Wanting and Needing

How many times a day do you find yourself using the words (either out loud or not) "I need?" I need to to take a shower, I need to buy toilet paper, have my teeth cleaned, do my taxes, remove the sock detritus from between my toes.

Whatever happened to "I want?" How did "I want" get lost in the endless, frustrating parade of "I need?" Needing is obviously more important, but if we really stop to think about the things we need, are they truly more significant than those we want? Or are we simply misusing the language?

I awoke this morning thinking, "You know, self, you really need to spend more time writing." Not here on my silly blog, but on the projects that have manifested themselves as sadly neglected little files stuffed in an eternally half-finished "Works in Progress" folder on my desktop. Are they really works in progress if progress is not being made? Or will I be forced to change the name of the folder to "Works Not Presently Progressing?"

The problem is not that I need to write. It's that I want to write. And, as we get older and different priorities and responsibilities present themselves, our wants naturally defer to our needs. But I'm determined to find ways to recognize my needs are not nearly as urgent as they may seem. There simply must be more room in our lives for our wants.

And so I'm attempting to change my thinking on this. For the next few months, as I settle into the tail-end of this transitionary phase and anticipate the next, I will make an effort to put my wants first. I want to write. I want to be brilliant and finish the projects I think could be brilliant and embrace the extreme satisfaction of finishing something because I want to, not because it needs finishing for an editor, a boss, a professor or anyone but myself.

One particular project I'm struggling with--though far more motivated to finish than others--is a profile of an individual who has recently entered my life and who is infinitely fascinating; the ideal subject of a piece that needs no fictionalizing to make a fantastic story. There is pressure on me for this one, not in the form of a deadline, but in the desire to please the subject with a completed piece. While the remainder of my personal projects have taken far better shape since my move to the quiet redwood coast and the introduction of less stress and more free hours in my day, that will change soon, as I embark on a different, slightly less enjoyable manner of writing--the kind that provides a paycheck. As I've grown highly capable of doing, I'll have to adapt. In this case, adapting to less free time will most likely (ironically enough) mean spending more time writing, since time is exponentially more valuable when we have less of it to ourselves.

Eventually I'd like (see, there's that want again) to post some of my written works on this site, along with some of the myriad photos I've taken of this gorgeous area I now, however temporarily, call my home.

Posted by ayelet at July 20, 2004 09:20 AM