Sometimes I get lost inside who I am. I contain more than multitudes. I am the view of dark space through the Hubble telescope. I am the ultra deep field, stars streaming my face like lost eyelashes. I contain 10,000 galaxies within the dark of my eye. With every action, I create a life. Destroy a species. Wipe out a pair of moons. Birth a dying star.
This is true of all of us. Infinitely large and utterly insignificant.
I got an email yesterday, from someone who thanked me for what I write. He said that this year, he came out to his wife as a transgender female. That women like me gave him the confidence to be himself. It made me cry. All things like that make me cry, that we touch one another across time and space, move planets, break stars open to make accidental light.
Since I was old enough to read, I knew what my calling was. Write stories. Write stories. Write stories. Change the world through words. Tell the emotional truths. Say the thing I’m not supposed to say, the hard thing, the difficult thing, the true thing. All of my multitudes know this. It’s the only thing they agree on, the only thing that keeps an infinity in equilibrium. And when I forget? A dying star writes its swan song. Light escapes from a black hole. The dark space goes beyond dark into something unknowable.
Sometimes I get lost inside what I am here to do. The internet pretends it’s a universe, but it’s just a shack on the outskirts of town. Important in its own galaxy, but small as the tip of an eyelash pressed to the Hubble. My real work is out there. In the dark space, where it is my job to bring the light.
My real work is to tell the stories that only I can tell.
What is your real work? Answer me that.
Kiss kiss bang bang, s.
**Today’s title courtesy of the poem, “Flying at Night,” by Ted Kooser
New Words:
2,700 gaming
Miles Walked This Year:
Words Written This Year:
My 42 Writing Projects This Year:
6. The Bone Key (novel)
5. Love and Sex in the Ninth World (gaming)
4. The Ninth World Guidebook (gaming)
3. Numenera CO (gaming)
2. Izaltu’s Needle (gaming) 3,500/8,000
1. Kinky Rewrite (non-fiction book) 50,000/60,000