An Authentic Voice At Last!

I woke today knowing that I was going to make some tea and go to the computer, write for a couple of hours, and go to work.  It was radical and revolutionary (I’ve claimed to be a writer most of my life but no fly on my walls would ever validate the claim) and yet at the same time perfectly natural.  In no less than five days, the rhythm and necessity of writing every day has entered me with a sweet and subtle pulsing that would say (if it could speak) “you are more you now than you’ve ever been”.

Today’s content was more daunting than usual, pertaining as it did to website content for the business that my partner and I operate (we agreed to capitalize for at least one day on the fact that I am a captive audience to my own keyboard and get some fresh mojo on our homepage).  Our current “presence” (if you can call it that) is bland and un-engaging, written as it was on the first day we learned how to work our iWeb, in a sort of frenzy to get something- anything- on the page in front of us.  Since its inception, we’ve been engaged and distracted in so many other ways that it has just kind of languished there like an old vase whose most recent stems have long since turned to sludge.

Faced with a blank page with the stated task of engaging the interest, curiosity, and commitment of people as-yet unknown, I have a tendency to go into hyper-formal mode.  What I produce in these states tends to be the sort of fluff that one might expect to see in a framed needlepoint hanging outside the bathroom in a narrow and heavily wood-paneled corridor in some nameless place... replete with superlative exclamations and extravagant promises of the lengths to which I will go to serve my clients (at which time I stop myself and say, “Wait. Is this even true?  What if I don’t hold their hand the entire time?  What if I don’t want to be available “any time”?).

The other tendency is to go all info-head, producing a stream-of-consciousness ramble about efficacy and purity and all manner of elements that pertain in a number of important ways to the issue at hand (essential oils) that, while scientifically validated, painstakingly documented, and altogether very, very fascinating, nonetheless have the effect of stunning the hapless visitor into a soporific unwillingness to engage any further, lest they become responsible for the same burden of information just hefted upon them.

So.  The quest begins to find a voice- a professional voice.  Quite unlike the veda-quoting, sanskrit spouting scholastic pursuits which have given me such thrills, or the justifiably “angst in my pants” memoir-ishness that keeps insisting it could be my salvation if I’d only sit down and write it, and far distant also from the down-home accounts of what we’ve got growing on the organic farm plot or ranting against the industrial-military complex and extractive economy mindsets... a professional voice must appeal to those who may not care a whit about all the myriad of other things that I am outside my profession (and indeed might disagree).

To my great astonishment I saw flashes today of genuine, authentic “self” come out in the playful way I explained how people get paid to do what I do (this topic’s always resulted in a sort of stilted, awkward result in the past, because this is the part where I fear being judged or misunderstood in my intentions - I will, after all, ask them to pay at some point).  Today though, I took a different approach and diverged briefly on Right Livelihood.  Suddenly what emerged was no longer “well first you sign up for this thing, and then you do this other thing” it was a confident breezy voice streaming from my fingertips saying something about service and dignity and integrity and engaging in meaningful work that actually pays - and I said, “there it is!  That’s us!”  A little bit sassy, a wee bit bold, but always respectful and always keeping grace as the centerpiece, even when being cheeky.

So pleased was I to find this character staring back at me from the screen onto which I’d released her that I did a little dance and yelped a little yelp.  She was bearing witness to that which I’ve come to know in my marrow in just five days of consistent writing: this is my way back to authenticity.  To reclaim the parts of me I cherish, to gain the trust of the old woman I hope to become, to live authentically in this life I must write “like my head is on fire”.  I don’t know who coined that phrase, but it’s been running through my head all day... probably because it’s true.