I’ve got a daily writing habit now. Mostly out of a need for some kind of routine or schedule. I wake up at six every day and I need something in between my first coffee and when I take a shit and then weigh myself. It takes about thirty minutes for the coffee to work, so here I am, writing, not because I’m good at it or because I even want to but as a matter of routine and necessity. I’ll probably consolidate and just start doing this on the toilet.
But you know what, sometimes you get up to wipe and you surprise yourself. You say damn, look at that. And it’s not the size or the shape of what you’ve done, or what has been left undigested. I mean it is those things, but it’s more what they imply, what they suggest – the way they make you consider your insides – the parasympathetic (?) processes that keep you running, a little factory in there toiling away, making, at the very least, a bunch of shit, while you, on the outside, in the mirror, in your conscious, sit here and wait for something to happen.
But the body doesn’t wait. You breathe, you burn, you die. Cells turn over, skin sheds. I think I heard once that no cells in your body are the same as they were five years ago. Materially, you’re always changing. But the mind sits and waits, looks at itself, wishes it could change, wishes it was something different, especially as it relates to output.
But why would you write if you have nothing to SAY? You moan, whine, complain. You sound like Ross Geller as you beg yourself to come up with something. Do you not think anything? Do you not feel anything? Of course neither are even possible. You can’t help but think and feel.
But then say to yourself, but there’s no need to publish these things, is there? You don’t pin your fingernail clippings to the fridge, do you? Isn’t this just narcissism? Cynically, yes, of course it is. But, gracefully, and possibly even more cynical still, who the fuck are you anyways? A monk? You’re the one guy that isn’t a narcissist now? When has mitigating narcissism ever been a concern for you?
In fact if you really think about it, publishing a daily writing habit isn’t akin to the shit itself (back to the toilet metaphor) or showing it off (gross), it’s more like the act of wiping. It introduces some accountability. You live in a society, you can’t just walk around with a bunch of shit in your ass all day.
Your thoughts, your feelings, they have to take other people into consideration, and if you start the day off with at least a very slight understanding that the only reason to -have- thoughts is to communicate them to other people, who knows, maybe you might be a bit more social, or it’s good or something. I’m not sure, to be honest I don’t like where this thought is headed. I guess what I mean here is that if I were to privately just whine about my thoughts without thinking about how obnoxious that would be to an audience, it would be like sitting around in my own filth.
And so this must be a matter of routine and necessity. Parasympathetic (?). Here is your daily writing habit and the hair that’s fallen out, the food you’ve digested, the skin cells you left on the pillow. Here is simply a reminder that your mind has turned over once again. At the very least, it’s just a way to quantify the churning of thoughts. See you tomorrow.