Bless me.

Bless me father for I have sinned. It's been 3 days since my last post. Just when I'd loosened the rules too! Coincidence?

I'd thought so. The past 2 days I'd been very busy. With work work--serious stuff, not stupid blog posts. I could probably have posted something anyway if I'd really wanted to, but that would break the spirit of the rules. The idea is for my posts not to be pro-forma but be actual expressions of myself--which takes time and an investment of consciousness.

So, would it have been better or worse if I'd made those meaningless rule-following posts just to meet the requirements. A little of both, I guess. It would be a bad precedent to just post filler. But it is a bad precedent not to post at all.

The first kills the purpose of the discipline. The second makes the discipline into a nothing.

One could argue that it is impossible to fulfill the requirements without some of the original intent slipping in. You express yourself even in the act of not expressing yourself, since part of you is that withholding of expression and that part is being expressed. And that isn't some technicality but an actual phenomenon. For example, see my previous (3 days ago) post. It is sort of pro-forma but my conflict with the rules is evident, though I was unaware this would be the case when I posted it. How revealing is that!

Still, something gets lost once it becomes OK to make ritual posts. The need for intentionality (both I and spellcheck are suspicious of that word) is an unspoken rule of the discipline. To put it another way, posts are supposed to be attempts to express the truth, not failures to hide it. This distinction looks clearer than it actually is, because the conscious effort only works by enlisting the cooperation of the unconscious component of creativity. Inherent in the act is a permission and a welcoming of the previously hidden aspect of who one is. The consequent discovery of what had been invisible is your reward.

The reverse of this process results from the habit of ritual. It is the sin of idolatry in that creativity becomes encouraged to hide. Your life becomes more unexamined and thus less worth living.

The above could probably use some editing. There's a lot more to be said and yet, I'm losing the organizational energy that makes it coherent. I want to talk about religion and how my starting this post as a mock religious ritual turned out to be more than just a gimmick. I want to talk about free association in psychotherapy as ritual revealing the unconscious. I reach a point where I want to talk about so many things but lack what is necessary to make it understandable.