I haven’t written here lately. A couple of lovely people have noticed and asked about it, which is nice of them. Or they’re simply curious, which is also fine. When a person does something regularly and then stops, there must be some reason, right?
On the outside, I was posting once a week. On the inside, the writing was slowly grinding to a halt. Rather than a life-giving outlet, posting on the blog began to feel like a chore – just one more task that went largely unnoticed, except when I said something wrong. I have enough of those jobs already, thanks, as we all do! A bit like cleaning the kitchen as a kid, when all the dishes were done but there was still that one pot in the sink. All the counters wiped, yet the floor hadn’t been swept. Or when I spend hours mowing the lawn and trimming the edges with the Weed Wacker, bones rattled and joints aching, but all I notice at the end is the one spot where a dandelion is still sticking up. Whack!
I started sensing that I had to qualify, quantify…explain…defend. The whole point of writing was to have an honest outlet for the thoughts and feelings chasing each other around in my mind. Or at least a page to wrestle with ideas and lay them out to be sorted, adjusted, and put away. For some reason, writing started to feel unsafe. Whose eyes were looking in from the darkness? Was I blessing anyone, or just exposing myself?
Whenever we honestly put ourselves out there in the world there is a risk of over-exposure. If people know what you believe they can lean in to pick it apart, poke holes in it, or question your motives. This risk just goes with the territory. If I didn’t want it, I shouldn’t have ventured out into No Man’s Land.
But what is the alternative? Well, writing that caters to an audience, but is untrue. The soft sell. There are many famous writers out there that have found a way. One one hand there are the Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty’s of the world, standing tall on exaggerated claims, plagiarizing the work of other authors, and holding uhhh… slightly shady credentials. Influencers like this wave from high on their pedestal of fame where it’s raining money. They pinch the ideas of others and spin them into gold. And no, I’m decidedly not interested in that.
Then there are the fiction writers with much more integrity but similar success. Rather than risk telling all, they imagine characters and settings to embody their stories, and we are none the wiser. Truth always makes a better story than fiction, but fiction makes a more readable cover. The best movies, too, are often based in real life with another name and a different timeline.
Some of the most illustrious authors have disappeared behind a pseudonym, like George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), or Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum). Even Stephen King wrote seven of his novels under the name Richard Bachman, and he didn’t need to. There were many good reasons for some of these personas, however. For example, the Bronte sisters wrote at a time when women were forbidden to write poetry (I know…but I haven’t the patience), and so went by the names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Perchance an author had an unfortunately German or Jewish surname around the time of WW2, or a Russian handle during the Cold War.
I completely understand this, now that I’m older, this writing under a pseudonym. Though it’s not easy to hide one’s identity today in the social media age where everything is connected, every Google search is recorded, and every strike of the keys can be traced back. A writer would have to be very committed to the bit, and swear everyone to secrecy – which never works.
I’m not planning to write under a different name. The whole point in blogging was to re-learn integrity rather than continue people-pleasing, to champion authenticity instead of toxic positivity, and perhaps to tell my own story in my own way, un-edited and un-sanitized. I still have odd conversations with people here in my hometown where they ask about things that never happened, or assume beliefs that are confusing to me, because I don’t hold them.
I wonder if that’s one reason to stay in the same place for a lifetime – you never lose control of the narrative.
Even if we do stay in the same town, our lives change and shift and can be reinvented. We can become completely different people, all while shopping at the same grocery store, attending the same church, going to the same office. It is accepted today and even encouraged. As many of my friends know, one of my favourite movies is The Truman Show. I think I relate somehow to the idea of everyone acting, everyone playing a part, while Truman just goes about blissfully unaware. For a while. And then, the spotlight falls from the fake “sky”. Then, the radio announcer seems to know exactly where Truman is going. And his wife seems a little… too happy. Something is off. The audience is rooting for Truman to find out the truth – some of them, anyway. Others hope he just stays put and keeps his mouth shut and the show going, all so they can be comfortably entertained.
So, I guess I started asking myself, “what’s the point?”
A sort of “How’s It Going to End?”
Somewhere on the boat, heading toward the perfect blue-and-fluffy-clouded sky, I realized the point was the writing. Not convincing anyone or saving the world, just the beauty and fulfillment of creative expression. This blog is for me, at the end of the day, and what readers choose to do with it is up to them.
I’ll keep writing.
Stories for Humans 