A Slap in the Face . . . From Myself

Every so often, I run across something past-me wrote that feels as though it chastises current me. Does this ever happen to anybody else? (I've been sorting through every piece of writing I've kept to see if there is anything I remember being humiliated about . . . for a writing assignment for Composition Theory, of course. And as I sort, I can't help reading.)

So here, from a six-and-a-half-years-younger me, is what made me feel chastised today. It's from something I wrote in a freshman honors writing class at BYU entitled "Unsolicited Solicited Advice from Me":

I can envision you in my mind. You are sitting at your desk with a blank sheet of paper laying in front of you in all of its bright, white glory. You hold a pen in your hand, but you aren't writing with it. You are fiddling with it, waiting for inspiration to strike you like an angry viper. You want lightning to strike you brain, and then you'll start writing things down. Why are you waiting, chump?

If I can give any advice, it's to stop sitting around on your rear end waiting for the hummingbird of inspiration to fly into your brain. Inspiration comes to those who earnestly seek it. It's just like praying for divine inspiration to help you in a decision you make. You don't sit around mulling over how much you need the inspiration. You get down on your knees and you pray your guts out. You do. You don't just think about doing. D&C 4:7 says, "Ask, and ye shall receive; knock and it shall be opened unto you." Please note that it doesn't say, "Sit around waiting for God to tell you what in the heck you should be doing." No, indeed, this scripture advocates action.

Mixed metaphors aside (give a girl a break . . . like I said, that came for a six-and-a-half-years-younger me, and I like to think I've learned a few things since then), I was surprised at something the younger me viewed as fundamental that the older me has forgotten: in short, I have forgotten how to throw myself wholeheartedly into something. I've forgotten how to act first and think later.

These days I spend entirely too much time mulling, and I'm relatively certain that my insistence on massive amounts of mulling is what lands me in apathy- and passivity-land. The more I think about writing something--anything--the more crippled I feel when it comes to actually writing it.

So today, I'm going to remember something my 18-year-old self seems to have known, but somewhere along the line, my 24-year-old self forgot: I'm going to remember how to do. How to act. How to achieve. How not to wait.