Writing, like most other (all other?) activities, often feels like an exercise in Sisyphean futility. If it weren’t for the miracle of the word processor, I would have been crushed beneath the weight of an Indiana Jones-esque boulder of crumpled pages years ago. The act of expressing a thought, written or otherwise, can be a complicated and cumbersome challenge. MLK once said that the calling to speak was often a “vocation of agony”. I don’t know about you, but I think that guy was on to something. I bet he had a few other interesting thoughts as well.

Personally, I struggle with communicating in general, but through the years I’ve at least cultivated a sort of linguistic, lexiconic, improvisational, and vernacularian utility belt of ridiculousness that has helped me to survive. (It’s a word. I mean, you know, now it is) Coming to terms with the general public when you spend most of your time alone can be like trying to shake hands with an octopus, but I think I’m getting better at recognizing which tentacles I’m supposed to jump over and which I’m supposed to roshambo. That’s what you do with tentacles, no? Writing has always been something that I’ve enjoyed doing despite my shortcomings, but when I take a step back, twist that little dial and shift focus outside of my own narcissistic pleasure and consider whether or not I am being heard or understood, I often feel like an alien. Or worse, I feel like a failure. Entire lifetimes pass in which I can’t tell if the various octopods are throwing rocks or scissors or paper, or just trying to escape my bizarre ape-man grasp, because why am I shaking my fist at them in the first place? I begin to feel uncertain. I feel as if I’ll never know how to actually communicate what I’m trying to communicate when it should be communicated, and that is scary, and lonely, and sometimes it hurts.

In the same speech mentioned earlier, MLK also said that despite the hardship of doing so, we “must speak with all the humility appropriate to our limited vision”. I think that’s important for me to remember because although I feel like I’m fumbling and flailing and failing to communicate appropriately with every tentacled creature I see, I am also just as much a weird ass octopus as they are and it’s probably best to just embrace the awkward handshake as a sort of language in and of itself. Like an improvised dance that I should enjoy and celebrate… or at least laugh at.