I published something on weBEgirls ten days ago: Does he want a relationship?
I believe I’m nearly done with these women’s magazine-style types of dating posts, but I no longer feel embarrassed by or mixed up about them, or as if I’ve been writing the “wrong” way. I now realize why I felt self-conscious about these types of posts–even though I was writing them, I believed them below me. I thought that they were too immature, too Seventeen Magazine-like, too similar to what a high school or college student would write rather than a 32-year-old.
But there is no official life time table and I didn’t date at all in high school. I was in two long-term relationships in my twenties, but they jumped from nothing to something quickly with no dating in-between. I’ve felt an urge to write about these topics recently because I’ve just recently got a decent grasp on them.
Most of what I’ve learned about dating and dealing with crushes healthily and making moves and handling rejection and being strong enough to reject someone else in an honest and straight-forward manner, etc., I learned over the past few years, as a 30-something. I couldn’t have written these articles at a younger age because I hadn’t learned these lessons yet. I no longer feel ashamed of that.
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
From The Writing Life, pages 78-79. I agree whole-heartedly and would also apply this to friendship, romantic love, work, life itself.
I’ve seen hundreds of ‘em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season ticket train, for fear they’d get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn’t be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world.
Found on pages 218-219.
- My name is Jessica.
