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11.3.16
past midnight
A free form.
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What’s in my head?
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What’s there to find that I have no idea is in there? Sometimes the only way to meet yourself is to write yourself down. I knew a woman who was afraid to become a writer because it felt too vulnerable. She didn’t want to be “captured” by her own words and scrutinized by others, A writing coach told her to video herself being vulnerable, in short clips, for 100 days straight and post them online. At the very least where only her close friends could view it. She did. She ended up shaving half her head in rebellion of her own fear of herself. I thought about shaving my entire head when I watched it. I haven’t. Maybe one day I will. In the end, I only watched about three or four of her videos. I didn’t care enough to watch the rest. I saw where she was going and was happy for her. I was glad that she shaved her head. But her vulnerability wasn’t enough for me to make sure I caught her next video, or caught her, as she feared. But these are. MY posts. They are enough for me to continue to write them, at least. Everyday. For my own purposes of growth and change. I will read them again and then again at various points through my life, I’m sure, but I doubt I will be rapt. Even as I go through old notebooks looking for material to develop, I get bored at my own thoughts that were tremendously meaningful at the time I wrote them. I suppose that’s the thing. It’s only us. Our vulnerability is powerful yes, but not in the way it seems before we go there. Because in the end you release caring about what will happen. It’s already happening. And most times it’s not quite that interesting. Well, it is, but it also isn’t. It’s beautiful and intriguing, yes. But even so, no one stands forever at the Grand Canyon to continue to look at it’s beauty. We return. To look again. See something we hadn’t before, but then, again, we move on. It’s our nature. This moment and then the next. This too shall pass.
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And if I stop writing? …My quest is to learn about commitment and consistency. Perhaps that is where I am vulnerable. Consistency. Can I continue to produce everyday? Can I be reliable? Will I only let myself down? Daunted by being held accountable. …CAPTURED by it…But held accountable for what? What would really happen if I stop writing? Would people miss reading my posts? What if they did? Well, they will remember what I did do. They can return to them here, if I have managed to captivate them – capturing their attention – and they are truly moved to read my words again; perhaps finding something they hadn’t found in them before. The world will go on. Perhaps people WILL think I’m an unreliable content creator. Or unreliable in general. And then what? What would really happen? I’d make it by somehow. It seems like it’s pointless to try or to care. But if I never tried to be consistent…if my friend never tried to capture her vulnerability…well perhaps we’d both remain caught be our own fear of being caught. And it’s true, this moment of myself is captured in a sense that one can return to it and read it again and again; just as I can return and see my friend’s posts again and again…and those moments were captured. But neither one of us is stuck in these frames of referencing our own vulnerability. We can return, from wherever we will have moved on to, and say, wow, look at what I was! What a beautiful thing that I was! I’m so glad that I wrote that moment down! And then, in that preciously brief moment of looking back, we will capture our own attention…so wait…we WILL be captured by doing this!
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…But that too shall pass.
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