Intention Attention

The optimism sites keep insisting that writing down your intentions gives great power to them and helps the Universe to grant them… does it make a difference to the Universe if your handwriting is illegible?? I have been writing over and over that I wish to make a good living with my writing, however, it might be read “with my wiring”… and I worry that someone might suddenly show up and ask me to donate my nerves for scientific research.

Unfortunately, this written repetition of intentions brings me back with excessive clarity to my first grade classroom where I had to write 100 times, “I will not talk in class”… and on that double-lined paper that allowed six sentences to the page, I went through my whole notepad on the second day! The humiliation and the writer’s cramp never seemed to cramp my mouth, but it’s probably what cramped my penmanship for these last 45 years.

And, because it’s impossible for a writer to resist, I keep editing the damn intention so that when I get down to the middle of the page it’s gone from, “I intend to support myself by my writing” to “I intend that my writing will be received with acclaim and great financial reward”… and by the time I get to the bottom, it’s shrunk to, “they’ll pay me for writing” -- and I have to go soak my hand to get rid of the writer’s cramp.