Do or Do Not…There Is No Try

Posted by Moose on September 18th, 2008. Filed under: Uncategorized.

I’m quite fond of my walls. (Um, my emotional walls. Not the actual walls of my apartment. Though I’m quite fond of those too.) They’re like the hard chocolate shell around the creme filling of a Cadbury egg. If Cadbury eggs were covered in jokes instead of chocolate. (Don’t you love it when you attempt a simile only to have it crumple pitifully at your feet, begging you to stop with the metaphors and the parables and other annoying English major constructs and just SAY SOMETHING ALREADY, but you’re too lazy to rewrite? ME TOO.) My walls keep me relatively safe and content, but they also do an adequate job of keeping out some of the truly worthwhile parts of life. Like other people.

Phase one of Project: Open Up involves writing for a new web site. Wherein I try to avoid extraneous jokes and tell the unvarnished truth. Needless to say, typing the first post felt like clawing out my small intestine with a garden trowel. It was exhausting. I may not do it again. MY COMFORT IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN GROWTH.   

If you want to read my pained attempts to whack the business end of a pickaxe into my carefully constructed barriers, go take a look. I’ll be posting there every other Thursday, and will try (shut it, Yoda) to avoid all similes, metaphors, and walls.

Phase two of Project: Open Up might include telling people I love them. Does it count if I do it via anonymous email?

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13 Responses to Do or Do Not…There Is No Try

  1. hillary

    yes – sending anonymous I love you emails is much better than leaving anonymous I HATE YOU comments. not that I know from experience or anything.

  2. georgia

    Congrats on the writing gig. I love that website, and loved your first piece! As someone who writes those insanely personal creme filling posts every couple days, I can vouch for their usefulness. Really, it’s so cathartic.

  3. Camels & Chocolate

    Guess what, I LOVE YOU! =) Um, that was a pretty bold declaration for the Internet, methinks.

    And I adore your new column. Go, you!

  4. Teej

    I loved that post. Can’t wait to read more.

    Anonymous love is A-OK! Hm, that doesn’t sound quite right…

  5. Artemisia

    Congrats on the article! Good things are sure to come.

  6. Rhi

    You are darling. And, I love you :)

  7. Jhianna

    I am so totally on board with the anonymous love notes. Yes, they completely count.

  8. Angella

    It TOTALLY counts. Off to read the post…

  9. The Over-Thinker

    But, is it okay to include a P.S. at the bottom of the entry?..a P.S. that includes a metaphor??? I mean, you can take the Moose out of the metaphor but you canNOT take the metaphor out of the Moose. NoImsayin?

  10. The Random Muse

    It counts.

    I’m not entirely sure how I got here, but I love your blog and am bookmarking it.

  11. Sarah

    Annonymous emails count only if you then move on to bigger things–like non-annoymous, or texts, or phone calls, or in person. But baby steps are perfectly permissible. Good luck!

  12. Peter Varvel

    Oh, Moose. Why do you think I’m so stubborn about staying inside my plastic bubble world?
    I have loved the online socializing of facebook, this past year, as well as my daily addiction to your blog and those of others’. But I quickly realized how lazy it is making me about socialzing in real life.
    The internet has become too convenient for satisfying my emotional needs. Who knew?
    The new column rocks – congrats!

  13. Laura

    In three paragraphs you just made me realize what I haven’t understood about myself for 31 years. The reason I have a hard time saying “I love you.” My walls. I got that the walls were why I had a hard time the first time in a relationship, but I never understood why I had a hard time saying it to non-romantic people that I do love, like my partner’s mother and 10 yr old sister — its my walls. It always struck me as odd that others could so freely say it and I always felt like I was weird that I couldn’t.

    Thank you Dr. Moose — that was the cheapest therapy I have ever had.

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