Freedom through limitation

Last week the opportunity came up to get paid for writing a blurb about a movie for (I think) a Tennessee alt-weekly. (As ridiculous as it sounds, I'm not entirely sure where my work will appear.) The little extra money is nice, but getting published means more to me.

Like it or not, what I do on TV and online is not necessarily viewed as legitimate, so some semblance of writing for a "real" outlet, no matter how little I typed or how prominent it is, provides a nice ego boost. Seeing my name in print--well, knowing that it's in print somewhere--and receiving a small payment is a kind of validation. As I near the taping of our three hundredth show, it might sound silly for three printed sentences to matter but they do.

And yep, that's all it is: three sentences. I was asked to write 100 words and came in just a few over. The limitation, though, was enormously freeing. I tend not to write as much as I could because there simply aren't enough hours in the day to pound out all the text that's half-formed in my brain. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of reviews that died because I couldn't devote the amount of time I felt was necessary to do them properly. I am my own editor and publisher, so I don't really have any limits on length. Unlimited space is actually a lot more paralyzing than being given a set amount.

This assignment didn't give me the room to say everything I would have liked to have said, but it gives me the concept for how to manage everything that otherwise currently goes unwritten by me. The question becomes if it is better to write something without every observation I'd like to make or nothing at all. Too often I've sacrificed the former for the latter. If I can hold myself to an artificial limit, I'm free to let go once it's been reached. At the very least it's a much-needed guideline for festival coverage.

It's no different for things in daily life. Rather than trying to do everything at once, something usually not feasible, it becomes a matter of taking it a step at a time within the limitations upon us. Losing weight isn't about shedding however much is set for the end goal but eating well from meal to meal and exercising from one day to the next. Getting a project done at the office isn't accomplished in one fell swoop but piece by piece. It's about making things manageable. Backwards as it sounds, limitations give us freedom to do what we need to do. It's when there isn't any structure or creative friction that, at least for me, I end up being most limited.