New Never Gets Old

  I think I'm addicted to starting over. I can't (I guess I could) write on a piece of paper that's been marked on, folded, torn, even doodled on around the edge where I sometimes trace the spiral-bound metal to look like vines with flowers. I can't (okay, I don't like to) keep my hair the same for more than three months. I love the clean feel of new. The wake-up-in-the-morning-and-the-world-is-yours feel of fresh starts. I guess that's not so bad, maybe, wanting to be a writer. New ideas and first drafts ignite some weird fire inside of me. I've never felt that everywriterwho'severbeen feeling of "the daunting and overwhelming presence of a blank, stark white sheet of paper lying on my desk in front of me." Only relief and excitement when I see that I'm the first to touch it. And a little guilt when I crumble it up into a ball and toss it into the trash when I don't like how that first sentence dips down in the middle, a little lop-sided a the top of the page. How my "s" didn't quite make that second winding turn as fully as the first winding turn. So here we are again: a fresh start. A fresh re-start for the first and original start that never finished.