Midnights, March: 29

I went back and reread the beginning of the book I wrote.

Why didn't anyone warn me? Why didn't I set up an elaborate security alarm that stopped me from opening that cover? 

It's not that it is, strictly speaking, Bad. It's that it's final. There were things in the first chapter which, upon this reading, struck me as flowing inelegantly. But I can't go back and change it. Can I give myself the grace to allow for the fact that openings are notoriously difficult? 

This question feels more vital, less rhetorical, than it would have earlier in the month. Because I don't think I have it in me to both 1) keep writing, and 2) berate myself over past choices while bathing in shame of those decisions. I am not getting enough sleep for all that.

It's hard to choose the former. Excruciatingly so. It'd be so easy to use this as an excuse to say, “See? I'm no good at this, either. I'm no good at anything, so I shouldn't even try.”

I could just let it go. This sweet little book exists. I can't change that. All I can do is make the next one is better—and the one after that, and the one after that—until I have a whole line of Past Carries whose writing deserves grace simply because they didn't know what I know now.

The work goes on, I s’pose.