Always Sweat The Small Stuff

Any big project, like a novel or adopting a baby, can seem overwhelming from the start, unless you begin with the easy, fun parts so before long, the progress you’ve made makes the whole of the project less intimidating. The downside is that the last 10% of the project takes twice as long because it’s the shit you never wanted to do in the first place.

On the novel, it’s been this terrible Chapter 3. Chapter 1 and 2 were about introducing characters and the situation, and they went pretty fast. Chapter 3 through 20 brought everything to a climax, and they went pretty fast. Chapter 3 is about making sense of the stuff that I wrote, trying to explain how any of this stuff is possible. In other words, it’s exposition, and it’s a drag to write in a way that makes it not be a drag to read.

On Saturday, I went to a pumpkin carving party at my little brother’s house and there was a psychic who had me roll a pair of dice as an answer to a question. I silently asked about the novel and got a 4 and a 5 which interpreted as, basically, pay attention to the details. Do sweat the small stuff.

The paperwork we’ve been putting off on the baby front is the short answer questionnaire which asks questions like “What are you limitations?” (One and a half lines to fill in the answer), “Describe your saddest day?” (Two whole lines to describe it), “How do you handle stress?” (Three lines!). I know that the agency is just doing their due diligence that I won’t fill in answers which say I like to do heroin every night, crying children make me want to bite things, and I enjoy sacrificing small, cuddly animals on an altar to my dark god. But I want them to like me, and think I could be worthy some day of a Greatest Dad In The World coffee cup, so I struggle. The usual bullshit answers don’t apply. In an interview for a job, we know “Describe your weakness” is always best answered as “I’m a workaholic” or another typical make-vice-into-virtue replies. But you don’t want to give a child to someone who says he’s obsessed with perfection, or phobic about disease, or anything that screams Daddy Dearest.

In the details and the limitations, I might just have to do the unthinkable and Be Honest.