Day 61

Day 61:

I have noticed myself doing something recently that I consistently said that I wouldn't. I've started modifying and going back on writing. I've only done this to things that I'm writing on that day, I haven't gone back to old posts or anything. However, at the start of this journey, I said that my writing would be exactly as I wrote it, mistakes and all. 

Just now, I changed this sentence to be the start of the next paragraph, even though I initially started a new paragraph on the previous sentence. Before that, I deleted a couple of whole sentences. The original premise of today's post was about PowerPoint clickers and how having lasers in them is pointless. But then I deleted it, because, and I quote from my own brain, "It's such a dumb premise". I'm not yet entirely sure what has caused this problem, but I hope that we will have found out by the time I finish writing this.

This rule and my strong attachment to it may seem picky, or even counter-productive to you, and you may well be right. After all, my primary objective for starting this journey was to develop a regular habit for (and to get better at) writing. Surely, making adjustments and streamlining my work as I write it makes sense if I am trying to improve. This is logical, and I'm now going to give myself a moment to question myself.

...

No, I think this is missing the deeper point of 'A Page a Day'. The idea was to show the progression of my ability to write, to both myself and those who I hope will be inspired by reading it. By leaving in all of the mistakes I make, it will show how the nuances* of my style have changed throughout the project, which I truly believe to be very important. Hopefully, these improvements have been happening, I have deliberately been avoiding going back and checking things for now.  The definition of a 'mistake' is also important in this. Grammar is flexible, with the use of certain punctuation or different sentence formations that could be 'mistakes', can also be considered stylistic choices. (I'll pretend that I meant to make that sentence very difficult to read :). For example, I have used 'and' and 'but' at the start of sentences on several days, which would have been completely unacceptable to do at school, but seems fine now. I do allow myself to corect things that aew actually mistakes, like spelling. If I didn't, that would make the days very difficult to red, and even change the maning of things completely. (All genuine erros ther, OH NO I CAN'T STOP NOW).

I wonder if my subconscious now knows that everything I write here is going to be published, so I'm being more judgemental and careful about things. Nope. This falls apart immediately, I'm already making things publicly available, and even though publishing a book is a step up from a blog post, it is the same action in principle.  It was unfair of me to judge the idea about laser pointers before I'd even written it; for all I know, it could've been really interesting. Maybe they have lasers in them because they are called 'laser pointers'. We will never know now, and that's a shame. It is almost to deny the world an idea by not writing or creating something that you believe in, and it is to deny yourself the opportunity to learn and gain anything that may come from it. Mind you, if I had have written about laser pointers, I wouldn't have written this, and we have no way of knowing which would have been better or more valuable. I could write it tomorrow, but it wouldn't be the same as it would be had I written it today.

As time goes on, we change as people, sometimes very dramatically in a short space of time. In this case, I may now spend a lot of time thinking about laser pointers, changing and forming my opinions about them, and maybe even looking it up on the internet. By doing this, I would dramatically change what I would write about laser pointers. Even if I made an active effort to think about the points I would've made had I written the piece today, it would never be the same. The nuances would be different. That piece will now never exist. The opportunity is gone. Context, and the time at which something is written, is incredibly influential.

I think that is the true reason why I do my best not to delete things. All of the days I have written up until now, and will write in the future, could only possibly exist exactly as they do if I wrote them on that specific day, in that specific mood, after that specific thought. If I didn't we'd never know what it would've been like. Perhaps better, perhaps worse, but different. I wonder about the countless things I have not written or created.

I hope you will write and create things, that are uniquely yours, that only you can capture. If you say "I'll do it tomorrow", remember that that statement can never be true. You will do something, but it won't be the thing you initially thought of, or wanted it to be.  Seize this moment, because it will only exist once, in the whole of human history. There will only ever be one 26th of October, 2022. There will only ever be one 'Day 61', and there will only ever be one opportunity to do exactly the thing you are thinking of right now. And that opportunity is right now.

I apologise to all fans of laser pointers, who will now never hear my 'Day 61' on them. Still, I get the feeling, even though I can never know for sure, that this is, in some ways, better ;)

*This auto-corrected to nuisance. That would have changed the meaning a lot :). I do need to work on my typing errors.