This morning doing Morning Pages I was noodling, not saying much of interest even to me. That's okay though it often doesn't feel okay. I worry, this is going to seem boring when someone reads these. Then I remember no one will read them. Sure, I save the pages and maybe someone someday will be so bored they read some, but the chances of that are slim. So why worry?

The answer is simple: I worry because I always think that I should do better. I accused myself of laziness this morning writing those pages. If I had only been thinking like a writer the last few days, I'd be writing something good by now. Turns out, I'm not leading the perfectly realized life. I know, it's totally shocking.

All this hit me two-thirds of the way down page one. From there I started writing that might be of interest to someone. It was about two kinds of writing I do. The first is when I have something to say to someone. That writing seems important because it goes out into the world and maybe gets some approval. Yay, me.

The second kind of writing is me just thinking. The number of Morning Pages that fall into this second category is staggering even to me. My guess is that it's up around seventy-percent, which is why no one would ever make it through all those pages. There's just not much of anything there. Really.

But those pages help me balance and get me to the pages that matter.

I remember my high school physics lessons on moment arm (torque) and the seesaw at Our Lady Of Lourdes. A seesaw with equal weights equadistant from a central fulcrum will balance. The seesaw with me, a fat kid, on one side, and my friend, thin and small on the other was out of balance. I had to move in toward the fulcrum. He had to move out away from it. That still wasn't enough. The seesaw had three positions on which it could rest across the fulcrum. We shifted it so his side was longer and then with him leaning back, me leaning in, we found balance.

Seventy-percent of my Morning Pages and half my typed writing sits on one side of the seesaw. I think of them as less important, the shorter end of the lever arm. Then there's the fewer pages out on the end of a longer arm, the larger importance.

This piece feels pretty thin and small. Still, I'll set it way out on the seesaw, hoping somehow to keep things in balance and not slam too hard into the ground. That sort of thing hurts. It's much better to be lifted gently, high up into the air and believe I'll never have to come down.