I can I know

Step 1: Paper and Pen:

6.12.2025

You can’t backspace on paper. 
The finality makes it harder to begin. 
What if I panic, need to turn back, and I can’t? I’ll have to start all over again. I’ll have wasted a perfectly good page. The risk of failure keeps me from reaching success.

Write more words. 
My stomach hurts.

The way I’ll go from perfect to 
all-over-the-place-no-rules. No in-between 
tolerable. I can’t TRY to be good, and then be bad. I have to either BE good, or be so bad it’s actually good. Because it’s bad with a purpose. On purpose. This is not a mistake.

Keep going.

Bad writing isn’t a reason to give up.
Most things aren’t a reason to give up.
You don’t even really ever need reasons to give up.
What you need is reasons not to.

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Step 2: Whatever This Is:

7.16.2025

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Sometimes you just write it twice. And then you can backspace. Not that hard, it turns out.

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Also, when I say no rules, what I mean is SO MANY rules.

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Five weeks later, despite plenty of access to the backspace key, some things deserve to stay. My stomach still hurts. The page was never wasted. It all makes too much sense and not enough. It’s perfect.

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