A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Hundred-Twenty-Eight
The project that I have been assembling for my fiance is pretty much done. I will have a bit more work to do in order to make assemble it, but the rest is completed already. I think it will be something that she appreciates in the spirit that it comes from. If I am wrong about that, well, it will suck, but I think that the care I have put into it shows.
Well, even in my personal life, my mind tends towards this kind of peripatetic uncertainty. I suppose it is a natural part of who I am, that I should accept it in some way and learn to be at peace even with those things popping off in the back of my mind. Maybe I will get to that at some point...
At one point today, my brother came by to help with a few things, and in the process looked at a piece I am writing that is not particularly nice to him. It is something that I wrote largely to just vent how I was feeling, and at a point when I was rather upset about a number of things that had occurred. I don't want to get into it all, but my birthday was marred, and the whole experience left me feeling rather crushed.
Now, the piece my brother read was my own perception of something, and it was not intended for him to look at it or even know about it. If I had ever wanted to publish it, I would have spoken with him in advance and made sure he understood it and how I had felt while writing it. But, instead, he was in my office, without really talking to me first, and just looked at what I had written, pretending he had not. Now, I had never intended him to see it, and it was on my computer at home, which I think of as a fairly personal space. It was a poem that I wrote to vent, and I feel like shit that he saw it, but I also feel violated by that at the same time.
In all honesty, the way I felt in writing that poem is not even a reflection of how I necessarily feel any longer, even before this occurred, and I feel that writing the poem was a way to understand those feelings and put them into a context. While the poem might remain in those feelings, my own thinking and emotions evolve through that examination. What is more, I don't feel I should need to offer any kind of explanation. If I had been attempting to hurt him, that might be a different matter, but I had not intended that poem as a public statement. To have to justify work I did that was on my computer is absurd and dismissively condescending. Not that I was asked to justify myself directly, but I felt that I needed to say something in order to alleviate any further damage.
It is the very fact that he saw work without my permission, really, and I might feel much the same way if it were another piece that didn't impact him at all. I can't help but feel bad for the impact it had on him, but I also don't feel I am at all guilty. All of which makes it feel as though the only thing I could do would be to apologize for my writing, and that is a rather upsetting notion, for I hope reasons that are obvious.
In the end, I had a short talk with him which I hope alleviated much of his upset, but I don't know. I am more emotional than he is, so he might already be fine, or he may be seething. In any case, I hope he comes to recognize that it was an expression from a moment in time and doesn't reflect anything more than the way I felt at that point. I really love my brother, even when he is not always the most pleasant or generous person in certain ways, and I don't want him to feel that I don't care or appreciate him.
Well, even in my personal life, my mind tends towards this kind of peripatetic uncertainty. I suppose it is a natural part of who I am, that I should accept it in some way and learn to be at peace even with those things popping off in the back of my mind. Maybe I will get to that at some point...
At one point today, my brother came by to help with a few things, and in the process looked at a piece I am writing that is not particularly nice to him. It is something that I wrote largely to just vent how I was feeling, and at a point when I was rather upset about a number of things that had occurred. I don't want to get into it all, but my birthday was marred, and the whole experience left me feeling rather crushed.
Now, the piece my brother read was my own perception of something, and it was not intended for him to look at it or even know about it. If I had ever wanted to publish it, I would have spoken with him in advance and made sure he understood it and how I had felt while writing it. But, instead, he was in my office, without really talking to me first, and just looked at what I had written, pretending he had not. Now, I had never intended him to see it, and it was on my computer at home, which I think of as a fairly personal space. It was a poem that I wrote to vent, and I feel like shit that he saw it, but I also feel violated by that at the same time.
In all honesty, the way I felt in writing that poem is not even a reflection of how I necessarily feel any longer, even before this occurred, and I feel that writing the poem was a way to understand those feelings and put them into a context. While the poem might remain in those feelings, my own thinking and emotions evolve through that examination. What is more, I don't feel I should need to offer any kind of explanation. If I had been attempting to hurt him, that might be a different matter, but I had not intended that poem as a public statement. To have to justify work I did that was on my computer is absurd and dismissively condescending. Not that I was asked to justify myself directly, but I felt that I needed to say something in order to alleviate any further damage.
It is the very fact that he saw work without my permission, really, and I might feel much the same way if it were another piece that didn't impact him at all. I can't help but feel bad for the impact it had on him, but I also don't feel I am at all guilty. All of which makes it feel as though the only thing I could do would be to apologize for my writing, and that is a rather upsetting notion, for I hope reasons that are obvious.
In the end, I had a short talk with him which I hope alleviated much of his upset, but I don't know. I am more emotional than he is, so he might already be fine, or he may be seething. In any case, I hope he comes to recognize that it was an expression from a moment in time and doesn't reflect anything more than the way I felt at that point. I really love my brother, even when he is not always the most pleasant or generous person in certain ways, and I don't want him to feel that I don't care or appreciate him.
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