repeating myself and leaving things out

i used to have a major aversion to repeating myself. it felt embarrassing. 

now i can't get enough of it. i could repeat the same thing in a million different frames. i could even repeat something the exact same way a million times. distributing information is hard! simplifying then repeating one message is a great way for it to actually come across to people. 

i'm also currently obsessed with cutting/editing/curating. i haven't quite yet arrived at a nice, succinct word for it, but the act of choosing what to leave out. i realized a few years ago that—much to my dismay at the time—the only way to share the entirety of an experience with someone is to literally experience it together; unless you do that, then you have to leave stuff out when you tell someone about it. and even then! you're both having an entire internal experience, which then you'd have to make choices about how to share that with them, if you wanted to. 

i realized this was a skill i could get better at. ok, i can't share the entirety of my experience with anyone, but i can also choose anything to share when i do choose what to share. 

accepting i'm allowed to repeat myself means i never have to get it right on the first try. i could write 1,000 blogposts taking a slightly different angle on approximately the same idea. i could hold it in my hand and turn it over and over again, in different lighting, from different distances, at different times of day. that also means i get to leave different things out every time.