A Writer's Notebook, Day Nine-Hundred-And-Sixty-One

I often find myself very flustered when I attempt to write about my life, or about topics which feel personally important, and I want to gain a better understanding of this.  I'll have the impulse to erase what I have already written, to undo and hide any effort, because I feel scared, I think, that what I am hoping to say will not be understood, or rather that I am revealing something important and vulnerable which I want to share, but which I am scared to tell.  It is a fear of not being understood, or even of being ignored.  I have been pushing myself by attempting to write of this type of stuff, even just in private at first, or by thinking of it as being to a specific person who I know.  Often, if I get past that first part, it becomes easier to keep going, though it still impacts the results in strange ways.  I realized, for example, that I have a tendency to try to work my way into a subject for an essay slowly, as if I am gently raising the heat on a pot so as not to warn those within.  This can be good, but I think I often go too long, so the reader does not have a clue what the essay is really about, which doesn't work either.  I remember being taught by the greatest professor I ever studied with that the way to write an essay is just to write it and not worry about the structure, and it was good advice for me, both then and now.  I know how essays should work and do not need to think so hard about those parts.  I just need to give myself permission to say what I am thinking and trust that I know how to communicate my ideas well enough that others will be able to understand.