Why am I so much more comfortable with the random and the chaotic than I am with things that are carefully planned?

For the same reason that it has taken me more than ten years to learn guitar. And I’m still not good, but at least I can sing along now and play a few old folk tunes and make myself feel better.

It’s not that I want to avoid the structure. I’m quite fond of structure, actually. Structure is what keeps us from destroying ourselves. But structure alone is just so… common. Something about it sucks all the inspiration out of the moment. It’s like letting the air out of a balloon slowly, not fast enough to notice the change until you’re left with nothing in your hands.

That’s what makes politics so boring today, right? The whole thing is scripted and ridiculous. That’s what keeps so many people away from the Church too, right? Who wants to be told what to do by a bunch of moralistic hypocrites?

That’s also what keeps me from being a great writer. It’s not the lack of talent or passion or inspiration. Nor is it the crap I tell myself about how no one has ever given me a break. It’s not even that I’m unwilling to work hard or to make a bold move. It’s simply that I lack the discipline to be edited, to submit to something–anything–more than myself.

Maybe that’s why I’m here right now, instead of somewhere else.

But here is good too. Maybe what we’re all needing… not looking for or wanting but needing… is the balance that comes from freedom in context, from being as free as a fish is within the sea rather than as screwed as a fish that fights the sea only to end up laid out on the beach, flopping around in joyous freedom until the last fated breath.