The Draft I Wasn't Going to Show Anyone

I didn't plan to spend my Wednesday night doing this. It started because I wanted to re-read the farmers market post from last week, the one about the tomatoes and the woman selling honey who called me 'sweetheart', just to see if it held up. It did. It's fine. It's a perfectly nice little post. Light, a bit funny, exactly what it looked like while I was writing it.

The problem is I accidentally opened the other one. The draft I saved as 'not for the blog' a couple weeks ago, the one that was supposed to be a mission statement but turned into something embarrassingly personal before I could stop it. I wasn't going to re-read that one. I read it anyway.

two browser tabs open. neither of them winning.

Here is the thing I noticed, sitting there with both of them open: I write differently when I think no one's watching. The farmers market post has rhythm and shape and a clean ending. The draft has none of that. It runs long in the wrong places and it's not trying to be likable and there is one sentence in the middle that I had completely forgotten writing and it kind of stopped me cold because I actually meant it. The public post reads like something I'd be comfortable showing a stranger. The draft reads like something I'd want to read.

I'm not sure what to do with that information.

figuring it out. kind of.

I'm not about to post the draft, it's still not for the blog, the title stands, I'm leaving the 'not for the blog' at the top as a personal monument to my own weirdness. But I'm sitting here thinking about why that line exists. What exactly am I protecting, and from whom. Fall semester starts in a few weeks and I signed up for Creative Writing on an impulse I still can't fully explain, and I think maybe these two facts are related. I think maybe they've been related for a while and I'm only just now reading them in the same sitting.