Flag of Qing dynasty or Manchu dynasty
"It might be that I'll be no different after."

What am I doing? Sitting. Breathing. Thinking. Being. Authoring. Inging. Not just any one of these activities, some of which actually involve movement, but simultaneously all of them. What am I, then? Sitter? Breather? Thinker? Be-er? Author? Ing-er? It seems that I'm most likely an Ing-er. I -ing, and therefore I am. Whatever I'm doing, I'm Inging. Right now, I am writing, but not just writing. At what point did I earn my creds as a writer? I know for certain that under no circumstances will I ever only write, for I must also sit, breath, think, be, author, while also Ing on several concurrent levels. Maybe I'm a perpetual part-timer.

I ask these silly seeming questions because they don't necessarily seem all that silly to me. I'm fifty-some installments into my inquiry into Authoring and starting to wonder what I might be pursuing. I was not seeking a wholesale refutation of whatever I might have been up to before. I was not intending to, for instance, trade in my writer credentials for the slightly more prestigious Author identity. I suppose that I might have been looking to add to my resume by re-activating an additional identity, if it's true that I become whatever I do. Do I? Really? That seems so unlikely!

The Muse surprised me yesterday by declaring that anybody who'd ever been in my orbit soon understood me to be an Alpha Male. I found this unlikely, for from here within me, I do not seem a particularly Alpha anything or anybody. I think myself rather invisible and inconsequential, so I guess that appearances might really, really actually be misleading. I'm of the strong opinion that everybody's rather unprepossessing inside, whatever flavor our exterior shell, we're shockingly similar in there. This opinion might result from my Alpha Male privilege, something I don't even have to think about to deploy, and which not everybody enjoys the luxury of affording.

I woke up this morning wondering if I was still actively pursuing Authoring, because I had not seemed to have made much of any progress toward achieving anything in a few days. Then I remembered that I'd started cogitating about the story behind the manuscript I was readying. That effort might also qualify as Authoring. I wonder—sincerely, not just superficially—what I think I'm doing besides endlessly Inging here, busying, fluffing feathers. I might be engaged in introducing myself to another part of me, not a whole new identity, but a sliver of an additional focus of my daily activity. I see that I'd gone unconscious before after failing to answer those Unanswerable Questions, a common response from this apparent Alpha Male when failing. I decided to highlight every damned ing in my story this morning to reassure myself that I am actually doing many things, while also pursuing Authoring. It might be that I'll be no different after.

©2022 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Authoring, #PureSchmaltz