Hubbing is Like Being Promiscuous
Hubbing is Like Being Promiscuous
I am always in love with my latest tryst, my latest hub. Whatever I've just written, I can't stop thinking about. I go back and read it over and over again. I touch it. I fix little things I don't like so much about it. I reread my favorite parts. I overlook mistakes because I'm so enamored of the whole.
But then a week or so goes by. Sometimes just a few days, and the love affair with the newest hub loses its ability to thrill. It was OK. I'm glad I wrote it. But I'm on to the next, proverbially hanging out in bars, surfing the net, playing on the office softball team. Keeping myself available and on the alert for the next attraction.
Every once in a while I'll stumble across an old hub. It's like finding a months-old movie stub in a coat pocket, or a half-torn ticket to a concert by a band they don't even play on the radio anymore, or a corsage flower pressed in a book that I decide to reread on a rainy afternoon. And I remember how much I liked it when I wrote it. I reread it, and you what? It's not half bad. Maybe it would be a better piece of writing if only I'd known then what I know now. Who knows? But it's old. It's in the past. It's over. Still, I'm glad I had the experience of knowing it. I smile remembering how it made me feel at the time. Like a former lover, I put the memory away and move on to the attractions of today.
What a writing slut I am. I fall so easily. I'm so ready to turn up my tender underbelly and expose all my fears and feelings and secrets to the faceless screen on any available computer. I give in without playing hard to get for even one drink - writing whatever inspiration seduces me. Then I just walk away. Leave that hub to wake up alone in my profile, wondering where I went. Wondering if I'll ever call again. But I'm long gone. On to the next. Like the Fleet just docked.
The truth is, I never really forget my former loves, all those hubs listed on my profile page. I may not want to relive the circumstances that prompted me to get into bed with those specific ideas, but no experience is ever remembered with complete regret. When I recall each and every hub, I'm reminded of the sensations they made me feel at the time, for that brief encounter. That literary one night stand. The memory usually brings a smile to my face.
And I fall in love with each one a little bit again - for the moment.
