studio of Rembrandt van Rijn:
A Bearded Man Wearing a Hat (c. 1655–1660)

" … without any meaningful answer."

Each quarter, at more or less precisely this time, as the final writing week of a series begins, I face a reconsidering again. After twenty-six repetitions, the reconsidering must have at least become a tradition. It seems necessary, though, to slow down in the face of completing to solemnly consider whether this pattern continues to be worth continuing. The question seems more significant than any answer it might inspire, for by now, I might just as well presume I know the answer heading into the pattern. I do not ask my question to produce a novel response, but to attain reassurance that my answer still holds relevance, that it remains capable of motivating, of promising to satisfy if not every day prove satisfying. I play a longer game than I can ever sense, so I must engage with belief each morning that the long run will still take care of itself.

I am ending my twenty-sixth series since I started producing daily stories. My inventory of finished daily stories nears twenty-four hundred, but the archives probably hold half again that many, all unpublished if not unposted. Frankly, the volume seems too great for me to even successfully inventory. I maintain an ongoing offline effort to form them into properly formatted manuscripts, but that effort always feels overwhelming and fails to become self-reinforcing. It's one of those jobs seemingly created for procrastinating under the understanding that we each need something to exercise our procrastination lest it fall on something significant. My life's work seems in the final iteration, just so much busy work.

It seems pertinent again to ask the question. Have I produced enough of these stories? Has my audience, stable and not really growing, probably at its high water mark now, lost interest, or have those hits continued accumulating? I revisited some past reconsiderings this morning and left considerably sobered. It seemed clear to me that I had successfully reconsidered in the past. I would gladly just publish those prior reconsiderations as my current ruminations because my questions this morning seem no different than the questions I asked myself then. I revisited my past reconsiderings in the interest of keeping myself honest. Had I asked serious questions then? How would I change them now? Would I come to any different conclusions now had I remembered my earlier inquiries?

I'm still in the game. I'm still producing and cannot find a good reason to disrupt this pattern. I could no more choose not to create series twenty-six than I could decide to stop meditating after forty-eight years of daily dedication to that practice. Ceasing couldn't undo anything produced in error. Nor would it erase any worthy accomplishment. Eventually, everybody gets to choose whether to continue being themselves or decide to dismantle experience to become somebody else. Many choose to start over, perhaps forgetting that there's never any undoing possible and we travel a one-way road.

Here are links to two of my previous Reconsiderings:

ConsideringReconsidering and Reconsidering. If you read them, you'll see the pattern and perhaps come to understand why I feel I must ask the question without any meaningful answer.

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Honing, #PureSchmaltz