Yesterday, putting pen to paper seemed like a waste of time. The thought crossed my mind: “Who am I touching with my writing, anyway?”
A too-critical mindset looks for reasons the work isn’t valid. Or gets you into comparing, by the numbers. “How many people are buying and reading my last book?” for instance.
Our society loves to rate and measure. Just today, I got a message that my Klout score went up. Does this make a rat’s ass of difference in the world?
Numbers have nothing to do with real success.
Yesterday I also heard from a couple of budding writers. One told me, “Thank you for sharing these poems, your story, with me. Thank God for nature, and art, and a few kind words.” The other writer had been having a hard day, and explained, “Once I settled in and started reading your book, it was like, okay.”
What matters is that I do the work I’ve been given to do.
What matters are these humans: one, two. Two seems like a pretty small number. But who can truly measure the value and beauty of those human beings, on this single day in time, and how by some grace I was able to help them?
These are the two people I will think about as I continue, day after day, the long, slow work of scribbling on the page.
Smallness, slowness, has its own beauty.
