I admit that I’m not writing this essay for you. I’m writing it for me.
I should just start a whole lot of my essays that way. Right now, I admit it: I’m writing this essay because I pledged to myself that I would write an essay a day, and I’m going to stick to it.
So here I am, writing an essay.
I think about Shaun White’s winning run the other day, and how it’s easy to think that all of his training is as exciting as those thirty seconds he was on the half pipe. It’s just difficult, when seeing someone do something that incredible, to actually imagine that there were days that he just didn’t care about what he was doing.
Yet that must have been the case. His gold medal run felt like a gift to us all, a chance for all of us to see someone doing something that none of us can do, save for Chloe Kim. There always seems to be, in genuinely great athletes and artists, a feeling that they are doing what they do not just for themselves, but for us all.
It’s impossible to imagine that there were times he practiced where he was just eager to get it over and done with. Yet there must have been.
I’d like to think that there have been times that the things that I’ve posted in this blog have felt like gifts, or at least have felt like attempts to be gifts. There have been many times I’ve tapped out words and thought “you know, I think people are going to like this.” I love days like that.
Not today, though. Today, I’m just writing this so that I can copy it into Weebly, proofread it, post it, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and then list it on my essay index page.
What I’m trying to say, and I think I’ve said it already, is that I just want to get this done today. I want to be through with it, and I just be able to say I did it.
It is impossible for me to imagine that anyone who’s reading this, right now, is getting the slightest thing from it. Okay, come to think of it, maybe there’s one thing that they can get from it, and it’s a common theme in this blog: success, it would seem, comes from doing it, every day.
There are days where it doesn’t feel like a gift to anyone. In fact, there are days it doesn’t even feel like a gift to myself. Today, writing is this necessary thing that I need to do, and I don’t want to do it at all.
I simply cannot believe that this could actually be the thing that I enjoy so much, the thing that has brought so much to my life. Right now, it just feels like this annoyance, this irritating goal that I’ve set for myself, this thing that I regret doing. Yet at the same time, I know that if I hadn’t set this goal, I wouldn’t have written anywhere near as much as I’ve been writing.
As noble a goal as that is, however, there will be days like this, days in which I just want to get the thing over with, get up from my chair, and do something else. And once again, I cannot believe that the words that I am writing have any value whatsoever. I even question my deeply held belief that I write on days like this to get boring, lackluster sentences out of the way so that I can dig down to the profound, interesting stuff that makes people feel, at least, that they didn’t waste their time reading my writing.
Today, my writing feels like something where I wish I could just get the words out of me, throw them in the wastepaper basket, and then take out the trash. Yet I need to post an essay, so here they are. I cannot, at this point, believe that that any of the words that follow, for the rest of my days, will be worthwhile; sometimes, it feels that way when I write, and I know, although I do not feel it at all right now, that this will pass.
This is what it means to write an essay every day, however. It means that there will be times that I write an essay not to inform, not to amuse, not to intrigue, but simply so that I can say that I wrote an essay.
And that is what I have just done. I have to believe that Shaun White has had days where he did what he did just so that he can say he did it. I also have to believe that some of those times may have even been during a competition.
There simply has to be a time that someone has done something amazing while, at the same time, his or her mind was filled with nothing more profound than “okay, let’s get this over with.”
Perhaps this essay was such a time, or at least close to such a time. I hope so.
There. I am done. I can say that I wrote an essay.
Sorry if I wasted your time.
I should just start a whole lot of my essays that way. Right now, I admit it: I’m writing this essay because I pledged to myself that I would write an essay a day, and I’m going to stick to it.
So here I am, writing an essay.
I think about Shaun White’s winning run the other day, and how it’s easy to think that all of his training is as exciting as those thirty seconds he was on the half pipe. It’s just difficult, when seeing someone do something that incredible, to actually imagine that there were days that he just didn’t care about what he was doing.
Yet that must have been the case. His gold medal run felt like a gift to us all, a chance for all of us to see someone doing something that none of us can do, save for Chloe Kim. There always seems to be, in genuinely great athletes and artists, a feeling that they are doing what they do not just for themselves, but for us all.
It’s impossible to imagine that there were times he practiced where he was just eager to get it over and done with. Yet there must have been.
I’d like to think that there have been times that the things that I’ve posted in this blog have felt like gifts, or at least have felt like attempts to be gifts. There have been many times I’ve tapped out words and thought “you know, I think people are going to like this.” I love days like that.
Not today, though. Today, I’m just writing this so that I can copy it into Weebly, proofread it, post it, share it on Twitter and Facebook, and then list it on my essay index page.
What I’m trying to say, and I think I’ve said it already, is that I just want to get this done today. I want to be through with it, and I just be able to say I did it.
It is impossible for me to imagine that anyone who’s reading this, right now, is getting the slightest thing from it. Okay, come to think of it, maybe there’s one thing that they can get from it, and it’s a common theme in this blog: success, it would seem, comes from doing it, every day.
There are days where it doesn’t feel like a gift to anyone. In fact, there are days it doesn’t even feel like a gift to myself. Today, writing is this necessary thing that I need to do, and I don’t want to do it at all.
I simply cannot believe that this could actually be the thing that I enjoy so much, the thing that has brought so much to my life. Right now, it just feels like this annoyance, this irritating goal that I’ve set for myself, this thing that I regret doing. Yet at the same time, I know that if I hadn’t set this goal, I wouldn’t have written anywhere near as much as I’ve been writing.
As noble a goal as that is, however, there will be days like this, days in which I just want to get the thing over with, get up from my chair, and do something else. And once again, I cannot believe that the words that I am writing have any value whatsoever. I even question my deeply held belief that I write on days like this to get boring, lackluster sentences out of the way so that I can dig down to the profound, interesting stuff that makes people feel, at least, that they didn’t waste their time reading my writing.
Today, my writing feels like something where I wish I could just get the words out of me, throw them in the wastepaper basket, and then take out the trash. Yet I need to post an essay, so here they are. I cannot, at this point, believe that that any of the words that follow, for the rest of my days, will be worthwhile; sometimes, it feels that way when I write, and I know, although I do not feel it at all right now, that this will pass.
This is what it means to write an essay every day, however. It means that there will be times that I write an essay not to inform, not to amuse, not to intrigue, but simply so that I can say that I wrote an essay.
And that is what I have just done. I have to believe that Shaun White has had days where he did what he did just so that he can say he did it. I also have to believe that some of those times may have even been during a competition.
There simply has to be a time that someone has done something amazing while, at the same time, his or her mind was filled with nothing more profound than “okay, let’s get this over with.”
Perhaps this essay was such a time, or at least close to such a time. I hope so.
There. I am done. I can say that I wrote an essay.
Sorry if I wasted your time.
