Let’s be honest, a reason I haven’t been writing is that I have been a little lost.
Drifting in doubt.
In the last few months my voice has been challenged. My authenticity questioned and my motivations put into doubt.
I generally think of self doubt as unproductive and self questioning as an absolute necessity.
Self doubt can be crippling.
Self questioning can lead to new answers, possibilities and evolution.
So I’ve been trying to shift my doubt to questioning. Which as it happens is harder to do than I thought and I’ve pretty much been shutting everything else out while I process.
What has been put into question – is my fundamental right to blog my thoughts and feelings as they pertain to my family and anyone else involved in my life whom I love. To speak as my view permits me to experience and to write that perception in a public forum.
I encountered this earlier this year when I blogged my dating perceptions and a few of the guys were not too happy about how I saw/felt/experienced the events and how said events were processed openly. After being challenged by these guys – I finally found the center to say, “It’s my personal blog, which means I write my experiences however I experience them, with as much honesty and shamelessness as I am consciously able.”
I have always said to people, that if you don’t want me to blog something particular, then let me know and if it doesn’t pertain to the overall arc I will exempt it and if it is necessary information then I will couch it in pseudonyms and shelter the identity and protect you.
Barring those terms, the moral of the story is, DON’T BE A DOUCHE AND I WON’T TELL THE WORLD ABOUT IT!
Ultimately, not everyone will always agree with me. What I see/hear/experience will never be filtered by any one person in the same exact way – hence the descriptive of a “personal blog”.
However, what I write is still filtered; capturing experience in words is tough – shortening the story to fit space and my capacity to sit and type, time, energy and output.
What it boils down to is essence. All these stories are the essence of the experience. It’s not a hidden camera capturing every minute inflection, tick, nuance or even other people’s intentions (as I often cannot vouch for what I don’t personally know). So what I end up with is more like an impressionistic painting.
Watercolor in vagary, accented by harsh points of reality then blending back into an impression or a shape of something while lacking all the detail of solid repeating lines.
I haven’t the eyes of Rembrandt in my ability to show a scene in masterful detail.
I am still like a child scribbling with chalk on the sidewalk. And knowing this, understanding this – I still feel that it is my right to continue my sketching, to get better at it. Practice. Learn. And if ever I can one day claim to be masterful, the fundamental problem of the eye of the beholder remains and truth will always be in question.
Even Rembrandt was not a camera, even cameras do not catch the periphery as video does and even video cannot properly assess intent.
So therefore even in mastery there is no perfection and truth can always be questioned.
Thus, I humbly set about with my clumsy chalks to paint pictures with words and tell stories. Protecting the best I can, being as honest as I know how, revealing what I see and feel in a way that leaves me utterly exposed and vulnerable – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
If you will all bear with me, I’m about to unburden myself with several blogs of backlog congestion. All the things I didn’t write about while I was processing. It’s heavy, but I expect as soon as I can put it all down on paper and get past it that I’ll be able to get back to my regularly scheduled programming of bumbling adventures and the quest for bliss.
But for the next few posts – some turbulence.
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