It's All Grist For The Mill

The Jan. 27 post, Chilled Into Unconsciousness, has been bugging me since I posted it Monday morning.

I missed the message with that piece and what really annoys me is: I knew it. There was a niggle in my mind about it that just wouldn’t go away.  A niggle that woke me up at 4:00 AM Monday, got me scribbling on the pad I keep by my bed and still I could not nail down the deeper point I was looking for: the point I was missing.

 I could have held Chilled back. I do have other options ready for posting, but for some reason I wanted Chilled out there. So out it went, not properly “browned and served.”

 Later that morning I was heading out in my car when WHAM! I realized exactly what it was I wanted to say about the Arctic Vortex and the “surprising” food in my fridge.

Too late.

 When I got home, hefting some Starbucks coffee, I wanted to DELETE the piece from the blog and from FB. I wanted to redo the ending. I had no idea if, or how that could be done. I assumed not.

But here’s the thing. How many times have we tried to say to someone, especially to those nearest and dear, something we felt was important, only to find that we had completely blown it? How many times have we thought later, I didn’t say that in the way I meant to. I left out what really matters to me. I will try again.”

And sometimes we do make another attempt and we fare better and other times? We quit on the whole thing, hoping that we haven’t botched it as badly as we thought, making the subject matter inconsequential in our minds so that we don’t have to pick up the pieces. We don’t have to try again.

With a blog, whatever I missed, it doesn’t matter, not even a tiny bit. But in significnt conversations with people we care about? It absolutely does.