Leaders of the Free World

You know that moment when suddenly everything just comes together and you sit looking at something and just KNOW that whatever happens now, your writing will NEVER be the same again.

Yeah, that, right now.

— 🗨️ S Reeson 💭 Digital, Physical, Fractal 💬 (@InternetofWords) February 11, 2020

This week, a major part of my February output has changed. For this month’s Big Submission [TM] the plan originally had been to repurpose what is, in my heart, the more personal set of poems from a selection of three possible entries. Except, there’s been a bit of a lightbulb moment after a week of staring at stuff with no real idea of how I can rebuild those moments, in some cases from scratch.

So, on Monday, time made me walk away and re-approach a selection that… well, is emotionally quite difficult to read. It was the sense of dread this collection radiated that had kept it untouched for some time, but in terms of salvageability and improvement, this was the best bet. My third selection has neither cohesion or narrative flow and needs to be completely reconstructed.

Instead, this was the better bet.

It is the acceptance of the event in my timeline, what it meant then and how I see it now in relation to the bigger picture. It's allowing myself to be kind, and accepting that yes, some stuff was awful, but you know where it lies within you and can deal with it appropriately.

— 🗨️ S Reeson 💭 Digital, Physical, Fractal 💬 (@InternetofWords) February 11, 2020

It was hard work. I’ve cried more in the last 48 hours than has been the case for weeks. Mentally, I am exhausted, but what now exists is a piece of work that I am genuinely very proud of. More importantly, this is the piece that, regardless of what other people decide, will see the light of day in some form as a printed work before the year is out. Self-publishing, on whatever format, will happen in 2020.

It also puts into stark relief exactly how much work has been done in the last year or so, and how little grasp there is of what exists and in what form. I’ve taken the step this morning of archiving the key files off to backups in two seperate locations, not just on my hard drive. You can never be too careful, after all. Then, there really needs to be some time to sort out exactly what has been stuffed where.

There’s an early Spring Clean coming, I think, a lot to do with this recent outpouring of emotional pressure. Many things can now be thrown away, for good, no longer required to move pace of my progress forward. They were, it occurs to me now, simply support structures anyway. Now I’m confident and comfortable enough to stand alone, none of it is required any longer. I can move forward, considerably lighter.

This really is the best work I have ever written.