefer to think of it as a devotion to my belief that we’re all connected.

Instead, it’s more about being addicted to the sensation of doing my best– and sometimes I think others can feel it, too. Perhaps even you, most beloved reader, have noticed it once or twice.

It smells like the clear air after a rainstorm. It sounds like a long word typed exactly right on a clacky keyboard. It feels like snuggling under a blanket straight from the dryer on a cold winter night. That’s the type of perfection I seek in everything I do.

Sometimes, I sense it in the work of others and it makes me smile — because I’ve noticed that no matter how different “what we do” is, our notes always seem to play together in perfect harmony.

Unfortunately right now, I’m a little off my game. I’m a little out of tune and there’s a strange rattle in my engine. I have faith in the rightness, though. I know it’ll find its way home, if I keep on practicing and playing.

So for now, I will simply keep on
keeping on.