don't you hate when your computer freezes, forcing you to shut it down, just as you were finishing a blog post? and then it's somehow not even registered in your drafts, so you've lost all your words and all the formatting you just spent all that time on? and the post was all about using your voice, your words, even if you don't know anyone is listening? yeah, me neither. never happened to me.
let's see if i can bring back the highlights:
i have a voice.
it is quiet.
especially when i'm not sure people are listening.
especially when i notice someone is listening.
it makes me want to stop and suck all my words back into my mouth, make sure they were worth saying. because if someone's listening? it means i am speaking, and maybe i have something worth saying, but maybe i don't.
i backpedal as soon as i see the eye contact, the nod, the comment. it makes me nervous when people listen. it makes me feel like something is wrong.
i only raise my hand to speak up when i know the answer. the right one.
and if my answer ends up being wrong? the heat of shame spreads fire across my face, and my words fall like ash.
but i have this sense that it is time. to open myself, open my mouth, no matter what happens.
she says, "you are an incredible writer. you just need to see it for yourself." she is right about this: i have to believe it for myself before i will start moving forward as if my voice matters. (but i'm not there yet most days)
they say, "you should sell your art! it is amazing!" (but i know all that goes into that and the energy and time commitment to dreams that may not pay off.) i've been there, done that.
but i am no longer "the stuck one", you know.
and i really do long to move my words and art beyond the confines of this studio, to let them be held and touched on all possible sides, let them move out of me and fly free to unknown destinations, where they will have the chance to be cherished, rejected, loved, burned, seen. where they can move with another spirit in grace and freedom and truth.
so.
i am moving toward this. toward myself. toward God. toward exercising the muscles i have been given. toward putting myself out there, going naked.
and also.
i'm doing NaNoWriMo.
the end.
goodbye october, hello november!
(here's to putting voice to the story-currents in me! *cheers!*)