Silencing the critics

I often wonder about the void where this blog travels and if it is mostly self serving. Somehow, I don’t think so. It’s really an online journal, a thinking out loud that, I hope, may inspire others to share.

I spent years as a journalist carefully, dutifully and accurately collecting the stories of others and have begun to realize it is time to share my own. That has not been so easy as I was trained to be the invisible observer, the one asking the questions, recording the answers, behind the camera and not center stage. That’s a more comfortable place for an introvert.

Yet I also connect well with people and some are amused and shocked to think I consider myself introverted. I think there may be seasons to introversion and extroversion (boy, those sound like new drugs ... in another life I named caskets and always thought I could create personas for new pharmaceuticals) ... for me, anyway. On Myers-Briggs, I register only slightly introverted.

I came to understand the difference better when my best friend, also a wonderful teacher, remarked that it’s really more about where you draw your energy. When I need to unwind, I have to do so alone. There are times I like the electricity of crowds and groups, but I often leave drained and in need of solace.

This blog is such a departure from my public writing, where everything is outlined and carefully constructed. It’s a hybrid of my journaling (free, loose with not much concern – yes, I am still a perfectionist – for grammar and spelling) and my professional writing. I do write here as if for an audience, unlike in my private journal, where I am brutally honest. That’s meant for no one’s eyes but my own and if someone else were to read it and be offended, “OH WELL,” as my youngest always says. It’d be their own fault.

Hopefully, I’m not offensive here ... just blogging away into the void.

• How often do I do something without being motivated by others?
• Is there a place I am totally honest with myself?
• Can I ever silence those critics sitting on my shoulder whispering in my ear? How?
• How freeing is it to do something “just because?”

Doubt is my biggest shadow ...

Umm... day 2, will this be a daily practice? Like Julie Powell cooking 365 days of Julia Child. Just not sure yet, but feel some commitment to regularity.

I find it interesting that I am reading Bridget Jonses’ Diaries and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – wildly divergent, yet both based on a regular progression of documentation. One fiction and one fact. One revolving round single life in late 1990s London and the other on growing one’s own food for a year. Yin and Yang, perhaps? But something about continuity and accountability appeals to me. Also something about “putting it out there," [maybe that’s why Bridget Jones appeals to me] a message I am repeatedly receiving from a higher authority, yet also from deep within.

I have privately kept journals, in the Quaker tradition without realizing it, all through my 40s and often find it a source of comfort, problem solving and creativity. It’s a place I can turn when it seems no one else understands or wants to hear “it” again ... the “it” du jour. Sometimes I journal religiously, others, not so much.

It seems mildly amusing that as a journalist for so much of my career, I never once considered keeping a journal ... “Just the facts, Mam,” I thought. Older and, hopefully, wiser. I find what’s behind the facts much more interesting and worthy of exploration.

I have two kinds of journals: one for words and another, for images, which often convey for me so much more than words can. I plan to post some of those images here.

Yesterday was quite exhilarating launching this blog (with so much forethought: a couple of hours ... really it’s been a whisper for awhile) and seeing it gain “followers.” Also humbling and gratitude producing. I hope the novelty doesn’t wear off. I joined facebook last year at this time all excited about “finding” old and new friends, then being less enthusiastic when it seemed kind of shallow. I desire a facebook with more substance ... not sure that’s possible given that its name so clearly states the intent. Or my bigger fear: that I have nothing worthwhile to say.

Doubt is my biggest shadow and I am learning to recognize, even honor it ... like the really long shadows of the trees today on the snow in the crisp sunshine.
• What are my shadows?
• How can I more fully integrate them?
• How can I honor them?
• Do I cast them on others, projecting what’s really just mine?
• Can I own them?
I am learning to trust the dark
and see it as not merely
the absence of light,
but the presence
the presence of all
the presence of all color

– Cathy
www.turtleboxstories.com is a place I have created for gathering and sharing the deepest stories of our hearts; please visit and/or share if you’re so inclined