I am disgusted to admit how externally motivated I am. With the threat of hair snippage, I've maintained a vigorous writing regime these last several days, blasting into the 70%+ wordmeter count.It's sort of like the reunion I dreaded going to a couple of months back. I couldn't fathom the psychic, emotional and strategic energy required to fly East and undertake a room full of people whose names I'd long since dismissed. And that ice-breaker night--true to fear--was paralyzing. I stammered and guessed and whispered my way through the evening, embarrassing myself several times over by mis-remembering just about every detail about high school.
The next night, the fancy night, was much better. Classmates emerged from the pea-soup fog whole people, with names and relationships and memories. They jumped off of the two-dimensional facebook palette and into human form. This is becoming true of my merry troupe of characters as well. They're marching out of abstraction and becoming, once again, friends with whom to tip a pint and tell a joke. I like it.
Don't be disgusted: there's absolutely nothing wrong with external motivation. Think of it as a source of energy that comes from outside of ourselves. Like food. We wouldn't want to feed exclusively off of what our bodies produce, would we?
ReplyDeleteMax, you are my hero!
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