Highlights of 2012 (2): What was your biggest question or biggest decision this year?
Will O. quit his job? When? What will happen next?
Those were the early November questions. O. did quit and is now unemployed. We are living off savings and my meager income, which will carry us for quite a while. Hopefully I get into grad school and get a stipend starting in September! For now, O. is doing lots of housework and plotting to earn money through private tutoring in computer science, and hanging out with me, and generally being so much happier than when he was working that I can only conclude that the decision was worth it.
Showing posts with label questions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label questions. Show all posts
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Bloggistential Crisis
Lately I have been wondering about purpose. What is this blog for? Is it accomplishing what it should? Should I be doing something different? something better? Ever since reading two or three blogposts about how to make your blog better, get more readers, increase traffic, etc., I have been intermittently paralyzed from blogging, or writing at all, with the perpetual question: is this any good? Will anyone want to read this?
Often I treat this questions like flies, swatting them away without much thought. They are annoying but short-lived. But these are flies that hover around the "New Post" button on blogger, and, as I do with any pest-infested place, I have been avoiding that "New Post" button, and even more, the "Publish" button. This is a problem! I'm not a blogger if I don't blog. I'm not a writer if I don't write. I want to live in my identity as a writer: I need to write. And so I need to face my fears.
I have been noticing more and more that the unexamined fears are the most troublesome. They nip at my heels, they growl at me from behind. They are always behind me, you see, because I never look at them. I studiously avoid eye contact, because in order to look at them, I would have to acknowledge their presence. Unlike wild beasts, these threaten me more by the fact of their presence than by harmful actions they could take against me.
In truth, when I look my fear in its yellow eye, it wilts like a scolded dog. It turns tail and disappears under a car like a stray cat. Simply by acknowledging that I have been afraid, I diminish my fear.
My fear here: I am afraid of being judged and found wanting according to some unwritten standard. I am afraid this blog will be a failure. --But when did I sign a contract subjecting myself to the judgment of the internet? The internet may judge me (most likely by ignoring my existence), but its judgment has no real force in my life. Why am I allowing it to have force in my heart?
The problem is, I have no idea what the purpose/mission/goal/raison-d'etre of this blog is. Or rather, I have several ideas, and sometimes they get along but sometimes they fight each other. Sometimes I think I keep this blog so that people can read my writing. This is scary because what if no one does read it? What if it's always just my parents reading? Sometimes I think I keep it because I write different kinds of things here than I write in a journal or an email. This is less scary. I am the only one I have to satisfy. Other times I think other things. It gets messy in my head and then I just stop writing, for a while. But I come back. I come back because, even though I can't tell you exactly what my purpose in writing here is, I know I have a purpose, or a hundred fragments of purpose, and I also know this blog doesn't have to be a mere means: it can be its own end.
My purpose in keeping this blog is to write, and to write well. Goodness is its own justification, and I don't have to write the best, the most, to write well. So here I am, and here I'll be.
Often I treat this questions like flies, swatting them away without much thought. They are annoying but short-lived. But these are flies that hover around the "New Post" button on blogger, and, as I do with any pest-infested place, I have been avoiding that "New Post" button, and even more, the "Publish" button. This is a problem! I'm not a blogger if I don't blog. I'm not a writer if I don't write. I want to live in my identity as a writer: I need to write. And so I need to face my fears.
I have been noticing more and more that the unexamined fears are the most troublesome. They nip at my heels, they growl at me from behind. They are always behind me, you see, because I never look at them. I studiously avoid eye contact, because in order to look at them, I would have to acknowledge their presence. Unlike wild beasts, these threaten me more by the fact of their presence than by harmful actions they could take against me.
In truth, when I look my fear in its yellow eye, it wilts like a scolded dog. It turns tail and disappears under a car like a stray cat. Simply by acknowledging that I have been afraid, I diminish my fear.
My fear here: I am afraid of being judged and found wanting according to some unwritten standard. I am afraid this blog will be a failure. --But when did I sign a contract subjecting myself to the judgment of the internet? The internet may judge me (most likely by ignoring my existence), but its judgment has no real force in my life. Why am I allowing it to have force in my heart?
The problem is, I have no idea what the purpose/mission/goal/raison-d'etre of this blog is. Or rather, I have several ideas, and sometimes they get along but sometimes they fight each other. Sometimes I think I keep this blog so that people can read my writing. This is scary because what if no one does read it? What if it's always just my parents reading? Sometimes I think I keep it because I write different kinds of things here than I write in a journal or an email. This is less scary. I am the only one I have to satisfy. Other times I think other things. It gets messy in my head and then I just stop writing, for a while. But I come back. I come back because, even though I can't tell you exactly what my purpose in writing here is, I know I have a purpose, or a hundred fragments of purpose, and I also know this blog doesn't have to be a mere means: it can be its own end.
My purpose in keeping this blog is to write, and to write well. Goodness is its own justification, and I don't have to write the best, the most, to write well. So here I am, and here I'll be.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Life Questions
Lately, I've been asking myself a lot of questions. Life-changes (especially those in the box of surprises we call marriage) seem to generate these questions--or perhaps it's the conflicts created or revealed by changes that give birth to these questions. The questions come in flocks. They descend from the skies, their wings clattering. They leave the ground a mess of droppings and feathers.
One flock is the color of money. Its birds sing about saving, about future expenditures, about how I spend too much. They demand to know why I need so many things, why I want them. They remind me, people are starving in other places. Children are shoeless in the Russian snow, and here I am, my closet floor full of shoes, considering whether I "need" a pair of boots.
When that flock drifts away, another flock settles around me. It pecks at me. It caws about newer clothes, more make-up, a different purse, more care in putting together an outfit. It tells me I am not doing things right.
Like sparrows that fill every bush and peck every square of sidewalk, questions twitter at me about chores. Has the laundry been done? When are you going to do it? What's for dinner? How about breakfast? Is there granola? Is the bread dough going to go bad? Are we getting enough vitamins?
There's a bird that shrieks that I'm not accomplishing anything, that I'm going nowhere. When will you apply to grad school? Why do you expect anyone to accept you for a PhD program? Why haven't you sent out any poems yet?
There is a rooster that crows some mornings: What do you have to contribute? What could you possibly have to say that is worth reading? (This started after I read a couple of posts on how to get more readers for your blog, which introduced previously unconsidered goals and standards into my brain.)
There is a vulture circling overhead, asking, What are you forgetting?
And I keep hearing the questions, Am I a child or an adult? What makes me happy? Why am I here? But at least those questions are asked by my own soul, not by insecurities and fears and the polluting influence of a materialistic, narcissistic, workaholic, kaleidoscopic society.
I constantly need to remind myself: I am not what I accomplish. My worth is not measured in statistics of any sort--in fact, it isn't quantifiable. I am a person, a story, a poem, a picture: not a machine. In solitude, in silence, in stillness, I still exist.
I breathe in deep, and blow out. I blow away the birds.
One flock is the color of money. Its birds sing about saving, about future expenditures, about how I spend too much. They demand to know why I need so many things, why I want them. They remind me, people are starving in other places. Children are shoeless in the Russian snow, and here I am, my closet floor full of shoes, considering whether I "need" a pair of boots.
When that flock drifts away, another flock settles around me. It pecks at me. It caws about newer clothes, more make-up, a different purse, more care in putting together an outfit. It tells me I am not doing things right.
Like sparrows that fill every bush and peck every square of sidewalk, questions twitter at me about chores. Has the laundry been done? When are you going to do it? What's for dinner? How about breakfast? Is there granola? Is the bread dough going to go bad? Are we getting enough vitamins?
There's a bird that shrieks that I'm not accomplishing anything, that I'm going nowhere. When will you apply to grad school? Why do you expect anyone to accept you for a PhD program? Why haven't you sent out any poems yet?
There is a rooster that crows some mornings: What do you have to contribute? What could you possibly have to say that is worth reading? (This started after I read a couple of posts on how to get more readers for your blog, which introduced previously unconsidered goals and standards into my brain.)
There is a vulture circling overhead, asking, What are you forgetting?
And I keep hearing the questions, Am I a child or an adult? What makes me happy? Why am I here? But at least those questions are asked by my own soul, not by insecurities and fears and the polluting influence of a materialistic, narcissistic, workaholic, kaleidoscopic society.
I constantly need to remind myself: I am not what I accomplish. My worth is not measured in statistics of any sort--in fact, it isn't quantifiable. I am a person, a story, a poem, a picture: not a machine. In solitude, in silence, in stillness, I still exist.
I breathe in deep, and blow out. I blow away the birds.
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