I’m working through what the next evolution of this daily blog might (could? should?) be. If you’re following along, here’s the last post. I have no idea how many of these posts it’ll take, but hey, a post is a post.
At one point posting anything at all was a personal challenge, because it was brand new. Now, I don’t feel right if I haven’t yet published my blog post for the day. I’m getting a bit tired of the format, sure, but I know I’m going to publish. I’d post something every day even if I didn’t figure out how to evolve the format. I’m just a person who publishes every day.
Now that publishing any old thing isn’t so much of a challenge, I’m wondering whether the right format (or one format, at least) could be my new personal challenge. The most challenging thing for me to write is poetry, for example. I feel like a total fraud if I even try. I barely let myself think of writing poetry—never mind call myself a poet—but I want to.
There are some things that feel like they can only be expressed through poetry. It sometimes feels like memoir would obviously be the most earnest form of literature, but I’d argue that poetry should wear that crown. I’d probably even argue that some things can only be expressed through poetry read aloud by the author—with feeling, that is.
What might it take to write a poem every day? What would it look like to riff on something through the lens of poetry? To half finish a poem, or to write the same poem a hundred times, playing with language and structure each time? I’m not sure, but doesn’t it sound fucking exciting to find out? Doesn’t it sound like a worthwhile personal challenge?
This was going to be the first idea I riffed on, but of course I was nervous. Steven Pressfield would probably tell me that I paused because of Resistance. He might tell me that poetry is exactly what I should be writing. That I should call myself a poet and that I should sit down and do the bloody work. He might tell me that, and he might be right.
Writing this down feels right, somehow and yet I’ll still explore for a few more days. I’m going to sleep on this idea like I am the others, but this idea makes me feel something that the others don’t. Maybe it’s just Resistance pushing me to explore other ideas, and maybe not. I’m sure of something, though: sometime, somewhere, I will write poetry.