Every Desire Needed a Sign-Off

Even when a desire surges up out of nowhere, I almost never act on it right away. Everything must pass through the exacting intake procedures inside my head. Drafter, reviewer, final signatory—all one person, running a remarkably industrious little bureau.

The trouble is, this internal system rivals any government agency in complexity and inefficiency. Take the night a fairly decent writing idea popped into my head.

Jotting down even a few sentences would have been the sensible thing to do, but my inner review board convened without fail.

• Hasn’t this topic been done before?
  
• Does it overlap with something I’ve already written?
  
• Will it feel trivial by tomorrow?
  
• Is it too personal—or, conversely, too generic?
  
• And above all: is this really something I want to write?
  

I hadn’t written a single line, yet five perfectly plausible grounds for rejection had already been produced.

What I finished that night was not an essay but a formal memo explaining why the idea should be turned down.

Submit an Incident Report for Every Emotion

Ideas are not the only items that go through this process. Emotions, too, are subject to similar rules.

On days when my spirits sink to rock bottom for no apparent reason, I cannot simply leave them alone. I will not be satisfied until I have tracked the feeling to its source. I question each possibility in turn: whether work has worn me down, whether I have had too little time alone, whether I am simply short on sleep, or whether I have even lost my sense of direction in life.

What my body actually wants is nothing more than a brief nap, yet the internal audit team keeps demanding a written explanation of the situation.

Good moods get the same treatment. Am I genuinely happy, or just momentarily excited by novelty, or thrilled because I’ve found an excuse to dodge reality? Every emotion that surfaces must have its origin and ingredients inspected.

When this happens over and over, the time to actually feel the emotion disappears. Joy cools while waiting for its authenticity ruling; sadness never gets to be sad on schedule because it’s too busy accounting for its own cause.

For me, thinking is often less a tool for understanding than a merciless hearing in which I corner myself.

“Why did you feel that way?”

“Do you have evidence that the feeling is genuine?”

Feelings are generally poor witnesses under this kind of questioning. Very few emotions are born with conviction. Most are a little vague, a little inconsistent; their testimony shifts between today and tomorrow.

But the review committee inside me insists on a coherent answer. The committee consists of a single member who rules by unanimous consent.

And that one member always votes no.

Eligibility Requirements for Sincerity

Looking back, what my internal committee demanded was not just a reasonable justification. It wanted a guarantee that the desire would persist.

If I wanted to try writing even one piece, I had to answer whether I planned to keep writing in the future. If a whim to pick up a hobby struck, I first had to disclose how long I could sustain it. If a new subject caught my interest, I had to explain what practical use it might have someday.

All I wanted was to try something for a moment today, yet before I knew it, I was being vetted on long-term plans and sustainability. I had effectively made my future self a co-signer on today’s curiosity.

I used to regard only lasting feelings as sincere. If interest faded within days, I concluded it had been mere impulse after all; if I couldn’t see a project through to the end, I retroactively downgraded the original enthusiasm to exaggeration.

The problem was never that I thought too much. It was that I couldn’t accept wanting something as a simple fact—I treated it as a claim requiring authorization. I kept filing a single action and the question of who I am into the same approval folder.

Opening a blank document was no longer a light experiment of jotting down a few sentences. It had grown as heavy as casting a vote on what kind of life I intended to lead.

Starting Work on Starting Work

At first glance, this habit looks rather admirable. It resembles the prudent approach of thinking things through and finding the right method before making a move.

The problem was that only the preparation was flawless.

This happened all the time when I was doing concept art. The moment I felt like drawing something, I would first collect references and flesh out the idea in text. The reference folder and the design doc grew impressively thorough, but what remained on the actual canvas was a flimsy sketch at best.

Whether it even qualified as a sketch required a separate review. The work had stalled at step one, yet the system for getting started was nearly perfect.

For a long time I called this laziness, then rebranded it perfectionism, and at times diagnosed it as a lack of willpower. The label changed often; the result stayed much the same.

The analysis I began in order to understand myself more accurately had become, at some point, a verdict that kept me from moving at all.

The item is tabled for the next meeting.

Expired While Under Review

This elaborate approval system did prevent bad decisions on a few occasions, but it let far more desires expire. Desire does not wait indefinitely for a sign-off.

Some interests stick around for a season; some impulses will take shape only if your hands move before the night is over. Even something I clearly wanted to try would gradually lose its shine if it sat on the review desk too long.

And then I would look at the cooled-down feeling and conclude that it was never sincere after all. A watertight piece of bureaucracy: let the desire expire during a protracted review, then reject it on the grounds that it expired.

But the fact that a feeling was brief does not make it false. A passing interest can be perfectly real for as long as it lasts. Liking something today and losing interest tomorrow does not retroactively counterfeit today’s feeling.

Maybe those desires were never insincere. Maybe I simply wore myself out trying to prove they were.

Abolishing the Pre-Approval Requirement

That said, I can’t conclude that I’ll simply think less from now on. Telling myself to stop thinking is roughly equivalent to recommending that the internal audit team voluntarily disband.

The audit team would probably convene a special meeting to review the merits of disbanding.

I still love the moment a structure clicks into place, and I feel most alive when scattered emotions coalesce into a sentence. I just need to rearrange the order a little.

I used to believe I had to understand something fully before I could begin. But now I think that trying is itself part of understanding.

What kind of writing I actually wanted to do only became a little clearer after I had written a few pieces for real. What I would end up loving for a long time was never something I could have known from the start.

Wanting to do something is not a business plan. A new attempt doesn’t have to be a test where sincerity is proven each time—it can be the simplest question for discovering the shape of my own mind. If something I tried didn’t fit, it doesn’t mean a character flaw was exposed; it just means I gained one more brief user review about myself.

So from now on, instead of requiring final approval, I’ve decided to return a degree of signing authority to my own impulses.

• Any item that can be started within twenty minutes is approved at the working level.
  
• Emotions of unknown origin are to be accepted on intake.
  
• Today’s interest shall not be required to submit a five-year plan.
  
• A faded interest shall not be used to retroactively invalidate the original filing.
  

A surprisingly radical policy, when you think about it.

Skipping the Final Review

This essay itself has not yet cleared every approval. There are outstanding concerns—whether the metaphor was stretched too thin, whether the middle sags, whether it arrives at a lesson too obvious to be worth stating.

There is a strong chance I’ll want to delete entire paragraphs when I reread it tomorrow. The relevant department has already registered its objections.

Still, this time I’m going to leave those objections in the minutes and let the essay out the door. If I can only act once every feeling has been fully accounted for, most feelings will vanish while the accounting is still underway.

This item is therefore conditionally approved.

There are no conditions.

The moment I attach one, another meeting will be called.