Lately I’ve had a rash of startitis. I can’t find a fit for my creative energy. The real-life drudgery, I plow through well enough; re-installing Dropbox and Open Office (thanks for that, Windows 8); completing the forms for various manufactured bureaucratic urgencies; keeping the car and the cat oiled and rabies-free.
Creatively, though, nothing gets finished. My knitting, for instance. The lace trimmed blue merino sweater, already blocked and shelved, nags at me with its slightly too-long sleeves. The neckline on the chunky handspun is all wonky, perhaps because I can’t decide between scoopneck or cowl. A crumpled pair of socks reproaches me with one unfinished toe. I abandoned all these projects for a laceweight wool and alpaca wrap that I set down in turn, after realizing that I’d dropped a handful of stitches several rows back, the yarn so gossamer it simply floated off the needles.
Even less gets accomplished with my writing. My desk is littered with half-finished stories and essays stalled at awkward transitions, larded with filler. I feel the energy leaching slowly from crumpled post-its scrawled with fantastic conversations eavesdropped from the bus. I poke them once in a while, to see if they twitch.
I chide myself, I guilt myself, I “should” myself, but nothing works. Nothing seems worth the effort. So I try to convince myself to just go with it, let myself go slack, flit from one project to the next like a butterfly auditioning flowers; after all, does it really matter? My husband, staring in dismay at the heaps of yarn and sweaters and paper stuffed into the corner of the sofa and threatening to cascade from hastily neatened piles at the edge of the kitchen table would argue that yes, yes it does.
He’s right, of course. Part of the problem is my desire to be perfect, the remedy for which involves setting aside my ego and bringing my imperfect offerings to my writers group for help. (I’m on my own with the knitting; the last time I brought a question to my local yarn store, I was advised to learn to knit righthanded.) But the other, more insidious issue is my desire for everything to be perfectly frictionless and smooth. I’m after that giddy feeling of possibility, the temporary high. The first false move leaves me wilting before a sense of hopelessness, the certainty that there is nothing to salvage. This is the part that scares me.
My mother’s refrigerator is crowded with jar after jar of jam—apricot, blackberry, peach; full-fruit; reduced sugar; honey-sweetened—each one opened and sampled and carefully resealed with a square of wax paper beneath the lid, to prevent sticking. They go with the unworn sweaters from Talbots and TJ Maxx heaped on the love seat in her study, still wearing their price tags. With the new and newer bowls jammed into her cupboards. The way she discards friends.
This, more than anything else—my husband’s frustration at a messy house, my own meddling perfectionism—resolves me. I don’t want to be that person, the one who shrinks from the first perceived obstacle, who rejects every imperfect sweet thing. Pandora pawing through her box in search of something she cannot name. My mother spooning disappointment from a jar of jam.
I don’t want to be that person and so, girded with fresh resilience—would that it sticks—I read through an essay; I inspect a sleeve. Neither is perfect, but perhaps they are better than I thought. Perhaps they are worth finishing.
Agnieszka Stachura lives in North Carolina with her husband, cat, and a variable
number of unfinished projects. Her completed stories and essays have been
published in Fifth Wednesday Journal, The Sun, Damselfly Press, Staccato
Fiction, and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, among other
publications
