Oops, I think I dripped a little existential angst on your toe

I SEEEE you (detail from my painting "Tree of Life"). In the spirit of good-natured perversity, I have this hanging in the bathroom.

Okay, I just wrote a big long post but it suddenly felt empty so I decided to scrap it and say this instead.

Lately I’ve felt kind of uncomfortable about writing in the blog. Although laughter is amazingly important to me–I still consider funny people to be just about the best people in the world–I’m no longer interested in being clever or telling amusing stories myself, and that makes me unsure of what my purpose is for the blog.

A friend was over the other day and I told her the above and she exclaimed, “But you’re the QUEEN of clever quips!” and went on along those lines for a few minutes, and I felt my heart sinking lower and lower into my stomach because she valued that so much in me, and it just isn’t there anymore. Just isn’t. I’m riding a different wave. Other friends have said similar things.  She also told me that she doesn’t visit my blog often because she doesn’t have time to assimilate what I write; it’s too much for her to process in the few minutes she devotes to reading blogs. That’s discouraging, though she didn’t mean it to be. I appreciate her honesty, and I understand what she’s saying, but now what do I have to offer?

So blogging is difficult, especially since I’m not an expert at anything and don’t travel much or scrapbook and am crap at writing book and movie reviews. I suppose that I write partly to be known and partly to share ideas that have made me feel better, so that if you’re struggling in the same ways, you can feel better too. But all of this is such a personal journey, almost too personal, and I share only a tiny bit of it with people. I wish I had a secret hidey-hole of a blog to tuck all the gritty details into, for those who are interested in them and so that everybody else isn’t bored to tears. But why not make this blog like that? People don’t have to read it if they don’t want to.

To be honest, I’m caught in a strange place–eager to share my process, but unsure if anybody really wants to hear it. It’s scary to be vulnerable like this, but I’ve been hurt so much lately that it’s difficult to believe that many people care, can accept this side of me. sigh. I realize how much I’ve pulled back from revealing myself, and how I’ve become comfortable only in sharing concepts and not the experiences that have made them come alive to me, and I don’t like that. The personal stories are what make blogs interesting! In whatever blogs I read, I tend to skim over any sentence that doesn’t begin with the pronoun “I”. But I’m having a hard time sharing my “I” in any detail right now.

I’m so grateful to the people who’ve stuck around for years, even though my style and subject matter have changed–I know who you are and I love you. I’ve also cruised around enough on the internet to see that there are millions of people who think like me, who’ve had similar experiences, who are riding the very same wave, but the problem is, we don’t know each other, and I don’t want to spend more time online courting new readers because I’m already on here enough. Gah, networking is exhausting and I just don’t want to do it.

All this babbling doesn’t mean I’m going to stop blogging… I’ve just slowed down because I’m not sure about my place in it, what I want to do with it, and how I want to do it. But, you know, relationships are about trust, trusting that the people who are reading this–YOU–are here because you want to be, not because anybody’s holding a gun to your head. Unless they are, in which case I’ll ask you to say hello to Guido for me, and tell him the check’s in the mail.

I’m just in a freaky-ass place right now when it comes to relationships, which is kind of funny considering that the post I scrapped was all about happiness and how every day has become an exciting new adventure for me. The thing is, it’s true. I am happy (even under the tears) but instead of simply telling you that, I’d like to get to the place again where I can tell you why. And not even tell you why, but bring you along on the journey so you can see why, without me having to convince you.

But I’m afraid that 99.9% of you will, or already do, think I’m batshit crazy. People thinking that about me won’t stop me from being it, but it will stop me from saying my stuff out loud. Man, that’s such a drag too, because the stuff we don’t say is the juicy chewy sweet part of the conversation. The rest is like, I don’t know, store-bought orange juice that’s been fortified with ten essential vitamins and minerals. It tastes okay and it’s pretty good for you, but where did the oranges come from? Florida? California? Mexico? Were they shaken from the tree, or picked? Did they get bruised on the way down? Were they ripe or did they sit in a greenhouse for a few weeks in a cloud of gas? Who picked them? A migrant worker with five kids or a young girl working a summer job? Did either one of them slide an orange into their pocket when the supervisor wasn’t looking? That’s the stuff I want to know. You can buy the same carton of orange juice in any old supermarket. It’s the story behind it that makes it unique.

So, I can see I have a decision to make. I think it’s either get back to being real or shut the eff up… Or, quite possibly, feel less angsty tomorrow and publish the scrapped post after all. I’m not sure if I’m ready to take the leap into full disclosure yet, but at least I can see that I’m working my way back toward it, especially since I felt I could talk to you about this, right? It’s been awhile since I’ve been nervous about pushing the “Publish” button. ha! But here I go. Talk to you lovelies later. xo

Oh, and check out my new TMI page. :)