Mr. Insecure

I have terrible insecurity when I write, I am sure that most writers do. The problem is that I am not a writer, I am a painter. But because I am an artist, I can appreciate what a writer, what a true wordsmith, goes through every time they sit down to work. When I write I have a subject in my head I want to tell you about. I go about my business of trying to supply details and when I am done I simply publish my thoughts. As a painter I do much the same thing, I stretch canvas over frame, I gesso, I begin to layer pigment until I am finished. The difference being that somewhere along the process of painting I can look at what I have done, and I know that it is ether going well or not, and more I can see the little inconsistencies, the areas that I need to work on, that need to flesh out and give more attention. That is not something I can do in writing.

The other night I was lying in bed with my wife. We were having one of those wonderfully intimate nights sharing ideas, talking about the day, kissing, and staring at each other till eventually time and the pressure of having children and the necessity of having to get up in the morning wore on us and we turned out the light.

Laying there in the darkness feeling my eyes adjust to the dim I began to feel the presence of crazy mind creeping in and taking over. I could see the images of unresolved conflicts, the stresses of daily life, work or even events of the past creeping in and at once I knew that I was in danger of going insane. My friend calls it monkey mind. I sat up, and not wanting to wake my wife, almost tripped trying to get out of the room. Minutes later she found me sitting on the couch. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Come to bed.”

In a daze I dumbly followed her and lying down again beside her she asked, “why did you leave?”

“I could feel my mind going crazy,” I said.

“Oh that?” Was her reply, “It usually takes me an hour every night to get past my mind and finally be able to settle into sleep.” I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t imagine trying to fall to sleep like that every night. “My trick” she continued, “if you want to call it that, is to try and name the voices that are speaking to you.” Lowering her speech she continued “Oh there is Mrs. Grumpy.” Then, her voice rising, “and there is Mrs. Insecure.”

“Her comes Mr. Unappreciated,” I said with a light chuckle.

“Oh sure” she said, “I know HIM.”

I lay there for a minute trying to decide which was better, trying to name the plethora of voices that were keeping me awake at night, or pacing up and down my living room trying to match them for strength and endurance.

“Mr. Insecure, Mrs. Self-loathing, Mr. Anxious, Mrs. Confused…” I drifted,

In a painting I can look at the surface, the texture of the paint, the color, the forms and usually know in an instant where I have gone wrong. Everything is simple in a painting, at least simple from the perspective of knowing where the proper place of things ought to be. In writing I have no idea. I stare at the words on the page, and if they seem to flow from the words on the tip of my thoughts I am usually satisfied, I have no great patience for writing. Things are better, I tell myself, if I just let them lie.