Unfinished Thoughts

I don't know what I mean either

This won’t be a complete thought. Which means it won’t be a complete essay. They rarely are. I need editors like I need a therapist. I think about that a lot when people quote my words to me—from the book, from interviews, from this substack. “I know you hate texting, but…” is one I get a lot lately, usually in a text from someone I love texting.

If I’d sent that texting essay to Jamie, my agent who usually edits me, she’d have come back with a list of questions: Do you think this is because your phone is mostly work now? Does writing a text break your concentration more than talking? Do you hate texting?

These wouldn’t have been the questions. I can’t predict her questions any better than I can predict a therapist’s questions. I know my first reaction is always irritation—I said what I said. Jesus. Then I’ll walk my dog and realize I meant something entirely different. We’ll never know how I feel about texting because I didn’t get the essay edited. Just stuck it up here, half-baked.

That’s the blessing/curse of writing I suppose. I just blurt this shit out, always have. Write it down and try to understand it or hope it makes sense later, but at least it’s not in me. It’s on a page. I found words for it. Getting paid to write, especially here when I’m not worried so much about the final copy, it’s like getting paid to breathe. I’d do it anyway but I’ll take the money. But then, it’s here, always. And while the copy’s final, my thoughts are nowhere near final.

Even when an essay’s gone through editing and friends’ reading and editing again… I was sitting in the barber chair yesterday listening to my barber tell me how passive they are. How they’d stay in relationships long past expiration so as not to upset anyone. And I thought, yeah, me too. Fuck. There’s an entire goddamn essay in my book about how I stayed with someone because I needed a place to live. I didn’t mention that. I said something super helpful like, “Yeah that sucks. Took my ass until I was 40 probably to quit doing that.” If I were the sort of asshole who gave advice, I’d tell them something like it’s okay to have an enemy. Isn’t that what I said in the book?