Well, this is the first IRON NODER where I didn't use all of my day logs. Not sure why. I think I just didn't want to talk about myself but I didn't entirely avoid that anyway. It's been a hard year for me for reasons that are both too personal and too complicated for me to explain here. I started out with very little motivation and remained there for most of the month. Per usual, the end of the month showed up and I started going like I actually wanted to finish. A big part of this is that I had to use vacation time before the end of the year and this week seemed like the time to do that.
I don't exactly lack for ideas to write about but I often run into a kind of writer's block where I keep swerving away from my central topic. I'll write a sentence, delete it, write another sentence, delete that, write a paragraph, delete that, and just end up staring at the screen with the clear sense that there is more to say but no idea how to encapsulate it. I've read enough to figure out that ideas that look small in the mind are often sprawling on the page. The number of ways to express an idea incorrectly out numbers the effective ways by such a huge ratio that it boggles the mind. Literally boggles the mind. As in if your mind isn't boggled thinking about that then you don't get it. Some nodes just about killed me trying to write them and others were upsettingly easy.
I'm glad to have written this month and I'm glad it's over.
IRON NODER XVI: MORE STUBBORN-HARD THAN HAMMER'D IRON