today i finally finished reading ross gay’s the book of delights, the book of gorgeous essays that inspired me to begin my series of “notes from volunteer isolation,” a materialization of my commitment to write more regularly than i have for years, which is to say that this book has saved me.
if you’ve been reading along with my posts, you may be asking didn’t you start this shit way back in march? and then you may quickly calculate that waaaaaaay more than 50 days have passed since then, and if you were the handful of blessed people who were following my posts religiously (thank you) you may wonder if maybe you missed the last few ones, to which i can assure you that it’s not your fault, it’s mine.
see, i suck at finishing things. more specifically, i have a hardest time tending to the last 5%. i drag my feet to the final touches, find the mixing and mastering painstaking, or in this case, have taken forever to get through #48-50.
i began really liking my writing probably around the #20’s, and was feeling myself by the #30’s. maybe i should publish these, i began thinking. but who would publish it? who would want it? with all that’s happening in the world? what good would it do? why do i have to turn everything into a hustle? maybe this is stupid.
i know that everybody has regrets – shoulda-coulda-wouldas – and for some, these regrets are tied to deep existential sorrows. shoulda expressed my love more. coulda quit harming myself sooner. woulda been the life i know i’m worth living.
so i’m grateful that the kind of regrets that haunts me, the kind that compels me to sigh long and deep at random points throughout the days, are largely the regrets tied to my creative endeavors that never fully manifested (which is most of them). that album staling in my hard drive. that short film locked in an outdated final cut file. the endless ideas i was ready to drop everything to pursue, until the high of inspiration came down and was swallowed by doubt.
in june i reached the #40s, and by then had been determined to at least reach #50. a low enough bar, i told myself. i had been writing and posting at least every other day, and if i kept it up could finish before my trip to the bay, and offer myself the rare satisfaction of actually seeing one of my personal projects all the way through, as opposed to adding to my cabinet of lost momentums. that’s when the excuses became louder, eventually engulfing.
i spent the summer only writing sparsely, and #47 was the last one i shared on instagram. just a couple more, you’re so close, i’ve told myself each morning since then, only to watch the sun set on another opportunity to complete. it was also in june that i was getting to the last few pages of gay’s book. for the past few months i haven’t been able to bare completing either of them. maybe i just can’t stand finality.
it’s not like i haven’t written anything since then. i started new “just for me” exercises, posted a bunch of private posts, left some easter eggs in secret links, even thought i could reacquaint myself with pen and pad. this is to say that after #47 back in july, everything started bleeding together, mostly with entries deemed too personal to share, writing accused of not being good enough to expose, and of course, plenty of weeks where i backslid into not writing anything at all.
so i finally finished the book of delights today. words that come to mind are satiating, fulfilling, liberating (i’m describing the last couple of essays, as well as the act of reading them). i felt the best way to honor this moment is to return to this intention, too, to finally finish my series. no matter how incomplete, anticlimactic, out-with-no-bang it feels.
before finishing this final paragraph, i went through all that other writing, only to discover that, due to my inability to number shit properly, i actually finished 50 posts months ago! the guilt that has sit tense in me, that has lingered on my to-do list for all these months, was in my head all along. in truth, the only sense of true isolation i’ve experienced through this writing exercise has been the loneliness of always being too hard on myself. for those of you who have read along, commented, encouraged me, thank you. it’s difficult to finish something you started, but even more difficult not to.