I am trying to find my voice as someone who blogs. I love writing and have written all my life. Songs. Now a book. Letters and stories and emails and other tidbits. But what I am trying to learn to do here is different. I am learning to let go. I am letting go of the ideas I have about who I should be, and how I want to be perceived.
I heard a podcast the other day and I honestly can’t remember which one it was but the idea was that when you think you are being too honest or you are revealing too much about yourself then you are starting to hit the sweet spot.
So that is where I am trying to go. I can see the picture of what it might look like when I get there and I can imagine someone down the line reading something I have written here and saying to themselves, yes, that feels authentic. I am trying. But I know I am not there quite yet.
My wife read the last post I put up here and she politely told me that it felt like I was yelling at her. And she was right. I stripped out all of the personal things I wanted to say. I never said why that particular thought was on my mind that night. I was pretty amped up from a half mile swim and ready to take on the world and I wanted to share that enthusiasm. I imagined it to be something that Steven Pressfield might write. But it wasn’t. It came across like I was talking at you, not to you. Like I was speaking form a stage and not sitting next to you. And anyway, who am I to tell you how to do anything? The only thing I would say in my defense is that I am someone who has done things. I can’t say that I have done them well, others will have to be the judge of that, but I have done them.
But so have you, and everyone else. We have all done things. And that is why I love writing. It shows me that I am not alone in my thinking, it lets me peek into someone else’s journey and see that someone else has been down this road. So welcome to my journey, I hope we can share some ideas and learn something along the way.
I keep a handful of quotes in a notebook and one that has stuck around for a while is this.
“Advice helps only him who gives it, and that only insofar as it lightens the burdens of conscience.”
Trevanian from Shubumi
I am not here to give advice. I am here as a fellow traveler. These are strange waters that we navigate and I do not know the way. But I am searching and learning the release of control.
Tonight I was giving my four year old daughter a bubble bath and she wanted to use the bubbles to decorate my face. I don’t think I was particularly excited about it but she insisted. So I gave in. I closed my eyes and released control. She put bubbles all over my eyes and made me promise not to wipe them off. And then she put them over my mouth so I couldn’t speak. Instead I listened. I heard the sound of the water moving and the crackles of the bubbles as they dissipated. I could smell the lavender. She kept piling the bubbles all over my face and all over my hair and then in my ears until I was covered in bubbles and when she was a satisfied she told me I could look.
Now I had to wipe some of the bubble off just to get my eyes open but when I opened them she was smiling and laughing and just happy that I had let her do her thing. And when we were done with the bath I went ahead and did my thing.
So I guess what I am saying is that I hope I can put some bubbles over your senses and that you can hear whatever it is that you need to hear and then when you are ready you can wipe away the bubbles from your eyes and go on and do your thing.
