It is Saturday morning, and like every Saturday for the last two and half years, I am writing a blog post. I do not question the commitment to this exercise, just as I do not protest the inevitability that I will be running tomorrow. Yet there are times when the undertaking seems pointless.
I had one of those moments on Wednesday night this week. I was skimming through a lengthy article written years ago by a friend of mine, an accomplished oral surgeon living in an exclusive north-Seattle neighborhood. My friend is a man of extraordinary abilities, though he would be quick to tell you that he is no better at computer programming than I. This would be in a futile attempt to downplay his finesse at extracting impacted wisdom teeth and the professional accolades he receives as a result.
I learned long ago to reconcile my envy of friends’ professional, financial, and athletic successes. I wish I could say it is because I have discovered and nourished my intrinsic self-worth. The truth, however, is that I simply gave up comparing myself to others because if I did not, I would live a pathetic and socially isolated existence. Besides, I like these folks, and I would miss them if I did not see them. I console myself that living in the shadow of talented and charismatic friends grants me cachet. It works for me.
At least I thought it did. But it turns out that my comrade is an extraordinary writer, having composed an account of his 2007 Paris to Brest to Paris (PBP) bike ride, a 750-mile event that must be finished in ninety hours. I admire both his bike riding prowess and his adventurous spirit. His ability to whip out a tome that is partly autobiographical, historical, and literary and large portion hysterically funny amazes me. His dismissal of his talent aggravates me.
It is easy to resent artistry and creativity – especially when the creator shrugs it off as though his brief infatuation was amusing to a point, but now he needs to move on to solving complex world hunger issues or tackling the mystery of quantum gravity.
Writing is different for me. It is an insatiable inner thirst that can never be quenched. It is akin to launching a weight-lifting regime that you attack religiously with the understanding that Rome was not built in a day. It turns out that not only can you not construct the Roman Colosseum, assembling a small espresso stand in a sleepy, midwestern town is almost impossible. You return to the weight room, day after day, with the increasingly distant possibility that you might some day be able to bench your weight. Well, maybe you can, but you would need to weigh what you did when you were five.
This is not to say that I have not gained some writing skill after composing more than 130 blog posts; however, it is less about composition than it is about perception. I have become a keen observer of both my internal and external environments, a perceptive stalker of my emotional landscape. I also see the physical world differently now, my mind constantly scanning it for content, for context, for meaning. Translating what I see and what I feel into the written word preoccupies me.
I envy my PBP bike riding buddy. His 2007 France cycling escapade had a distinct time and geographic start and finish, with thrilling, grueling, engaging, and memorable events along the way. But for me, I just slog along at my computer, my fingers sometimes moving quickly over the keyboard, or sometimes glued to my furrowed brow, wondering, just wondering, what on earth I am doing and when it will end.