“I read once that in order to write a great book, you have to be willing to kill your darlings. Everything, simply, can’t fit in. And I suppose it’s the same in all things of life. In order to have the best things, sometimes, along the way, we have to be willing to set some really good things aside.”
With one part characteristic indecisiveness and one part insatiable awe and curiosity for all there is to experience, know, see, I’ve always been one to want my cake and eat it too, a thousand times over. But this year, I’ve realized that in trying to do all things, I do none of it well. In striving to maintain friendships – childhood, high school, college, “SF we like to party,” as classified by my Google+ circle, and so on – I compromise them. By wavering between career choices, I stay still, immovably entranced by the comfort of the status quo, looking wistfully ahead, waiting and wondering “what if’s.” 2012 has been and will continue to be a year of pruning – purposefully removing the auxiliary, accepting that pieces will fall away, making room for what is essential, what I want, to grow.
There’s sadness in loss of any kind, but as Ron of Parks and Recreation advises, “It’s better to whole-ass one thing than to half-ass two things.” It’s time to start whole-assing it all the way.
