Living for the Details

So I started my first legitimate job this summer. Terrifying with a capital T! Sure I've had the odd babysitting and housecleaning job since I turned twelve, but for the first time ever I found myself answering to a supervisor and being responsible for my own actions. Or almost the first time.

You see, as I was organizing invoice receipts, I realized that this was exactly the kind of work I did for Peer Counseling. Sure, Peer Counseling revolved around counting pencils and organizing index cards rather than alphabetizing fire marshal licenses and organizing invoices. However, there is one common link here; all of these activities are dull, monotonous, and time-consuming.


And I love it.

I love the little details, the grunt work, all the necessary evils. I find the repetition relaxing, and comforting.

And what's more? I realized that those detail-oriented jobs are exactly why I love acting and writing so much.

Let's look at acting. The thrill of getting on stage and performing doesn't come from the final result. I never even see the finished production. And besides, the roar of the the crowd, the sonorous applause, the echoing laughter; these things don't come from the finished product (unless you're watching a British comedy, but I digress.) The enjoyment comes from the little details that you spend weeks trying to perfect: the exact inflection of a line, the precise facial expression after a joke, the ideal over-exaggeration of a body movement. No one ever made an audience cry by standing there and pronouncing a line with no practice.

Alright so you'll give me acting, but what about writing? Doesn't the joy of writing come from the emotions a story, or an article, or a novel can inspire? Yeah I'll give you that much; the thrill of seeing an amazing comment on one of my Wattpad stories, or the lurch in my heart upon seeing my mom tear up when she reads one of my short-stories makes writing uplifting. But I don't write to have fun. I write to relax. I write to calm down. And what calms me down isn't inspiring emotion in others, but spending hours or days searching for that perfect word or phrase to embody a character in their entirety. Inventing names and plot lines, then working to make those stories come to life takes a lot of patience. It's painstaking work, to leaf through a thesaurus, looking at the definition of every word, trying to find the perfect one for the situation. Stringing together the adjectives and nouns into a perfect sentence, then pulling them apart to restring them, I focus all of my attention onto one task. I work with something until it's exactly what I want. And when I put it together perfectly, I feel confident.

You see, that confidence I get when I nail the high note in a musical or when I finish a nearly-flawless paragraph, it makes me feel like if I work on the details in my real life, I can get it to work out just as well as the production or the story. Its my own personal chocolate. I write, and I'm comfortable. I live for the details.