Michelet: Een vermetel plan [An Audacious Plan](1888)

Careful Whatever I Wish For
My side work profoundly influenced this writing week, my day job mismanaging The Muse's political campaign. In that work, I found insight into what I might have been attempting in my real job, this story-writing occupation that only pays me in satisfaction. I watched myself meandering yet still making progress. I caught myself exhausting myself, too, and wondered who taught me to be so damned self-sacrificial. I suspect my loving parents taught me how to deeply wound myself because theirs had taught them the same lesson learned in the heartless heart of The Great Depression. Intergenerational self-destruction in pursuit of survival, perhaps even success, seems like a worthy inheritance. It seems pleasingly paradoxical yet stunningly familiar, an audacious solution for a common problem. I must be careful whatever I wish for because I can hurt myself in any pursuit.

Weekly Writing Summary

I began my writing week recounting how what I'd initially dreaded became my new hobby in Canvassing. "I had license to explore people's porches."

Siegfried Lauterwasser:
Outside the Door, Cologne (1950)

" … we might just be GoodNuff to accomplish that."
—
I visited my childhgood neighborhood and stumbled away feeling stunned in ThePromisedLand*. This story proved the most popular this period. "The world seemed balanced then, though, in retrospect, it must have been balanced on the head of the usual pin."

Pierre François Basan:
View in the Neighborhood of Orléans (18th century)

"When the school seems like the fanciest property in the whole precinct …"
—
I considered the work volunteers accomplish in TakingAHike. "No worker ever hoed a row of beans without counting how many weeds he dispatched and projecting his rate of progress in his head."

Jan Lauwryn Krafft (I): Wandelaar [Hiker] 1704 - 1765

"I'm in a kind of walking coma …"
—
I compared industrial-scale process with the kind employed in a CottageIndustry like campaigning. "We stumble forward before we ever learn to march and march on legs that vividly remember stumbling. We will never become mindless machines but still produce exquisite results."

Helen Allingham: A Wiltshire Cottage (19th-20th century)

" … on legs that vividly remember stumbling."
—
I looked at my meandering work and wondered how it would ever amount to anything in Amounting. "Nobody would ever propose a meandering race, for races exclusively concern themselves with the shortest distances between two points. What if the purpose was not to arrive there first but to arrive there changed?"

Ridolfo Ghirlandaio: Portrait of a Gentleman (c. 1505)

" … we might misattribute to ourselves."
—
I caught myself in a dangerous space after wearing myself out to the point where I just felt Exhausted. "I must hold my imperatives loosely, or they flip around and get me. I must hold my deepest convictions slightly skeptically, or else they seem determined to undermine me and my intentions."

Rembrandt van Rijn: The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c. 1644)

" … much better off just staying away from engaging."
—
I ended my writing week recounting how The Muse prepared for a public performance in PreparationDance. "Appearing genuine requires much preparation. Authenticity on any stage demands just this kind of attention. GoodNuff doesn't necessarily mean "off the cuff.""

William Strutt: A Lioness Preparing to Spring (August 8, 1889)

"Appearing genuine requires much preparation."
—

This writing week proved typically exceptional. It seems to sum to more than its individual parts. I focused perhaps too much on my campaigning efforts because Canvassing deeply surprised me. I revisited my past to find it missing in action and monitored my internal state while working. I recognized the fundamental difference between how The Muse's campaign operates and how I was taught organizations were supposed to work. I acknowledged the essentially infinitesimal nature of progress and worked myself to exhaustion. I ended my writing week preparing, winding myself up for a repeat performance that might repeat this same pattern but with fresh material. Isn't it always like this? Thank you for following along!

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #GoodNuff, #PureSchmaltz