I've been blogging now for seven days. My first full week of writing. I have to say that it's been a short yet remarkable journey.
It's a strange feeling, blogging. Blogging is the digital equivalent of standing in Times Square with a megaphone. But there's a strange disconnect that goes with it. Because you can't tell if anyone is hearing you. If I were to stand in Times Square with a megaphone, which I suppose would be more courageous, I would see people try to scurry by or give me dirty looks or toss money. Something. I would physically be there. There would be some sort of exchange. I would witness.
But here, sitting in my office, hammering away, trying to empty out my head and grant my husband the gift of peace, I'm alone. It feels a little bit like shouting into a cave.
For this reason, your comments are greatly appreciated.
But then an odd thing happened at a party I was at last night. Twice my blog was mentioned. And twice I found myself staring at the ground, embarrassed. At first it struck me as an odd reaction. But being honest with myself, I realized that it wasn't odd. It's not odd at all.
I've talked before about the voices that hold me back. I know about them. I live with them. That they exist isn't news to me. What I didn't know, until I put myself in this slightly uncomfortable, highly vulnerable position, is just how frequently they speak. And how consistent they are.
I'm currently working in a branding/design firm. I knew nothing of the business when I first walked in the door. After nearly two years there I haven't learned nearly as much about the world of branding/design as I would like. But I have picked up a few things, one of them being the vital importance of repetition. It is comfortable and reassuring. If real estate is about location location location, then, in my very humble opinion, a great deal of marketing is about repetition repetition repetition.
The apologies, the not good enoughs, the don't moves - they are consistent and comfortable. They repeat and repeat. And they are not voices. They are me.
So I guess that doing this, even if I am shouting into an empty cave, is a makeover of sorts. A redefining.
In Tony Kushner's play Angels in America, one character asks another how we change. This is the response:
"God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching."
More tomorrow.
2 comments:
Whenever I have needed to change something about myself or my life, and I am speaking from almost 60 years of experience, the little voices might as well be the whispers of mice. They are drowned out so easily by the shouts of comfort, technology, fear, and any number of other lion roars of society and my own experience. Sometimes I am lucky enough to have life change things for me easily enough so that I can see that my self-change is "duh" something I really need to do now and it just "makes sense." But sometimes, as happened when I fell down a flight of stairs and broke two teeth and split open my lip, it took a violence like the kind Kushner talks about to wake up my mind. It took severe violence to my body to see that the change needed to be made in my soul and my heart or I was going to eventually fall off a cliff or worse. So. Change. Every day an issue. It never stops. Thanks for making me think about it today Roger. Thanks for blogging. You know you are one of my favorite writers.
Why is it that praise is often as difficult to accept as criticism? I feel that way sometimes, too, and then I usually end up annoyed with myself. Have I come to think so little of myself that I expect criticism over praise? Do I expect to fail more than succeed? Something to work on.
Roger, you write so well. You manage to say what I'm thinking - sometimes before I know I'm thinking it - which I'd say is the mark of a true writer. And, I'll say it here over and over so you get used to hearing it.
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