I have to share something that happened with my son this past weekend, since it so perfectly illustrates the meaning of the title of my blog.

Oliver, who is seven, was mad at me about . . . I don’t remember what, because that’s how bad my memory is, but it doesn’t really matter. So he was mad at me, and his revenge for whatever I had done was to try to trip me. I discovered this because I went to look for my shoes and found them about eighteen inches apart on the floor with one end of a string tied to each shoe and the string stretched as tightly as possible between them.

I chided him about the “trap,” telling him that purposely tripping someone could cause the person to get seriously hurt and have to go to the hospital. “But I knew you would see it!” he countered. Okay, fair enough, I thought. I was pretty sure he hadn’t really wanted me to get hurt; it was just that he didn’t know how else to express his anger. (I’m supposed to be teaching him that part, but, um, I think I need to use some new curriculum.) So I let it drop.

A few minutes later, I looked at the trap again and noticed something I hadn’t before. On the other side it, where I would likely have fallen had his plan worked, were three pillows, laid on the floor carefully, end to end. He wanted to trip me, but he wanted me to have a soft landing, to not be injured. (I don’t know why he didn’t point out the pillows when I scolded him about the trap.) He wanted to hurt me but he didn’t want to hurt me. Isn’t that how we humans are? We engineer falls onto pillows, and we scream in whispers.

I’m pissed off right now. Not at anyone or anything that I can recognize. I’m pissed off, I guess, because I want to write and yet I find it so maddeningly difficult. Because I have wanted to write my whole life and I’ve mostly found ways to put it off my whole life. Because I don’t understand why something I want to do so much and love so much can cause me such grief.

Of course it makes sense that the things we have to work hard for are the most satisfying. How could it be any other way? But I usually feel that it’s not just hard work to write but impossible work. It often seems impossible to get the ideas and words in my brain out onto paper or screen. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t really find impossible work all that satisfying. It makes me want to stomp on my head. So I just kind of shut down and I let those words stay right where they are.

I guess now, though, the impossibility of it is just starting to piss me off more than shut me down. At least more often anyway. My mind’s doing something like this these days: “Oh yeah, words? You think you’re impossible to organize? Well, I’ll show you, you a**holes! I will sit down and TYPE, and you can see how you feel then, making that arduous, confusing trip from brain to screen!”

But here comes the irony: I am happy to be pissed off right now. I am feeling lots of things! I am making myself do something hard! I am slogging through! Yeehaw! (I am picturing myself knee deep in mud, trudging along, with boppy music playing. I want to dance but am physically unable.)

So, to recap: Pissed off rather than totally shut down, and happy about that, and knee deep in mud but wanting to dance.

I declare it to be progress. Messy f’ing progress.