Hey friend,
I'll be honest, I've been trying to start writing again for a couple of weeks now. I'd open a blank page, type a sentence, then close the laptop.
I told myself I was "thinking it through." Really, I was avoiding the part where it's messy before it's good.
Yesterday John walked past my desk, saw the same three sentences on my screen from the day before, and said,
"So... you just keep sharpening every knife?"
He wasn't wrong. He's seen me do this before.
On my first day at Zest It Up Poke, he handed me a knife and a side of salmon. I spent way too long getting the knife "perfectly" sharp instead of cutting the fish. Every pass on the stone felt like progress. Nothing got cut.
Eventually John looked over and asked, "You gonna cut that fish, or just keep sharpening the knife?"
That's when it hit me.
"Poke" isn't a word somebody invented in a meeting. In Hawaiian, it literally means "to slice crosswise into pieces."
Before there was anything to name, there was the action.
Someone made a cut. The name came afterwards.
My first cut wasn't the cleanest. The pieces came out uneven. But the second cut was better. And by the end of the tray, I understood something no amount of sharpening could have taught me.
I'd been doing the same thing with writing. Waiting to know exactly what I was making before I let myself start. But the name came after the first cut. Maybe it always does.
So this is mine. This letter. Uneven pieces and all.
I don't think the lesson is really about writing, or fish.
It's that you don't get to find out what you're making until you've made a messy first version of it.
I want to get back in the habit of making first cuts instead of waiting for perfect ones.
See you around,
Milo 🌱
P.S. — Is there a knife you've been sharpening instead of using? (Mine was this letter.)
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