learning to share
About a year ago, having spent my literate years without any personal writing practice, I began to write daily. This wasn’t really a writing “practice,” nor was it journaling in the sense I had always imagined–a diaristic accounting of events and how I felt about them. I wasn’t writing to hone my skills toward any particular end; I wasn’t deliberately sowing the seeds of a memoir or a similar offering. Instead, this writing emerged as a companion to various activities that might strike an observer as “spiritual,” but which I consider practical modes of care, like brushing teeth, going to work, and bathing, among other sundries.
The writing has been uncomplicated, I think, because I haven’t thought to share it with anyone else, I’ve had no expectations of a “release” and subsequent evaluation. Unlike past attempts at journaling, it has required no effort or motivation at all to start writing each day, even when no particular topic comes to mind. And the act itself yields fruit: every time, within a page or so, the writing reveals something to me that I hadn’t expected, hadn’t sought out. Whether I arrive at my notebook with a problem in mind or start, as I often do, by writing I’m not sure what to say today…, invariably the questions I begin with are turned on their head; my own fundamental assumptions refuted and a new mode established, not of questions but of clarities, decisive and plain as a ringing bell. Afterwards I am usually much calmer than when I started, and if not, I’m at least clear on what I need to do (usually, I need to make breakfast).
Over the course of this year of writing, I’ve sometimes found myself revisiting particular passages, refining them, working them into something like a structure that I then return to, seek shelter in, and derive comfort from. These bits of writing often turn more tightly around a theme than my daily streams of thought, or else they just aren’t so specific to my life situation. On these occasions, it’s occurred to me that I might share my words more broadly, and I’ve done so once in a public blog and a few times on social media. Those experiences have been affirming, but with sharing comes a host of familiar challenges I’ve been reluctant to face.
Each time I’ve considered sharing more, I’ve felt a part of myself take the wheel. This part assumes the role of a kind of talent manager, and quickly sets about strategizing various elements of how this sharing will take place: What will my platform be? What will I name this project? What is my “brand identity?” How will others perceive me? How do I want others to perceive me? Do I want others to perceive me at all? This line of thinking has the opposite effect of the writing, and muddles me so thoroughly that I throw up my hands and move on to other things (like breakfast).
Like most people, I have a history of performing in order to secure the positive feedback that for a long time was my only source of self worth. My specific performance style has been intellectual, and my self worth depended on others perceiving me as intelligent, witty, wise beyond my years. Failing that, my self worth depended on making others feel stupid and small. It’s been a long journey out of that thicket, and I have no interest in returning for an extended stay. But having spent some of the last year in various positions of solitude, I find that my own stores are full for winter, that I have filled them myself, and that in fact I have a surplus I don’t want to waste.
The purpose of this work I have been doing privately, it turns out, is to share its fruit with others. I’m afraid of this path that might take the writing-as-care away from me, might lead me to contort myself back into an old transactional mindset, but I’ve come to see this fear has been obscuring another possibility: that I might learn a new way of doing things. I want to learn the art of sharing from this full place, of sharing without performing, without expecting or subsisting on a reward. To do so, I have to take some risks. The thicket of self loathing, in any case, is not a static place we escape from once and for all. It is a dance I am learning, a balance that begins to feel less fragile as I cultivate joy in the movement.
So, I’m trying this out. Feel free to join me, and here’s what you can expect if you do:
I will not commit to any regular cadence for this project. I’m unlikely to write more than once a month or less than six times a year. You will never hear from me twice in the same week.
I will be honest. This is not to say that I won’t write lies (I won’t), but more so that I will be earnest, that I will try my best not to manage how you perceive me, that I will find my own voice.
I will write what I know. My aim is to share what I have learned. Sometimes I might enlist the expertise of others or describe aspects of my own life situation to support this aim, but for the most part these essays will be meditative, not investigative or autobiographical.
That’s all for now. Take care,
Helen