When to say when

It’s really fun to break stuff. 

I am a fan of demolition. 

Of the many home improvement projects I’ve taken on, the busting up of things is one phase I always handle personally. 

A friend of ours is undertaking a huge renovation project. 

And I’ve been able to help with the demo twice now. 

I guess I’ve always been a fan of destruction, to some degree. 

I hope you can relate. 

Creation and destruction. 

They are two different impulses, for sure. 

Creation requires more patience, deliberateness, precision. I enjoy this, too. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy basking in the beauty of a finished project. My culminating experience as a writer, for example, was writing the last chapter of my novel. There were so many decisions at the outset. How will this person walk? How will this person talk? Where will this confrontation take place? Why? But by that last chapter, there were only answers. This person has to walk here, say this. There wasn’t any more doubt as to what to include. It was as if it was written for me. 

Poetry gives this rush in a much more compact and evanescent form. It’s easy to tell the difference between poetry and prose. Poetry writes itself. I have to write the prose. Poetry captures those awe-struck moments when words cross your imagination the way stars shoot the sky. Poems make you say, “This is not me. This is for me.” I’ve found it all to be very humbling. 

One of the best examples for me is a poem I published on the blog after the Orlando massacre. 

First, the massacre happened. Then we spent the evening with our kids catching fireflies. There was something so childlike and perfect about that day in the wake of that tragedy that I knew it had the stuff of poetry in it. But I had to wait 2 days before the poem came. And when it came, it came fast. I had it written in 20 minutes. That poem, Orlando, can be read here.

It is in moments like that—in the writing—that I know I feel the feels of the great poets out there. It is what, I believe, Wallace Stevens meant when he said, “for a moment … [we] are a part of an element, the exactest element for us, in which we pronounce joy like a word of our own.” If you don’t know Wallace Steven’s work, I highly recommend you google his name and “of bright & blue birds & the gala sun.” It is one of is more obscure works—but it is one of a dozen poems I’ve committed to memory in case I am ever stranded on a deserted island and need to preserve my will to live.

This is quite the tangent. 

I only write this to convince you that I love creating, and I value it—as my stepfather is apt to say. 

But I do love me some destruction.

There is no form to that. There is not a right way to burn a poem. You just throw it in the fire. 

Destruction is that wonderful and wild impulse in which we lose all sense of caution. It’s as if our frontal lobe moves to the back of the bus. It is immensely satisfying. 

So, when a friend of mine asked for help demolishing his house, I practically began to salivate. 

I’ve been there twice, helping to fill two dumpsters with outdated plumbing, plaster walls, carpet, trim. Here’s what the work has looked like. 

Good conversations have come from it too. 

This new world order, the lock-down domestic economy, has changed things. My friend moved by the water, for example. Because he could work remotely, why hang close to the city? 

We spoke about our lives in between the heaves of the sledge hammer. 

“I guess we’ve sort of settled into the new normal at this point,” I told him.

He asked about my writing. He’s a really good friend.

I told him that I am gearing up a new non-fiction book. Maybe something to self publish. Something based on the blog.

“How?” he asked. “Aren’t you editing the newspaper still?”

Oh, right. Launching our city’s newspaper. That too. I seem to forget, sometimes, how many balls I juggle. 

He added, “I’d think the newspaper job would probably be enough extra-curriculars for you.”

I can’t say I’ve thought about it that way. But it felt good that day, as the sweat fell on demolished plaster, to give myself a break. It’s probably not the right time for me to patch together a new book. Maybe I could just settle into the newspaper work I’m doing with some peace of mind that it’s that extra I need in my life at the moment. 

It made a big difference. 

I work on the paper at night, when the kids are asleep. And since I told myself I should be aggregating themes from this blog to form a book, I’ve been in this self-competition for time. Ultimately, I feel all this self-pity for not having any time to work on this book idea. As a result, I resent every minute I spend on that newspaper. 

Giving myself a break that day has changed my work on the newspaper, drastically. 

I love it now more than ever before. The work hasn’t changed. What has changed is my outlook on the work. I no longer see it as a time-suck, swallowing up every free moment that should be spent on other projects. 

I’m in a good place with it all. 

It’s not like this blog is going anywhere. Neither is the concept. The miracle of the mundane is a lifelong craft. It will outlive me, whether or not I pursue it for life. 

A major part of this miracle is living sober. 

And the point of this post is that I don’t know when to say when. 

I mean this literally. 

You know how people say, “say when,” when filling your drink?

I used to purposely say nothing just to see what they would do. And to guarantee the most amount of drink in my cup. I’m not kidding. 

I’ve spent more time slurping stationary shot glasses or tumblers filled to the brim than I have saying, “enough.” 

And this fact remains true for me in sobriety. What am I? 13 years sober? And I still seem to need to fill my life to the brim. 

Saying, “when,” to life’s demands is a new practice for me. It might always be a practice—something I actively have to think about in order to do. 

But the results are immensely satisfying. 

And, paradoxically, pumping the breaks on a book project about the miracle of the mundane allows me more time to go out and experience that miracle. Such as now. As I shut it down to go skiing with my daughter.