This Is My Disclaimer

My one and only. I promise maybe.

When I share a creation - an image, a song, a poem - there's something within me that needs to put up a disclaimer before I do. It's probably —some version of insecurity, or that I want to be understood, or that I want to soften the ground some before I leave you with something I made just in case it's too heavy.

It's as if I feel like I need to justify:

• where I crafted this idea so you're not confused, or that

• it isn't final, so don't judge this quite yet, or

• I'm just trying a new style / thing / medium and I'm not sure if it's going to work, or

• this is why I felt this way at that point in time but I worked through it I'm all good now, or

• here's what I know my intentions were, don't you see that and get it now, or

• I know it's not the best and you've probably seen / heard / experienced something like this before but I tried...

...and on and on and on and on and on and on.

You may be like me in this, or you may not.

With anything I write here, I will always feel the need for a disclaimer, so I decided to just do one big one. One to encompass all further disclaimers, negating the need for another one. Or at least I hope so.

My thoughts, poems, and ideas aren't perfect, aren't fully formulated, aren't always correct, aren't final, will have grammar and spelling errors, will be sometimes more feelings than facts, will be sometimes facts devoid of proper feelings, will probably be too blunt and sometimes too light, are not meant to hurt, are not personal digs, will not fix problems, should not cause problems but might, and are probably more wrong than right.

Can we stop pretending that we aren't all simply works in progress doing our best to survive and thrive? Can we stop pretending that we have more figured out than we do not?

My disclaimer is this:

I AM NOT PRETENDING.
MOST OF THIS COULD BE WRONG.
AND I AM NOT FINISHED YET, SO PLEASE, HAVE PATIENCE WITH ME.

Thanks for reading anyway.
trae castles