Work Flow

 Wake up, get up.

Doom scroll then gather my things up.

The start of each day is this monotonous ritual. It's boring. 

Then when something does change it's stupid. It's pointless. It's for no reason at all. I often wonder what the thought process is. Why the sudden bursts of micromanaging. I feel like it's correlated to her being scolded.

She finds something she can control.

And when I think about that, it's sad. Really sad. Then I'll feel bad for her. Try to be nice to her. Then she'll bother me more and more until I get overly annoyed. This cycle is gross. The changes are pointless. The nitpicking is pointless.

What's worse is you barely understand me, so what makes you think that kids with even lower English levels than you will understand me more?

The difference is they'll try. They're not afraid to be wrong sometimes and ask questions.

"It's fine," I tell myself. 

"5 more months," I tell myself.

But that's not how I should be. That's not how I want to be. I've thrown myself into my writing but all I feel is worse and worse. I'm so critical of my writing. I know what people say. So many incorrect commas, grammar mistakes, and run-on sentences.

I've been writing and feeling and pushing so hard that I don't think I even know when a thought is ever really complete. See I'm teaching English now and have to be extra conscious of that as well. It's unnerving seeing so many sentences start with Because and And or Yet when I was in school they taught us that was not allowed. But in later years and through reading books I've learned that you can use any of those to start a sentence.

I don't know any grammar rules by heart yet I will stand by the oxford comma until the day I die. I've been told we write like what we read and an old classmate's words still haunt me. "Fanfiction writer" breaks my heart as it gets spit like an insult. And I don't want to cry in front of these strangers. I hate them. I hate them. I have to work the rest of the summer with them.

So then I cringe and fret over the fanfiction I read but sometimes the heart thrown in there is worth a few little errors. See even I have standards. I see errors. I avoid the big things. It's the smaller things I don't understand or see. I know a complete sentence has at the very least a subject-object and verb but other than that I am unsure.

I've read that shorter sentences are more impactful in your writing and I try to stick to that. I try not to start too many sentences in a row with She or He or I or Then but then I feel so stuck and caged and claustrophobic. Then I'm expected to edit myself and I'm drowning. Drowning because I see what I want to say said before me and I'm content... I'm content but have no consumers.

Don't do things for money they say. Work to be happy they say. How. How can I be happy when no one is reading. I hear a resounding silence after every speech. I've bled my heart out again and again then beg my lovers and friends and family to read-only to hear the same thing again and again. "You are a good writer."

That's not what I want. God more than anything I want to make you feel something. Tell me how it got under your skin. Tell me you empathize with every scene or just that one scene that reminded you so much of your mother it made you choke on your own breathing. Tell me that living became just a little easier reading through the mess because it was a language you could decipher.

Tell me. Tell me it made you feel something. Anything.

Sometimes when I write. I feel possessed and I know in my heart of hearts that this is something the world needs to see... it's the in-between that's so discouraging.

Maybe I am a good writer. Even in a world where saying that sounds like a lie, people who are good don't tout it. That's fine. In this strange twist of fate as with everything. I love my writing, I love who I am.

I just don't love what others are saying and thinking, but I can't truly say that. If no one reads, then no one has said anything.

So I press my nose to the grindstone again. Weary, worn, and numb at times. And I write. I write and write and write so that maybe one day... I'll know where to put these things on display.

Renewed hope.

The cycle begins again.

And that is my work flow.