I write with a refillable fountain pen. The twelve-dollar bottle of ink on my desk lasts six months. Not bad given how much I write. Every third day or so, I refill the pen. This is my sixth fountain pen and has a peculiar behavior: no matter how well I clean the nib after each fill, the pen blots one glob of ink onto and through the page. What a mess. And it has been driving me crazy.

For months I've worked on a solution. I wipe the pen carefully, hold it upside down, and flick it to settle the ink, but that glob keeps blotting the page.

This morning, I filled the pen, wiped it oh so very carefully, and, as I have the last month or two, folded a scrap sheet and wrote a bit. Four words in, the pen belched a glob. After a dozen more, all was well.

Returning to my Morning Pages I wondered, why can't I solve this problem? when in fact I had just practiced a fine solution. I wrote the glob onto a piece of scrap. Ten seconds of scribble and the problem was solved. I've had it solved for months. How have I missed that?

I've missed it because I've been fixed on one solution instead of the problem. I've been willing to settle for nothing but a refilled pen that writes cleanly from the first word. Fixated on that, I missed having solved the problem of blotting on my writing pages.

I forgot to be aware of what's happening. Wishing for something, I missed the solution I had already discovered.

I'll bet that a blotting pen isn't the only problem I may have solved without noticing. It might be time to pay better attention.