Debunked!

A moment of silence today as I honor the departure of one of my favourite bloggers - "Crouching Mommy Hidden Laundry". She has decided to go back to her "real life" and leave the blogosphere. I'll miss her wit and candor. However, I'm puzzled. Reading between the lines I can see that she held her blog identity as separate from her own. In fact, reading the comments left by her fellow bloggers on her final entry, I noticed how many claimed blogging as a form of escapism.

While writing and blogging can feel like indulgences for me because I love it so much, it never occurred to me to hide here or invent an alternate personality to do it. I write and blog to make sense of my life - not to avoid it. I write to figure out who I am not to pretend otherwise. In fact, I'm often left feeling pretty darn naked at the end of some entries and it takes a serious deep breath to screw up my courage before I hit the publish button.

Its one thing to write where only strangers will see it and quite another when you know that friends and family are there to. I doubt that I'm alone in my hesitation to be seen by those close to me. It may seem like a contradiction, but when you stop and think about it, we are most vulnerable in those relationships. I don't care if a total stranger writes me off as a crack pot or feels that I am lacking in talent. I do find myself caring what those close to me think. However, having said that, those external reference points certainly don't have the clout that they used to.

There was a time when I would never dare to have a different opinion - never mind committing to writing it down! - for fear of criticism or being made fun of. It kept me silent for a very long time. Silence is lonely and it has a tendency to erode your health - physically, emotionally and spiritually. Its as though you lock up the vital part of yourself, barely feeding it enough crumbs to stay alive. As it weakens, it gets easier and easier to ignore the banging on the bars of self imprisonment and yet as it fades, so do you. I know because I've done it. I also know resuscitation isn't as challenging as you might think. It begins with telling yourself the truth about things -even if you choose not to tell another living soul - just stop lying to yourself about things.

It so happens that I have decided to take it one step further - I tell myself the truth about things and choose to write them down too. Somehow taking these private conversations into a public domain has a magical effect for me. It is both terrifying and transformative at the same time. Its like showing up on stage in your undies! Before the curtain rises, I have no idea if it there is any audience or a full house. Perhaps there is an exhibitionist inside me because lately I find myself longing for a wider audience and the possibility of readers who would welcome as book as well as a blog. Once again, I am reminded that to pander to an audience would likely ruin the magical alchemy of writing.

I write for me - and anyone else who happens to find some resonance is welcome to the party. I don't presume to have any answers for anyone else. Writing seems to be part of a bread crumb trail that helps me chart where I have been so that I can keep moving forward. No doubt, the path is often circular and labyrinth-like as I wander back over familiar territory but the bread crumbs of syllables are there to help re-orient me again. Faithfully, one step after the other, word after word, I move forward.

I noticed that just like I don't have to be anyone but myself, writing doesn't require a whole bunch of ritual and romance. It gets squeezed into the nooks and crannies of my life these days. Often I'll start a blog entry only to pick up the threads over several days until it feels complete. I used to be afraid that I would lose a thought if I didn't immediately capture it. Now I'm noticing that I seem to be able to pick it up where I left off, as though I had hit pause on the stream of conversation that runs inside me. Sometimes when I re-read things, I notice that their trajectory has changed subtly over the course of writing them. Clearly life experience is tempering that continuous flow of internal dialogue but hasn't taken me far from my original intent.

My desperation to capture words on the page was born from a belief that they would disappear forever and that the opportunity and promise of discovery within them would be gone too. What a potent metaphor for how I have lived. Living with a sense of scarcity about everything from time to exciting opportunities and feeling torn between my intentions and the "flavor of the week". Another myth debunked! There is always more - more time, more opportunities, just more! As a result, I'm finding it much easier to live with all my priorities intact. I don't have an alter ego to sustain, writing doesn't need to be romanced as it fits into the little spaces in my day. The flow of words gathering depth and meaning as I go along are independent of time. They keep nudging me forward.

I'm sad to have lost a fellow blogger to what I believe to be some of the myths of writing life. I'm even more sad that she has likely succombed to what I believe to be the bigger illusion that who we are on the page is just one of the many masks we wear when we are too afraid to stand naked and vulnerable and fully alive on the page - AND more importantly, in our lives. All the best to Crouching Mommy Hidden Laundry. I hope you find what you are searching for and can fully unleash the things your readers loved most about you into your "real" life!