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what am I even doing

For anyone who has so graciously subscribed to this newsletter, let me just say: thank you. I hope what I write blesses you.

And also, here’s a poem about the pressure of creation.

I don’t want you to read my writing
Actually, I really do. Really really. Please read what I write, but not if you don’t love it. Keep all gentle suggestions for improvement to yourself, please, my writing is not for you. It’s for me, to know myself, and to absorb the truth, and if you tell me what you don’t like about it you’re probably wrong. But I won’t be able to shake that feeling… that feeling of unwriterness, of give-me-your-validation-it’s-why-I-exist, of tugging on my brain stem, of better and more and perfect and when-will-this-be-enough. Please don’t read what I write, but if you do, share it and extol its virtues. Entice me with the incense of adulation. Snare me in cords made out of my own prose, in shackles of poetry, inundate me with praise and let creation run dry, let me drown in self-imposed deadlines and standards exceeded and expectations raised, lead me to the realization, weary and wrung and gray, that I am only free when you don’t read these words—when I can tie a string to each one and let the whole flock of them rise to the heavens, only heard, only seen, only tasted by Him.

Writing this newsletter is kind of like making a cairn. Stacking up words, who knows who might stumble across them?