Saying Less

My resolution is to Say Less. It's been a resolution for the past two years, but this time I need to make it my singular focus. It can't be this simple, but lately it feels like every unpleasant experience I ever have is due to Saying Too Much. Then again, maybe I've had more good than bad come from Saying Too Much.

I'm reminded of teaching an improv class in 2013. One student was such a dork--but such a funny dork! For mid-terms I gave each student a challenge for their scene. The boy with the slow charm had to rush, the girl with all the questions had to make all the choices, and the dork had to play someone confident. He really couldn't do it, but that was funny too! After the exercise he slumped to his seat. "I get it! I have to stop being a dork!" No, no, no I clarified. You'll never not be you, but you can push the boundaries of what you is.

Being authentic and trying to say what I mean has been really important to me since I don't know when. Honesty is sacred, emoting is power, I MUST BE ME! My enneagram four wing never more ruthless than Sunday when I spent at least an hour fretting about what my phone lockscreen would be for the new year.

But a new take on authenticity has finally occurred to me. Maybe my full-throated beliefs are a privilege. The worst briar of the recent past, a person in my life trying to make me feel small. I spent dozens if not hundreds of hours considering how to express the deep and inappropriate discomfort this person has inflicted on me. But no draft was ever right because I don't think there is a draft that this person would fully accept. In the meantime, I wasted so much of my authentic energy on that stupid venture! I could have been writing play that ends capitalism or something!

I used to think saying something, even if no one agrees, at least let the fledgling truth exist somewhere, somehow. And I still think that. But alternatively, I could look for safer nests.

Last winter, I battled a conglomerate who wouldn't pay me on time. I hated how they made me beg for what was mine. My friend Mur suggested I stop explaining myself. You don't have to bare your soul because they're wrong.

Worked on My Book for the First Time Since October

As long as you write something everyday. I agree and I disagree. I don't count journaling. I don't count blogging. Outlining. But then I start to not count just a page or two.

It seems like there should be priorities with projects, but you can't make yourself make yourself. I have tried. I have failed. My main fear is that in my patience, someone else will write it. I remember a girl on the volleyball team in college saying she never misses a practice because somewhere out there her opponent is practicing. And I still think about that. But then I try to remind myself we don't have opponents. Not like that. That's what neutral me believes, at least, until I see a movie trailer and think, "That's...a lot like my XYZ." But as a lover of things that I love, I would go to all movies about things I love, right? Several people watched this quirky Netflix film and texted me about it. "It's so you," a thing no artist hopes to hear. I avoided it until I was home alone with lots of snacks and no more papers to grade. I sucked in a huge basket of air and pressed play. It wasn't me at all. Or, rather, I would never have made it. I have rarely known such relief.

It's not about what I want to do. It's really not. It's about what I can do. Okay and a little about proving something. (To be honest.) But what I want has never been what's going on. It seems so beautiful and fortunate that I have rarely wanted. What an enormous gift.

Anyway, I finished another chapter of my book just now. Chapter 8 out of 12, to be exact.

Ashley Simpson

ME: Ate two cookies for dinner. Boop.
BISQUE: That's how I know it's still you.

Sugar cookie versions of us.

Oh, it's as if you know me better than I ever knew myself.