One day after I posted my last entry, I began to regret it. The regret turned to mortification, which led me to this dilemma:

To delete the entry, or to leave it be.

Some people use their blogs as a diary. They expose details of their private lives in the most public way possible. This is a type of exhibitionism.

Others use their blogs as a purely creative medium. It is a fairly non-judgmental forum in which to experiment with ideas and writing techniques.

Without doing so consciously, I think I’ve tried to achieve something in between these extremes. I enjoy writing, and I’m a fairly easy subject. But I’m not comfortable with exposing too much of myself.

It is true that my last entry contained no specifics-- one friend asked me if it was about job frustrations, another asked me if I was having "man trouble."

So I guess my embarrassment doesn’t stem from having confessed my darkest secrets. But I think my unease has to do with the fact that it shows a lack of emotional discipline and takes on a self-helpish tone that doesn’t suit me well.

But this is all beside the point. The interesting question is whether to delete.

After watching The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I thought about whether there were any memories that I would like to delete from my brain. My conclusion was no. The bad things that have happened to me have shaped me into who I am today. I need to remember these things as they are essential contextual references upon which I base my current decisions and personal identity.

I recognize, of course, that I’ve led a fairly privileged life to be able to have this rather academic attitude towards the idea.

But leaving that aside, my question is what then of blog entries?

Would deleting one be the equivalent of a digital lobotomy? And if so, is that a bad thing?

I think it would be.

For me, blogging is a bit risky. I always feel nervous for a few minutes after I have hit the "publish" button on blogger. Though I’m not discussing my latest bedroom adventures, I am exposing parts of myself for public judgment. That is something I have never done willingly or well.

Therefore, perhaps as penance, I’m leaving up my last post. I also realize that the unfortunate consequence of this post will be to draw further attention to my last post.

So there it is in bold type: I am vulnerable, irrational, emotional, and prone to bouts of extreme irritation.

Just don’t be expecting to see much more of that any time soon.

Unusually Emotion-Filled Personal Post with an Absence of Detail.

Alright, I am Officially Annoyed.

If annoyance was really something that could be certified as official, I would likely be fast-tracked to the front of the line. I wouldn’t need to have an affidavit commissioned, or a DNA sample submitted, or a cover letter created. The officials would take one look at my face from their vantage across the counter and see that I was bona fide annoyed.

They would stamp my certificate and I could go home and sulk. Officially.

And it is worse than just feeling like I have endured the misfortune of something outside of my control. No, this annoyance comes from not even understanding the rules of the game. And in not understanding the rules, the super plus annoyance comes from wondering whether it is actually in my power to prevent this annoyance in the first place. Or whether annoyance is the appropriate strategy. Or whether I should be working on a strategy at all.

I am rather staring into a black box and any time I see a glimmer of shape inside it, I immediately ascribe all sorts of supporting, clarifying, enhancing detail. So it is about 10% truth, and 90% fabrication. And as one friend says, someone who lies 1% of the time is a liar. So it is actually my fault.

Because if I could just sit patiently and wait for the detail to fill in slowly, I wouldn’t have to create these fictions that shatter when I take them from the box and hold them up to the light and see that they are actually not what I imagined them to be.

But sitting patiently doesn’t feel right to me.

So perhaps the best I can do is just be honest about what I can and cannot see and wait for those with the illumination capabilities to do their thing.

And I should give people the benefit of the doubt. Always.

And strangely, I feel like my annoyance has been downgraded from a red to a yellow alert. Good stuff.

Letting Go



It was 6:15 p.m. and I was sitting on the patio with Scott and Seiren, trying to relax. On this beautiful afternoon, we left work early and headed to a large outdoor patio for a beer.

But it was getting late. Pottery starts at 6:30 p.m.

I signed up for pottery through the school board’s continuing education program and I take the class at the local high school. To be honest, it wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to take “Writing for Beginners” or “Intro to Drama” but both were cancelled due to lack of community interest.

So pottery it was.

At about 6:05 p.m. I declared that I wasn’t going to let myself get stressed about an activity that was supposed to be for the purposes of stress relief and for exploring my creative side.

“Whatever, I’ll be late. It won’t matter. The teacher usually does the demonstration late anyway.”

This was true.

Our pottery teacher, who thus far had been pickled-drunk every class, would usually stumble in about half an hour late, begin a demo, and halfway through would say:

“Well, you get the picture. I don’t wanna waste any more of your time. Go to it team!”

And with that she would excuse herself to go outside to flirt with the school janitor.

But in spite of my commitment to laidbackness, I had begun to guzzle my Corona and started to calculate how long it would take me to get to the pottery studio.

Before long I was semi jogging up the street towards the school.

I arrived, sweaty, breathless, fifteen minutes late, to find that I had not yet missed anything.

All the students were sitting silently with their blocks of clay in front of them. Even though we all stuck our fingers in the same sludgy slip pot, we had not managed to break through our collective social awkwardness. We all made pinch pots in silence.

There was a new student in the class, T. He had a perfect upturned nose, wore dark eyeliner, and spoke with graceful gestures of his hands. Our teacher took an instant, but unsettling, liking to him.

Our teacher loudly welcomed the new student:

“Welcome, T. This week we’re making mold bowls and next week we’re making goblets, and I know you have good use for those!”

I think she was meaning to give him a joking nudge on the shoulder, but she missed and ended up sort of stumbling into him.

T’s face turned pink.

Aside from concern about missing the demonstration, I was also concerned that I arrive at class early enough so that I could make an incense holder. I had been designing it in my head all week.

We all sprung into silent and intense pottery action.

But my incense holder was not coming along as planned. In fact, it was a downright monstrosity.

I felt a tinge of stress as I looked at my utterly failed creation.

But then it just struck me as incredibly funny and I began to laugh. A number of my fellow students gathered around me to see what I was finding so funny.

“Well,” said T who was speaking while pouring all his soul into smoothing out his bowl “You are lucky to be comfortable with asymmetry. I’m so damn perfectionist that [smooth] I can’t even relax [smooth] until [smooth] everything is [smooth] perfectly symmetrical [smooth].”

“I’m just happy to be here,” said the girl with dark Gucci frames who had made a minor monstrosity of her own, “I’ve been meaning to take pottery for three years but investment banking doesn’t leave much time for creativity.”

Then the class prodigy came to join the discussion. She explained that she comes by her sculptural abilities honestly. She is a professional cake designer. I asked her what the strangest cake she ever created looked like. It was for a baby shower and was a woman giving birth. Made in chocolate.

She exclaimed how refreshing it was to be able to simply create without having to worry about the taste of her creation.

And then I thought about the beer I had consumed before this class. And I thought about our inebriated pottery teacher. I realized that even in her drunken absence, our teacher [prophet?] was bestowing her deep knowledge upon us:

The key to an enjoyable pottery experience is letting go. And the key to letting go is alcohol.