Monthly Archives: January 2013

Jan7

Thoughts on Writing: Never Care Too Much & Never Stop Caring

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Some thoughts on time and permanence

Some thoughts on time and permanence

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down to blog.

There are many reasons for this, most involving nights of writing very long reports for the office and equally long assignments for school, but the real reason is, of course, that I wasn’t sure how to phrase the changes that have gone on in my life. I wasn’t sure how being so preoccupied with everything would effect my writing and it made me apprehensive. The other reason was that every time I tried to write a post, WordPress would crash, deleting my  post and discouraging me from committing any more thought and emotion into something that would subsequently be deleted.

Much in life is like that though, isn’t it? In the past 4 months of trying to ground ourselves in our new apartment, Patrick and I have been building shelves, reorganizing cupboards, investing into making our new place feel more like home. It’s a work in progress… but whenever we set something up, we both stand back and look to one another for confirmation that yes, this makes it more like home now – and when his friends come over, we show it to them too. They assure us that “it’s a great spice rack” and “yes, that painting does cover the weird hole in your wall”. We put up pictures, we straighten books on shelves. Throughout that process, we both know that this apartment is a temporary place for us. After all, we can’t spend our lives throwing money at a landlord and dragging our laundry down 4 flights of stairs, it just isn’t how I imagine adults to live! When I think about moving though, I think “but we just set up that new shelf for my teapots!” and it makes it all feel so pointless.

I feel much the same way about my job: I’m frustrated that every month, I have an article published in a journal under someone else’s name and that no one will ever know that I have an archived body of published work. I seek praise for each report, I feel immense frustration when I’m told that a report isn’t “up to my standards” or that my “heart wasn’t into it.” The criticism is sometimes fair, sometimes heavy – but I invest an immense amount of energy and emotion into my work and I care about its comments and reviews. Unfortunately, I can never hear client reviews so I hold on to the scraps I am given from those whose names are published and the praise they receive for it.

Grades have been the same. I haven’t accepted anything under an A this semester and accepting a B+ in my hardest class left me in a sour mood. Of course, I know it’s about the learning and I know that no one will probably ever ask to see my transcript but I just can’t help but feel that those grades are on me, not on my work. I care too much, I rework, I struggle to make myself proud.

Perhaps that’s the key here. Maybe if we could all care a little less about something lasting and care a little more about it happening at all, maybe we would be happier.

Maybe knowing that nothing is permanent would encourage us all to seek out new experiences and allow us to just write on.