Top of the morning and off the top of my head, I remind myself every day that I will never be good enough at what I do to stop practicing. It’s funny that we start blogs to write it out, with writing as a means of thinking through what or who we are and what we do. I firmly believe that people are never entirely sure of what they think or where they stand until it’s articulated, in any language. Returning to what’s so funny about all of this: of course, the moment I actually have something to write is when I lose the time to write it. Instead, I make lists, I tell myself what I did for the day and mostly none of it involves the kind of writing I have to do, but it helps to get some kind of word out. Even if it’s just me talking to myself.
But back to practicing: the practicing still gets done. Take my thesis – I’ve been kicking it around in my head for almost a year, and today I found out that enrollment has begun at my University (the one where I used to work and still study, not the one where I work now). So how’s this supposed to go? Do I sign up as a resident? I’m definitely not a student in the sense that I need to sit in class and meet my professors every week, but I’m not done! And I don’t know how it works to be “not done”! This isn’t a humblebrag, it’s just me realizing that, well shit, I may have messed up because I’m still trudging along and the end is nowhere in sight. Or it actually is and I’m just enjoying the scenery way too much.
Every day, I try to clock in a couple of hours of just re-typing what will now be referred to as “the thing.” The thing now only exists as a single print, which I must race to encode all over again before it disintegrates, gets lost, or my cats eat it. When I’m done with a page, which usually results in a complete rewording, I tear the loose sheet off the manuscript and use to mop up spills or pick up poop. This, for me, is practice. This is the language of never good enough. But it’s also a matter of realizing it has to end somewhere, and never being completely happy is just another way of keeping the thing alive…Or staying alive after the thing is put to rest? Either way. I’ll get there soon.
Alice Sarmiento 