Tomorrow, May 10th, I will launch my website. As I’ve mentioned in posts below, this is now the 4th or 5th...or maybe the 6th or 7th...launch date I’ve set, but this one I will follow through on, because honestly, why not?
Launching this work into the world has felt like preparing a turkey dinner over and over and over again for the past year. Just when I think I have the table set just right, I forget something else. The guest list grows and the pie burns. I have to grab more chairs from the basement and the gravy is sticky. I’ve tended to this meal for hours and hours, hoping that once my guests sit at the table, they’ll enjoy what they see. They’ll feel my intention. Appreciate the effort. Taste the fruits of my labor and leave full and satisfied before moving on to watch some football and take a nap.
And I will stand back in the kitchen, sweat dripping down my temples as I watch my guests partake. Knowing it is now too late to make any corrections or add any extra additions. I will have to accept that it is perfect as is, because really, there are no alternatives. They’re already eating.
There is a reason that I have never actually cooked a Thanksgiving meal. And there is a reason why I have never really shown my writing to anyone else. I don’t like doing things I don’t know how to master. I don’t like doing things where I can’t control the outcome. Whether writing or cooking, I have to accept that people have different palettes, and that not everyone who consumes will enjoy.
Writing to please is not why we write. And waiting to launch until things are perfect does not work. Because perfect is an illusion - it is an ideal that means something different to each and every one of the 7.8 billion of us walking the earth right now. There really is not a standard to be met - no true recipe to follow.
Welcome to the table. Bring your side dishes and your opinions, your baggage and your perceptions. I will make room for us all.
xx
Sheila