Here in Vancouver it's cherry blossom season. While biking around today surrounded by these beautiful trees, a useful metaphor came to me. I've been struggling with how to develop this site. I look at where I want to get to, what I want to create, and nothing I start feels good enough. There's so much I want to develop and share, so many different things I want this to be. I didn't see it until recently, but all of that internal work and those times of frustration are necessary. Similar to the trees, you don't need to see the roots to know they're there. It will be a while of appearing to be nothing until it slowly breaks through the surface and begins to take shape. People don't need to see all of that background work. They just need to read and sense that it's been done. The messy first drafts, the clutter that comes from trying to create something. Those are all just necessary creation of roots.
The branches and the occasional flowers have the ability to develop because of the foundation. I see this as the logical extension of reading, of gathering knowledge. What do you do with all of those scattered notes, where do you put those half finished ideas? When you have a flash of inspiration, when you read something that sparks a realization, what do you do with it? Expose that understanding, develop your thought processes. You need to make it your own. Take the best practices others have developed and do the work to adapt them for your own purposes. This is a framework to hang ideas on, an evolving project or "tree" of growing knowledge. Maybe a branch starts growing and becomes something else. Maybe a secondary branch begins to sprout. While doing some quick research for this, Wikipedia brought up an interesting point: "Trees do not usually grow continuously throughout the year but mostly have spurts of active expansion followed by periods of rest." This is exactly what I meant when describing the fleeting and rhythmic nature of inspiration. The key is to be prepared and have structure in place to develop those insights.
I realize that it doesn't have to be perfect. Discoveries are made by doing, actually putting writing out into the world. Producing nothing is safe. It doesn't elicit a fear response. By claiming it's not finished, it's not good enough, we can avoid the work. Resistance is something well documented, and the majority of my writing begins with incoherent fearful gibberish. It's comforting to know that others struggle with this. If you want to explore this further or work to resolve similar conflicts with resistance, check out War of Art or Bird by Bird.
A final thought on this metaphor. Does that flower need to be anything more than it is? No. It is the final, perfectly imperfect growth of the tree. It blooms, it's beautiful, and then it falls off and dies to be replaced again in the future. The majority of this work, the majority of this writing that I view as so precious will fall off and die. It will inevitably be swept up and lost in the tide of the internet. There's a point where you just put it out there. And then you go write the next thing.