getting it in, part 1

Setting yourself up for success with the right tools and environment and rituals is a good and smart thing to do. What a sneaky vexation, then, that attention given to the tools, environment, and rituals can subsume or stand in for the doing of the thing itself. You obsess over the notebook and mug and tea-making and do very little writing. You get the performance gear and the gym class pack and the data tracking app and you don’t actually lift. The perfect (situation) becomes the enemy not just of the good but of the actual. I’ve fallen into this trap so many times, especially with writing.

To avoid this, there’s a different mode of practice that I’ve come to think of, wryly, as “getting it in”. This is a useful mode to discover and cruise within. Its defining feature is smiley indifference toward the environment, tools, and rituals that set you up for success. When you’re in this mode, you eventually relish crummy tools and unfavorable circumstances and busted rituals. You’re still doing your thing despite all of that. You’re getting it in.

When you’re getting it in, you start to take pride in, even build a collection of, the trying circumstances that have failed to thwart you. You amass a Seuss-y list of situations where you still got it in: on a plane, in the car, in pain, at the bar, on Dumaine, near and far! What a splendiferously diligent writer you are.

Earlier this week, we got 9.5 inches of snow in one day in New Orleans - the most since the last year of the Civil War. Running that day, and the next, when I was slipping all over and my eyeballs stung and my mile splits were depressingly slow, felt surprisingly satisfying and affirming. I kept a lil promise to myself. I got it in.

[“written” in the notes app on my phone; with h/t and apologies to Jadakiss, 50 Cent, and others]

-eric