Shop talk and the spirit of experimentation

If you know me, you know I’m always conducting my little “experiments.”

When I was in college and first began to feel some real sovereignty over my own life, I adopted this word to help me “flip the script” and take the intimidation out of anything which felt even remotely committal (which, according to Alison Armstrong, is evolutionarily not a woman’s strong suit), saying, “I’m going to look at it like an experiment,” which meant there would be a period of evaluation, then reevaluation, and then if need be, I could hit the eject button.

That might sound kind of flighty, but looking at life like a string of experiments, or approaching something new with the spirit of experimentation, has served me well, and cultivated in me an authentic streak of boldness. 

And sometimes, these little experiments happen accidentally.

Take last night, for instance.

Something came up which prevented me from putting in my evening writing time, and so I had to move that window into the following morning before work, when I would ordinarily be editing the previous evening’s blog post. Something I observed about this routine is that there’s obviously more pressure on the moment when the day’s writing is only being written the same day it needs to be published (not exactly the go-to method of The Professional). There’s a lot hanging on that hour or half hour. I gotta be on my game.

Yet, the flip side is that I have more energy in the morning. Yesterday’s post seemed to me to have more chutzpah, more verve, more fire in its belly. Fire is the last thing in my belly right now, my eyes only growing droopier by the minute.

So maybe there’s a happy medium with which I can experiment next. Instead of relegating writing as the last thing before bed, I’ll do it before I eat dinner, right after I get home from the day job.

I apologize for this boring shop talk, dear reader. You see, it helps me so much to air things out with you. That in itself has been an ongoing experiment—this very blog where you and I can spend a few precious moments together.

Expect my report when next we visit.

Happy weekend, and Shabbat Shalom, my friends.