Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Trying to Retrieve the Essence

This is not my original post for today. I have tried to redo what already was germinated from within my noggin, heart and soul to no avail. I feel wrung out, empty, and cosmically wronged by the techno-marvel that is my desk top computer at work. Even worse, by my own wanton carelessness. Let me explain.

Something just happened that hasn't before since I've been blogging. I had just finished a long post that I felt fantastic about, one fueled by raw emotion and inspiration that my writing process occasionally (and thankfully) affords me. Thoughts and phrases came up from my core and out through my fingertips I had no idea were present or simmering below the surface. My muse was engaged in her easy chair and had granted me access to some of my finest writing to date (please recognize subtle tongue-in-cheek delivery here, while knowing it all feels true!). And then I hit something on the keyboard, and it disappeared. The whole brilliant post. GONE. After a frantic 30 minutes searching for the post in every nook and cranny of this #%$&*@!ing machine and all it's many niches, I had to give it up. It feels big - like I'll never retrieve those words that expressed my heart so accurately. How can I go on?

Whoa Nelly! Talk about an attack of EGO in it's basest form! Yeah, I wrote a post I liked. It was fine. But it didn't contain the key to ending global warming, the formula for the ultimate cancer cure, or a proposal to end world hunger. Truth be told, my plan to take over the world (ala Pinky and the Brain) wasn't even included. But my reaction was of UTTER DEVASTATION. HA! Somewhere in the 9th Step of the 12-step program of AA (and its many offshoot groups) is the phrase "errant nonsense", that refers to our screwed up notions about ourselves and life and all therein on any given day. See the previous paragraph for textbook definition and object lesson of "errant nonsense".

After this sequence of utter frustration and resultant pissed-off-ness by me (translate anger), I figured I'd just have to do a rewrite - hoping for some of the magnificence of the previous effort. Yeah - more errant nonsense. I stared at the screen, retyped the brilliant title, and nothing came. The emotional dissonance that often precedes and then prompts decent writing from yours truly had already been dissipated by the original exercise of typing it all out as it flowed through my channels. And I'm left (or really you guys are left, tee hee) with this tale of abject loss.

Good news - I didn't feel like eating a cake over this. Not even a bag of fritos. I'm learning to not take myself and dumb luck, good or bad, so seriously. That isn't my default setting, to be sure. But learning to just accept what is does lead to a more peaceful day to day existence through the minutiae. Becuase after all, "it" already is what it is. There's only so much controlling of the universe I can exact as one woman at any given moment.

So today's post was going to be about changes - deep changes, that I feel are at hand in my psyche. What it turns out to be about can be best summed up by my favorite piece of AA wisdom, the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change...
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His will.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen.

Attributed to Reinhold Neibuhr

Wow - even if you don't believe in "He", this is powerful brain fodder. And maybe
today's lost brilliance will revisit me in a dream and present itself for further exploration. But it already is what it is, and will unfold as it will. It always does.

10 comments:

  1. Hi Leslie. I've had several posts disappear in blogger and finally I worked out that the way to get it back is to press ctrl + z as quickly as possible before the auto save makes it permanent. I am always on a knife edge with blogger knowing it could happen at any moment. The safest is to write in a word processing doc and then paste in afterwards - which can be done if you change the encoding in blogger to "windows" (well on mine it is "western european (windows)" but it may be worded differently in US).

    It really sucks! But well done for dealing with it in such a sanguine manner.

    Hope the rest of your day goes better!

    Best wishes,
    Bearfriend xx

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  2. I've done that with comments that were particularly heartfelt. My frickin keyboard has a touchboard on the bottom. Sometimes my shirt brushes the pad and it sends the curser back, I hit enter and bam! partial comment removal. Never to be retrieved. Perfect empathy destroyed. Those always lead to a cuss fest. A whole post would definately p me off.

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  3. Sorry about the lost post! Soo frustrating!

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  4. I think "accepting hardship as the pathway to peace" is particularly apt here. Thanks for posting the Serenity Prayer. It's working for me today.

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  5. You still got everything you needed to say out and wrote down. We just did not get to see it. Pretend you wrote it down than lit a match and torched it like on a movie only instead of going up in a puff of smoke you sent it to cyber space . That is just as good.

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  6. Aagh! I know the frustration of losing a written gem--how aggravating! But as you say, it is what it is. Glad to hear that great changes are brewing! *Hugs*
    Bethany

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  7. I know the crushing feeling you just experienced. I have had it happen all to often. I have, over time, learned to periodically save my post, especially when I feel really good about a post.

    Grats on not resorting to food during your frustrations.

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  8. I have been there. And I felt a big sense of loss too.

    and if this happens to you on a regular basis. Write in WORD and then use 'copy' and 'paste' to move it over to your blog.

    Blogger ran through a stage where it was EATING posts.

    Now, I do not write in word, but I immediately set the date that I am posting it (I write ahead at least a day). And then I hit publish several times as I am writing. since it is set to a day (or sometimes a week) in advance - it does not appear on my blog when I do this - it just shows up as scheduled.

    and GOOD for you in not letting this sink you! I can identify with small things sinking me - because that used to happen to me on a very regular basis. the event was disproportional to my reaction. And then the fallout (food) from my reaction gave me physical symptoms (GI track, migraines, asthma, sleep) that would sink me even further.

    Our blogs are an important tool in LISTENING to ourselves. Of course it is going to be meaningful when a thought is lost. But you are right - it should not impact our actions.

    I totally identify with this posting.


    PS - I often write out my replies and then copy it so that it is in my computer's memory if something happens to the comment. I write LONG comments (often) and it is a pain in the butt when they get sucked into blog never never land.

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  9. Computers SUCK sometimes. I've never had that happen with a blog post, but several emails, for sure.

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