On Call

Off Course

Yesterday was supposed to be a productive writing day. Yesterday was not a productive writing day. I felt overwhelmed by the infinite combinations of words that could be.

I believe in callings. I believe God asks us to do things. I believe my assignment is to write a book. When I don’t want to write a book, I know I will write a book. When I try to convince myself that all this calling business is fabricated, I sink into existential sadness.

I unhelpfully think that God doesn’t need me to write a book. This is true. God doesn’t need me to do anything. I am not responsible for changing hearts. I fear I would make things worse. Now that’s presumptuous. Jesus can take care of this.

I have been praying the surrender novena. Each day ends by saying “Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything” ten times. Yesterday I threw my notepad on the floor after at least an hour of deliberation about whether or not “I want to articulate my spiritual journey” is a good sentence.

My cry to the heavens went something like this. I want to surrender as badly as you want me to. I don’t even want to write a book. I’m just doing it because you asked me to. And how is it even possible to surrender writing to you because it certainly seems like my hand has to write words from my brain and I don’t know which words from my brain to choose.

I have also been trying to organize my personal documentation. I had notes and files saved across five applications and wanted to consolidate. I am a hoarder of my thoughts. Lack of coherence annoys me. I want the entirety to be something. I merged two applications into my OneNote journal but did not maintain chronological order. This kind of chaos makes me want to delete everything.

THEN I would start perfect organization. This is not a new hope. Here is an edited journal excerpt from six years ago. Using these tools to organize has been good, and it only bothers me a little that everything is not perfect. How could I know before? Initially I had a cute little journal to write in, now this makes more sense. You just have to do the best you can and start with something. Once things get added, the organization gets convoluted because you did not have a perfect system from the start.

I like exploring reflections from past versions of me. I expect this will help the book. Conversely, I skim over writing drafts that I didn’t develop into a piece. I anxiously save them in case they contain the best sentences I have ever written. There is a new AI tool in OneNote, so just now I ask it to pull every well-written sentence for me. Interesting, but Melissa, just delete.

I am going to publish this now before doubt talks me into burying what is alive. These words would not rest in peace because they, like me, want to be free.